Take a peek into the looking-glass, and on the other side is a land where things are a bit more reasonable.
http://www.mercurynews.com/...
I don't want to send traffic there, but read the WSJ linkif you must [there are some conflicting figures in these two articles, FYI]
As part of measures to close their budget gap, the Netherlands is cutting 12,000 military jobs, scaling down a jet program with Lockheed Martin, and reducing amounts of military hardware. In 2010, the Dutch govt collapsed over the issue of troops in Afghanistan, which have since been pulled out of that conflict.
We could take lessons from the Dutch here on Afpak, military spending, and cannabis policy (for good measure).
[In October, the UK cut 8% from its military budget. ]
That's not to say that social spending isn't being slashed in the Netherlands. It has been, as with other countries in Europe. But the contrast is how military spending cuts are never part of the cuts in America. It's absurd.
Not to mention, as The Daily Show covered recently, tons of cash is still being burned by the Pentagon on contractors, who get paid significantly more than enlisted military.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/... [video link]
Many in the rightwing establishment are so wedded to bloated military spending that they floated conspiracy theories about the teabaggers joining forces with progressives to cut military spending.
The United States now spends 54 percent of the money expended worldwide on defense, according to the Swedish-based Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s 2010 yearbook, i.e., more than the rest of the world combined. In real dollars, that’s approximately $1 trillion per year in defense/security programs, once Defense Department outlays, the cost of the Iraq and Afghan Wars, and security spending in other federal agencies (such as Homeland Security, State, Energy, HHS, and intelligence) are included. It’s a cost of nearly $9,000 per household in the United States every year.
http://thenewamerican.com/...
This Young Republican, guy named Ryan, is pushing his own budget, starting with his pathetic little 'response' to the State of the Union. If you look at it, there are no significant cuts to military spending.
But military spending is fraught with unintended cost overruns, waste, and rising costs. Look at the EU, where military cuts are being made:
Defence ministers are going to have to contend with some uncomfortable facts. Defence inflation goes up faster than normal inflation, and one factor that contributes to this is the price of military equipment, which each year will cost 5-10% more than the previous year. Military deployments are in any case very expensive, with the average expenditure for, say, a Finnish soldier deployed in KFOR in Kosovo running at about €95,000 for a six month deployment period. And for the EUFOR operation in Chad the comparable bill went up to €250,000 per soldier. The 1,800 Dutch troops in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operation in Afghanistan cost twice what was envisaged four years ago. All in all, modern missions cost far more than peacekeeping missions of the past. Last year France had to spend an extra €260m in its missions to address urgent operational requirements. This was double what it spent the year before and five times more than in 2007. Such operational cost increases mean that most probably European countries will have either to cancel or postpone military spending to the future.
Link
In February 2009, Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass., called for a reduction in the defense budget: "The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy. I am working with a variety of thoughtful analysts to show how we can make very substantial cuts in the military budget without in any way diminishing the security we need...[American] well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face."
-wiki