MoJo has A Point

Report: Military Blew $1 Trillion on Weapons Since 9/11 | Mother Jones.

I don’t agree with a lot of what I read in Mother Jones, being as I am somewhere to the right of Karl Marx. Occasionally, however, they make a good point, and I often find it lurking in the writings of Adam Weinstein as he writes on security issues.

While I think Weinstein oversimplifies aplenty in this article, I’m mostly with him when he writes:

Is the military in a bad way when it comes to staying up-to-date? Not really. But is it paying through the nose for what it gets nowadays? Absolutely. Perhaps if congressional conservatives and generals attacked military contractors the way they attack defense-budget hawks, they could afford their guns and butter.

The problem with defense procurement is that it is the single largest specimen of a larger species, the uncontrollable government budget. The problem, however, is not defense: it is self-perpetuating bureaucracies and unkillable programs, brought to you by careerist officers in the Pentagon and pork-barrel rollers on Capitol Hill.

It is time for us to start slashing the fat in the government. Let’s begin by killing the Humvee, the F-35, the F-22, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and the Littoral Combat Ship.

Author: David Wolf

An adviser to corporations and organizations on strategy, communications, and public affairs, David Wolf has been working and living in Beijing since 1995, and now divides his time between China and California. He also serves as a policy and industry analyst focused on innovative and creative industries, a futurist, and an amateur historian. View all posts by David Wolf