"Defense is where we're supposed to spend tax dollars"

By Steve Hynd

 Just as the warmongers ratchet up the noise machine for war with Iran again, Dan Froomkin, writing at HuffPo, asks an obvious question: should we really be looking for more of the same after Iraq and Afghanistan?

What lesson have we learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is it that we should prepare for similar conflicts in the future, or that we should avoid them like the plague?

Over the past nine years, it's gradually become accepted that our military's duties include not just deterrence and conventional warfare but counterinsurgency, nation-building, counterterrorism and propping up fragile governments.

A recent Congressional Research Service report determined that the more than $1 trillion that's been spent on Afghanistan and Iraq make the "war on terror" the second most expensive U.S. military action, in constant dollars, after World War II.

So when it comes to making substantial cuts in the country's enormously expanded military budget, said Gordon Adams, a professor of international relations at American University, "the key is going to be in mission discipline."

"We are at a point in American history where a serious, baseline discussion of strategy and mission is essential," Adams told a House oversight subcommittee for national security and foreign affairs.

Congress needs to do a "hard scrub" when it comes to what missions it considers appropriate for the armed forces going forward, he said. "Which ones are most important to the security of the U.S.?" Is the chief takeaway from Afghanistan and Iraq "that our national security is engaged every time there is a terrorist attack, every time there is a insurgency," and so on?

Froomkin cites some think-tankers and Democratic congressmen, including Barney Frank, who obviously think the answer should be no.

And then there's the Republican view:

"Defense is where we're supposed to spend tax dollars," said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who indicated his support for reductions in "everything else."

If people like Jordan have ever heard of "positive freedoms" - the little things that help you pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you can't afford the bootstraps in the first place - they were either too stupid or too sociopathic to care.

Update: Michael Cohen - "Tasked by Rep. Barney Frank to identify areas of the defense budget that could be cut without compromising U.S. vital interests", the Sustainable Defense Task Force "found nearly $1 trillion in possible savings over 10 years."