Spending money we do not have to protect us from threats that do not exist

I have never been a big fan of George Will. Over the years it has seemed to me that in his columns, in his television appearances, and in his ubiquitous musings on baseball, he has been smug, self-satisfied, and condescending. Will is usually prone to taking the conservative side of arguments but does occasionally depart from typical conservative dogma. In a column in today's Kansas City Star, Will attempts to justify the recent United States policy of targeted killings of suspected terrorists. In his discussion, Will admits that today's American military, as currently constituted, is unwieldy and ineffective in fighting the current threat presented by terrorism. Will amazingly quotes former White House attorney John Yoo, one of the authors of the notorious Bush administration torture memos. Will quotes Yoo as follows:

"Most US wars have been fought with military mass sustained by economic might. But as Yoo says, today's war is against a diffuse enemy that has no territory. So the war cannot be won by producing more tanks, Army divisions or naval forces. The United States can win only by destroying al-Qaeda's ability to function – by selectively killing or capturing its key members ."

I have a moral problem with targeted killings of "suspected terrorists." It is the "suspected" part of the equation that I find troubling, both on due process grounds and also because targeted killings in foreign countries have typically resulted in the killing and maiming of numerous innocent bystanders. Collateral damage is both the name and justification for the extra carnage.  Putting that question aside for the moment, however, I do believe that Will, by way of quoting Yoo, has correctly analyzed our current need for military capacity and hardware. In the current negotiation between the White House and Congress over the "Fiscal Cliff" issue, both sides are anxious to avoid the predetermined spending cuts agreed to some time ago, which would be the result of a failure of the President and Congress to agree on appropriate spending cuts to deal with the deficit problem. Going over the "Fiscal Cliff" would result in substantial cuts to the military budget.   Republicans certainly consider the military budget to be sacred. The Obama administration has proposed some modest cuts to the military budget. It is obvious and today admitted by conservative spokesman George Will that maintaining the heavy arsenal of weaponry and equipment, not to mention manpower, reflected by our current military, is both unnecessary to meet any conceivable and foreseeable impending threat and largely ineffective in dealing in a focused way with the terrorist threat actually presented. We currently spend more on "defense" than all the other countries in the world put together. And this does not take into account all the money we spend on other security activities such as Homeland Security and the vast intelligence operation that America has maintained since World War II. We can solve a great deal of our deficit problem by becoming realistic about threats actually presented in the modern world and confining military spending to some reasonable response to the threat presented.  If we do not rein in military spending, we are going to slowly die from internal bleeding caused by spending money we do not have have to protect us from threats that do not exist.

Abraham Lincoln had these prophetic words:

"Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step over the
ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! -- All the armies of Europe, Asia
and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own
excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander,
could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the
Blue Ridge, in a trial of a Thousand years. At what point, then, is the
approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it
must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction
be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation
of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." 


http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/7_absurd_ways_the_military_wastes_taxpayer_dollars/