The Pentagon’s pooh-bahs are less than universally enthusiastic about the candidacy of one aspirant for the presidency:
(Defenders) of some of the Pentagon’s biggest weapons systems are worried that if (he) were elected, he would order sweeping changes, killing a number of big-ticket programs…
“He is more feared in the Pentagon because he is impervious to the usual methods the military uses to roll the civilian leadership,” a senior Defense official said.
Past presidential hopefuls have pledged to reorder military spending and alter war preparations. But (he) “knows where the bodies are buried,” the senior official said…
“He” is Arizona Senator John McCain, of course. Which fact probably won’t be seized upon by those who have only ever found one utterance of a GOP president worth quoting.
Obama would cut military spending too, even as he promises to both increase the size of the ground forces and bring them home, if your can get your head around that. I’m jumping to conclusions based on prior experience here, but the last Democratic president without significant military experience – Bill Clinton – avoided the dirty work of figuring out which programs to cut by cutting pretty much all of them just a little. And then a little more. And so on.
If Obama follows Clinton’s lead, his cuts would also be “horizontal,” with every service sharing more or less equally in the pain. If history is any judge, McCain’s cuts to the military budget would most likely be “vertical” – saving money by killing off whole programs.
Which is what really frightens the Iron Triangle: Everybody – DoD acquistion program offices, contractors, vendors, congressmen with concerned districts – tightens their belts for horizontal cuts, but everyone knows that no one important will get hurt. All the big dogs get a place at the dish, even if the services never quite get to the finish line on a program because capabilities are cut even as acquisitions are spread out over multiple years.
Vertical cuts on the other hand leave important people standing around without a chair when the music stops.
Scary stuff.
Good -I hope for “vertical cuts” and that “important people” are left standing when the music stops. Government procurement is inept and corrupt, including the military.
Top Dogs get rich, grunts get the shaft (as well as us lowly taxpayers). Perhaps McCain can make a meaningful difference.
Lex, I’ve been following your blog for a long time and I greatly respect your opinion.
Would you please do a blog post on this:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29000
Or, just answer here what you think about it?
Thank you very much.
Heather, thanks for your kind words – I really appreciate them.
As for Patrick Buchanan, I feel more than a little uncomfortable with many of his domestic and international policy preferences. His recommendation here seems to be a retrenchment from our international obligations – obligations we take on willingly, if heavily, knowing that no one else remains capable or trustworthy enough to fill the vacuum that would be left by our absence.
Buchanan preaches (among other things) a comfortable 19th century sort of isolationism. The fact of the matter – from my perspective, anyway – is that all of our tendrils of economic, political and yes, military power, are inextricably interwound in this cramped and crowded 21st century planosphere.
It’s comforting to think that we can safely withdraw one or another element of our overseas presence. The fact of the matter is that the globalization train has left the station, enabled mainly by the pax Americana. But nature and geopolitics both abhor a vacuum.
It’s too late to get off the train, and we can never truly “go home” again. We are the indispensable nation, stuck with the world as we have found it, as they, in turn, are stuck with us.
Thank you Lex.
“… all of our tendrils of economic, political and yes, military power, are inextricably interwound … ”
This is the part that is just beyond my comprehension. I want to understand it!
Bringing our troops home (from everywhere except Iraq and Afghanistan) appears to be such an easy solution to our economic troubles!
The arguments for it seem so plausible.
Someone recently argued with me that “we are borrowing from Europe in order to defend Europe, we are borrowing from Japan in order to keep cheap oil flowing to Japan, and we are borrowing from Arab regimes in order to install democracy in Iraq.”
Their point was that we are trillions of dollars in debt and our country is going bankrupt.
I didn’t know how to answer them, except to sputter on that we couldn’t pull out of Iraq.
This was before all of the Wall Street bailout stuff happened! I see the mad dash our country is making for socialism and I feel absolutely confused and turned around!
~Heather
This ain’t ’92, and if you’ll remember, the actions of the ’90′s set in motion 911. Horizontal or vertical we’ll still have Barbarians at the Gate even a messianic community organizer can’t ignore…
Our job security comes in a distant second when it comes to our families and this nation’s security. Right?
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