Mr. Write's Page

Maybe it’s old age. Maybe it’s frustration. Whatever the reason, I’ve been especially cranky and opinionated lately about politics and governance.

If I simply stewed on it, I might end up with an ulcer. So I’ve been venting.

I am not shy about my politics. I’m a lefty, because I think people should watch out for each another and give a hand to the less fortunate. I’m not an I’ve-got-mine person.

That being the case, I’ve concluded that what this country needs is a healthy dose of socialism, to repair some of the damage done by capitalism gone crazy.

Where to start? Why, socialized medicine, of course. It’s the perfect solution to the health care mess.

Today, however, I want to erupt on the subject of defense spending. If this might get your blood pressure up and inflame your own latent ulcer, now is a good time to stop reading.

I did a bit of Googling, and I found that in 2010, the U.S. military budget was $693 billion. Billion, with a B.

As you probably know, not all defense spending appears under the military budget. When you count defense spending not directly in the Pentagon’s budget, the real total was between $1 trillion and $1.35 trillion.

Just for the year 2010. Trillion, with a T.

If that fact isn’t enough to make your head spin, consider this: our 2010 military spending was equal to the 2010 military spending of all other countries on earth combined.

The Cold War is over, and in today’s world, we are threatened quite minimally. So, when our needs at home are so great, why do we spend one trillion dollars per year on national defense?

Because we have a permanent defense industry that makes it happen. The defense industry, lobbyists, Congress, and the President see that it gets done, more or less automatically.

Defense contracts are widely distributed among the states. They create profits and jobs at the local level, thus ensuring the support of local lawmakers.

The influence of the defense industry is so strong that Congress sometimes appropriates money for weapons systems that the military neither needs nor wants, and says so publicly.

Here are more interesting facts I found on the Google…

The United States, in its role as Policeman to the World, maintains between 700 and 1,000 military bases in 130 countries around the globe. The exact number of bases is, of course, classified.

The cost of maintaining those bases is about $100 billion per year.

The cost of waging the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is about $150 billion per year.

So far, the U.S. has spent about $375 billion on the war in Afghanistan.

So far, the U.S. has spent about $745 billion on the war in Iraq.

So far, $21 billion in aid to Iraq has been classified as wasted, stolen, or unaccounted for.

Last year, audits by the General Accounting Office reported cost overruns of $295 billion by Pentagon weapons systems under development.

Last year, the GAO also audited the Department of Homeland Security and found $34 billion in contracts that involved obvious waste and fraud.

From 1957 to 1960, as a military dependent, I lived at Patch Barracks, a U.S. Army base in Stuttgart, Germany. That base is still there today, still fully staffed with American troops and their families.

Patch Barracks is one of those 700-1,000 American military bases around the globe. It is one of 50 American military bases in Germany. It is one of five American military bases in Stuttgart alone.

The bases, the wars, the contracts, the overruns, the waste — they all go on, year after year, virtually automatically.

And here we are, spending one trillion-plus dollars in a single year on national defense.

We do this at a time when no country in the world threatens us militarily, when our economy is in the toilet, when millions are unemployed, when the housing market is a disaster, when government at every level is drowning in debt, when states are cutting services and laying off workers to get by.

None of this came about because of some classic evil conspiracy. It’s just a system that evolved over time as big corporations went about the task of making money.

It’s just an example of unrestrained capitalism acting naturally.

2011 Google Earth photo of Patch Barracks, a U.S. Army base in Stuttgart, Germany. American troops and their families have been stationed there since July 1945.