War Spending vs. Safety at Home Posted by Lorelei Kelly

It's hard to talk about government priorities these days without falling into the old Cold War framework of Guns versus Butter....This framework is indeed obsolete.  Just helping our military services to build back basic and elementary equipment is going to be very expensive over the coming years. You can support a healthy and strong defense however, and still decry the amount we're spending on President Bush's vanity war. The war supplementals are fair game for a priorities debate.  Especially when Halliburton contiues its gargantuan and non competitive contract rip-offs of our soldiers and our taxpayers. (keep your eye on that link for more hearings on Iraq contracting)

The cost of the war in Iraq is creeping into all of our domestic budgets. These budets are political documents (and moral documents as Jim Wallis of Sojourners has pointed out). I would argue that some of the items cut relate directly to our ability as a nation to protect ourselves over the long term in a post-9/11 security environment.

Let's have a look at this week's H.R. 3010 - Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education Appropriations Act for FY06.  These figures reflect the budget that came to the floor of the House of Representatives the week of June 20th.

International Labor Affairs (86.7% cut);  These are the public servants who care about things like child labor and corporate social responsibility.  Such nags!

For hospital emergency preparedness grants (3% cut) ; Duct tape and plastic sheets, people!

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (4.6% cut); West Nile what?

Education: No Child Left Behind (3.3% cut / $13.2 billion below its FY06 authorization level and a $40 billion cumulative shortfall since the enactment of NCLB);   They should be home-schooled anyway.

Education Technology grants (39.5% cut); Because our future competitiveness is SO important.

Give me a break.

Comments

[fat sam]

good post.

[Eric E]

I'm a newcomer here, so pardon my ignorance, but isn't there a larger question of figuring out what the right military response to asymmetric threats is? Until we have that one pretty straight, we have no idea if we need 4 divisions or 40.

Seems to me this was one of the key problems of the Iraq war - Rummy talked a good game about a new kind of military, but as I understand (and maybe I'm just woefully misinformed), we're still using our forces to try to do pretty conventional missions - secure this place, drive this group of fighters out of that place, etc. The track record of major powers fighting guerilla insurgencies in this way is pretty dismal.

I only have one idea for reform, and that's to insist that everyone above a certain rank have proficiency in local language before deployment, except where we've been attacked. This in its own right would require a somewhat more conservative deployment strategy.

What are the metrics for the effectiveness of troops trained as warfighters vs. MP's in these kind of situations? I guess I'd like to know that we're making progress figuring out what works in this regard before starting a big ramp-up in troop strength.

Anyway, that's definitely a rant from the sidelines, as I have absolutely 0 national security experience.

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