There have been some discussions on Grist lately of the military, the military budget, how how militarism relates to sustainability.
Everyone interested in those topics should immediately go and read "Entrenched, Embedded, and Here to Stay: The Pentagon's Expansion Will Be Bush's Lasting Legacy" over on TomDispatch. It is a deeply disturbing -- not to say nightmare-inducing -- story about how the Pentagon has metastasized under the Bush administration.
As the clock ticks down to November 4, 2008, a lot of people are investing hope (as well as money and time) in the possibility of change at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But when it comes to the Pentagon, don't count too heavily on change, no matter who the new president may be. After all, seven years, four months, and a scattering of days into the Bush presidency, the Pentagon is deeply entrenched in Washington and still aggressively expanding. It has developed a taste for unrivaled power and unequaled access to the treasure of this country. It is an institution that has escaped the checks and balances of the nation.
[shudder]
Everything you always wanted to know about EPA greenhouse gas regulations, but were afraid to ask
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Wolverine Posted 5:04 am
29 May 2008
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:18 am
29 May 2008
But not in the Pentagon. For there, the dominant measure of success is gain in power, the ability to control the behavior of groups of people, even whole nations. When it comes to maximizing power, monetary efficiency often comes second. Thus it appears to be normal for Pentagon managers to treat the inability to match payments made with goods or services received as a mere inconvenience that may be brushed off as so much "budget dust". Magnitudes such as 2.3 trillion, while ordinary in astronomy are unusual in economy. Note that $2.3 trillion exceeds the net value of the entire plant and equipment of U.S. manufacturing industries, currently measured as $1.8 trillion.
The Pentagon managers' loss of $2.3 trillion has a far greater significance than as a mere exhibition of trashy administration. The U.S. is now in the grip of a highly militarized form of state-capitalism that was gradually installed during the half century of Cold War . Without formal announcement or debate, this development has spurred the deindustrialization of the U.S.
Note the date that Rumsfeld made this announcement. While I'm not into conspiracy theories, the next day provided all the justification the Pentagon needed, that it had lost with the end of the Cold War, to continue to grow and metastasize.
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Kristina & Jason Makansi Posted 5:47 am
29 May 2008
(AP) An internal audit of some $8 billion paid to U.S. and Iraqi contractors found that nearly every transaction failed to comply with federal laws or regulations aimed at preventing fraud, in some cases lacking even basic invoices explaining how the money was spent.
Of the money paid during a five-year period - from 2001 through 2006 - $7.8 billion in payments skirted billing rules with some violations egregious enough to invite potential fraud, warned the Defense Department's inspector general.
The findings provided fresh fodder for anti-war Democrats, who say President Bush's administration has turned a blind eye to the problem of corruption and fraud by relying too heavily on contractors to manage the war.
"There is something very wrong when our wounded troops have to fill out forms in triplicate for meal money while billions of dollars in cash are handed out in Iraq with no accountability," said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Results of the investigation were released at a committee hearing on Thursday, the same day the House approved legislation by Waxman intended to strengthen anti-fraud measures and increase transparency in contracting. Waxman's bill was passed as part of a major military policy bill, which authorizes $601.4 billion in defense spending.
In its report, the IG estimated the Army made more than 180,000 commercial payments from stations in Iraq, Kuwait and Egypt in the five-year period. The payments were made for various supplies and services, including bottled water, food and trucks.
In one example, $11 million was paid to a U.S. company without any record of what goods or services were provided, the IG wrote.
Overall, investigators estimated that the Army made some $1.4 billion in commercial payments that lacked even minimum supporting documentation, such as a certified voucher or invoice.
"Payments that are not properly supported do not provide the necessary assurance that funds were used as intended," the IG concluded.
CBS News - Audit: Iraq Contract Skirted Fraud Rules
Pearl Street::Jason and Kristina Makansi
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Russ Posted 6:07 am
29 May 2008
This piece doesn't even consider the massive expansion of private paramilitary structures alongside of and intertwined with the Pentagon, as Naomi Klein and other writers have documented. Of course, the aggrandizement of Blackwater and others has been done completely on the public dime - a particularly sinister twist on the privatize profits-socialize costs ideology.
Consider also the astronomical expansion of "defense" contracting by a mind-boggling array of industries, as discussed in
this LA Times op-ed by Nick Turse. As he lays out, the military-industrial complex now includes Pepsi, Johnson & Johnson, Ford and GM, Colmbia Tristar and 20th Century Fox, Tyson and Kraft, Krispy Kreme donuts, and many others.
All gorging at that Pentagon trough. So if you're wondering how to fight the hideous perspective presented by the original article linked here you won't be fighting just the military and the usual defense contractor suspects, but pretty much the entire corporate welfare complex.
And to think this explosive cancer has debauched under the auspices of the "small-government", "anti-welfare" party.
Sickening.
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Biodiversivist Posted 7:42 am
29 May 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Hal 9000 Posted 9:47 am
29 May 2008
Unfortunately, getting the facts out and changing the politics, as the article suggests, will be extraordinarily difficult. For all the Bush administration's faults and incompetence, it has, with a substantial assist from the MSM, effectively shielded its military and terrorism policies (and even its mistreatment of our military personnel) from criticism under the umbrella of patriotism. The Bush Administration's simplistic mantras and messaging ("you're for us or against us" and "support the troops") repeated ad infinitum by the Republican noise machine are blunt but ultimately effective political tools that help squelch reasoned debate. As I noted in an earlier post, the MSM assigned the three candidates who advocated real change in our foreign policy and military spending, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Ron Paul, to the lunatic fringe. In a piece on the Huffington Post a few weeks ago even Bernie Sanders conflated our response to terrorism with military preparedness because, I suspect, he didn't want to appear soft on defense or anti-military.
Under the circumstances, I think a useful grass roots approach is one adopted by religious and social activist groups advocating for the poor. In recent years these groups have argued convincingly that budgets are moral documents. Military spending to provide reasonably for our common defense is moral. The Bush administration has sunk unthinkable wealth into pre-emptive war, torture, extraordinary renditions, the projection of power across the globe, the disruption of democracy and democratic movements in other countries, and the privatization of our military. These are not morally defensible choices nor can they be hidden within the rubric of providing for our national defense.
Our spending choices represent our basic societal priorities, a point also emphasized by religious and social activist groups. Thus, our budget says we are militarists who will use the blunt instrument of military power to impose our will on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, as many of the Tomgram contributors have shown, military power is not a substitute for diplomacy and the improper use of military power leads to blowback, including terrorism. Thus, despite massive military spending, the Bush administration's foreign policy and its response to terrorism have generally been ineffective.
Finally, and obviously this is disheartening to those of us who think an ordered, effective, and timely response to anthropogenic climate de-stabilization is one of our government's highest priorities, blowing the bank on our military and taking the military budget off (or mostly off) the table shapes the climate debate. We need escape hatches in our climate change legislation because we might not be able to afford the actions necessary to reduce GHG emissions as the science demands but we can afford 183 F-22 Raptors (originally conceived to counter Soviet fighers) at $390 million a pop (including development costs)?
Still waiting for the peace dividend. . . .
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Wolverine Posted 4:41 am
30 May 2008
The U.S. spends more on the military and military related expenditures than on anything else by far. The military's main purpose is to protect Americans' "way of life," which means consuming whatever they want, the rest of the world be damned. While most people would not be able to articulate this, they know it deep down somewhere. So of course most Americans "support our troops" and the military in general.
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