Once again the American public is being screwed by $billions of wasteful Pentagon spending. Here are just some of the many ways your tax money goes down the tubes: Last year the Pentagon contracted to spend $17.6 billion for 10 submarines. For the past decade and the foreseeable future the U.S. will be involved in a series of military engagements where sand, not water, is the biggest environmental opponent. Our theater of operations in the Middle East is the desert, not the ocean. Then a reasonable questions arises, why spend $17.6 billion for 10 submarines? The answer comes from the militarists in our country who claim that we "have to keep an eye out" for Russia, China and, of course, North Korea. Always vague, always suppositional, the military-industrial complex always has some cover for its bloated over-spending.
Moving to an expenditure that comes out of the Pentagon petty cash fund - just a $1 billion. Last year Senator Tom Coburn raised the question of why the Pentagon had to spend $1 billion to destroy $16 billion worth of ammunition. Why was that amount of ammunition purchased only to be sent to the junk heap? No answer from the Pentagon.
Perhaps the most mind-blowing Pentagon expenditure is the $1 trillion (not with a "b" for billion but a "t" for trillion) for the misguided F-35 fighter jet program. The sad tale of huge cost overruns and mechanical and electrical problems for the world's most expensive weapon could fill volumes. To mention a few: structural cracks, buggy electrical systems, non-functioning high-tech pilot's helmet, faulty guidance software - and the list goes on. But weapon programs that were hugely over budget and failed to meet even minimum specifications never stopped the Pentagon. A few days ago, the Pentagon asked Congress to approve $34 billion for an additional 4oo f-35 planes even though the planes have not proven to function reliably in action.
When does reason, or at least responsible questioning, ask why these huge amounts are spent when they cannot be reconciled with national security? The standard military answer is, "you never know". That quasi-answer has been the basis for the expenditure of $trillions and the death of thousands of American lives (the Iraq war) and keeps the money triangle of Congress to the Pentagon to Defense Contractors obscenely intact. (Our infrastructure could be fixed with the money wasted by the Pentagon). The triangle starts with a money request from the Pentagon that gets passed by Congress and moves to military defense contractors. The defense contractors, in turn, plow money from these contracts into Congressional campaign funds and valid national defense is neglected to keep the money machine moving. The standard, but unspoken, justification for this waste is that it creates jobs. Certainly jobs are important but a principle of responsible government is that you create jobs with job programs, not with defense spending. When it is not, like the present situation, both power and money is badly misused.
We are involved with a presidential campaign in which, hopefully, meaningful debates will take place. Will any of the presidential candidates raise the question of Pentagon bloat? With the exception of Bernie Sanders, I doubt it.