Why the Pentagon's Budget is So Bloated
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Why Israel Is So Cruel
Why India inc is so obsessed with its libido?
America accounts for over half of the defense spending around the world. Just for comparison's sake, the Pentagon's R&D budget alone exceeds the entire Chinese military budge. The United States, for example, has 11 carrier units in comparison to Russia's 1 and China's none (there are three other carrier units in the world and they all belong to American allies).
It is imperative that the United States maintain a superior military force in size, skill and technological ability. And so it does. While most defense spending is justified, the Pentagon's budget is incredibly bloated and there is a lot of waste. Many outdated and useless armaments are often appropriated by Congress. They do not help the military and if anything are corrosive in that they divert precious recourses to ineffective purposes. Often the Pentagon is opposed to such armaments. Take the C-17 cargo plane, the Pentagon is entirely opposed to it but Congress is nonetheless determined to fund it:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in no uncertain terms today that if Congress attempts to put back money for the C-17, the military cargo plane built in Boeing’s Long Beach plant, he will recommend to his boss, President Barack Obama, that he vetoes the whole defense spending bill.
Have you ever heard of a bureaucracy - which is geared to ask for more and more funding - demand that the legislator not appropriate funds and that it is the legislator that wants more wasteful spending no matter the will of the bureaucracy? Welcome to American government. There is a reason for this:
In his farewell address to nation, President (and former general) Dwight Eisenhower warned about the 'military industrial complex'. A complex that would seek to encourage defense spending and even confrontations with other nations not in the interest of the military or the nation, but in the interest of the corporations who build weapons and, of course, benefit from such spending.
His initial draft warned against the 'military industrial congressional complex' as a nefarious triangle, but 'congressional' was removed because Eisenhower's advisers consoled that members of Congress would be offended if the president was seen as attacking them and that such an offense in a farewell address would lead the president ending his relationship with Congress on a sour note. In an effort to leave office with all smiling, the brutal truth of Congress' corrosive role was suppressed. We are now seeing it in play.
