Source: Global ResearchDavid Swanson
On Thursday, Leon Panetta held a press conference announcing what he
called "cuts" to military spending. The first question following his
remarks pointed out that the "cuts" are to dream budgets, while the
actual spending will be increased over Panetta's 10-year plan. Is there
any year, the reporter asked, out of the 10 years in question, other
than the first one, 2013, in which spending will actually decrease at
all. Panetta replied that he was proposing really truly to cut the
projected dream budgets that he had hoped for. In other words, he did
not answer the question.
Now, there are additional minor cuts "on the table" as the saying goes, cuts that Panetta has described as disastrous, cuts that would take U.S. military spending back to about 2007 levels, cut nowhere close to what a majority of the country favors. (How we survived 2007 and all the years preceding it has never been explained.) Earlier this week, Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee sent President Obama a video denouncing these cuts. They are, of course, the cuts mandated by the legislation that created the Super Committee, which failed, resulting in supposedly automatic cuts.
The video (available here) is itself packed with lies. It falsely claims that cuts have already been made. It uses dollar figures derived from lumping 10 years of budgets together to make cuts sound 10 times larger. It pretends the automatic cuts would all be to the military, whereas many could be to the State Department and other subsidiary arms of the military. These Republicans propose slashing 10% of non-military government jobs and describe this as saving jobs, even though non-military spending produces more jobs for the same dollars than military spending does. And of course there is no mention in this video or in any official discussion of exactly how outrageously huge the U.S. military has become. But a crazy video, and a bill to go with it, can not only pass the House and make its way into the Senate (Senator John McCain is already working on companion legislation), but the President is already in agreement with this bill's primary purpose of undoing any actual cuts to the military. The history of lame duck officials, by the way, is that of becoming less, not more, representative of the public will. Caveat emptor!
In 2004, three times in three debates Senator John McCain proposed cutting military spending and Obama avoided the topic. Candidate Obama proposed significantly enlarging the largest military the world had ever seen. And he has done so. He now proposes not to cut it while pretending to cut it. The best bit of rhetoric in this week's State of the Union address was this:
Now, there are additional minor cuts "on the table" as the saying goes, cuts that Panetta has described as disastrous, cuts that would take U.S. military spending back to about 2007 levels, cut nowhere close to what a majority of the country favors. (How we survived 2007 and all the years preceding it has never been explained.) Earlier this week, Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee sent President Obama a video denouncing these cuts. They are, of course, the cuts mandated by the legislation that created the Super Committee, which failed, resulting in supposedly automatic cuts.
The video (available here) is itself packed with lies. It falsely claims that cuts have already been made. It uses dollar figures derived from lumping 10 years of budgets together to make cuts sound 10 times larger. It pretends the automatic cuts would all be to the military, whereas many could be to the State Department and other subsidiary arms of the military. These Republicans propose slashing 10% of non-military government jobs and describe this as saving jobs, even though non-military spending produces more jobs for the same dollars than military spending does. And of course there is no mention in this video or in any official discussion of exactly how outrageously huge the U.S. military has become. But a crazy video, and a bill to go with it, can not only pass the House and make its way into the Senate (Senator John McCain is already working on companion legislation), but the President is already in agreement with this bill's primary purpose of undoing any actual cuts to the military. The history of lame duck officials, by the way, is that of becoming less, not more, representative of the public will. Caveat emptor!
In 2004, three times in three debates Senator John McCain proposed cutting military spending and Obama avoided the topic. Candidate Obama proposed significantly enlarging the largest military the world had ever seen. And he has done so. He now proposes not to cut it while pretending to cut it. The best bit of rhetoric in this week's State of the Union address was this:
"Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home."
