More On Democratic Pork: Deadly Pork

To follow up on the recent Democratic pork post at Bottom-Up Change: there's this in today's Post.

Perhaps I should start by making it clear that I've always been in favor of substantial defense spending, unlike some liberals of my acquaintance.

However, 46% of our discretionary spending is, under current conditions, probably far too much. And wasteful military spending is bad in more ways than other types of wasteful spending. For one thing, more money is at issue. Buying even one unnecessary unit is significant when you are talking about, e.g., F-22s. For another, the best-case scenario for excess military equipment is that it goes to waste; the worst-case scenario is that a bloated, super-powerful military makes irrational military adventures like Iraq more likely--such a military, some argue, actually pushes us into more wars. And, of course, excess equipment is often sold to other countries, some of which misuse it. (It'd be awhile before technology like the F-22 would be sold to such countries, but we need to take the long view here--and it's not just the F-22 and it's ilk that are at issue).

What's surprising in the Post article is that it's Dems--some very liberal Dems, of a type often accused of being anti-military--who are a big part of the problem. It was seven Dems (including Ted Kennedy) and four Republicans who demanded that the Pentagon reverse its decision not to buy more DDG-1000 destroyers (cost: $2.7 billion apiece). The Pentagon says it doesn't need any more of them, because they can't defend against even some very simple missile threats.

Now, I'm not up on the DDG-1000 debate, and it might very well be that the Navy is just maneuvering to get an even newer and more-expensive destroyer. That would be a reason to push them to take more DDG-1000s. But that's pure speculation.

As for the F-22, I'll be posting on that again soon. The last post drew an e-mail from a PR person under contract to Lockheed, offering up several patently sophistical arguments in support of continuing the F-22 program. But I'm giving the PR guy a chance to respond to queries before I post on that.

We now have the military-industrial complex that that noted bleeding-heart liberal Dwight Eisenhower warned us against. This is an internal enemy that can suck trillions of dollars from us, make us a more bellicose nation, flood the world with weapons, make war a more tempting option, and ultimately make us less prepared to fight one. Although I'm a fairly well-educated layperson on these issues, I don't know enough about specific programs like the DDG-1000 to know whether it is clear that we shouldn't have more of them. But my general rule of thumb is: if the Pentagon doesn't want it, then we don't need it.(1, 2)


1. Though see qualifier above about turning down one unit in order to shoot for something snazzier in the future.

2. The reverse, of course, does not hold.