Want To Cut Defense? Maybe Give The Military a Breather, Then

[n2doc]

By Spencer Ackerman November 18, 2010

After the leaders of a White House deficit commission released a plan to chop $100 billion out of the defense budget, Defense Secretary Robert Gates struck back, criticizing the plan as “math, not strategy.” That’s music to the ears of a different group of defense budget-cutters, who have a strategy to scale back U.S. military commitments — and reap the cost savings.

Pull tens of thousands of troops out of Europe and, to a lesser degree, Asia. Scale back the increase in soldiers and Marines prompted by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. There are lots of poorly-functioning military programs that can be cut, but the real path to a lower defense budget that doesn’t impact military preparedness is in going to war less, according to a letter to the deficit commission signed by 45 longtime defense wonks. Call it the dove’s budget.

“Since the end of the Cold War, we have required our military to prepare for and conduct more types of missions in more places around the world,” reads the letter (.PDF), spearheaded by the Project on Defense Alternatives and the libertarian Cato Institute. “The Pentagon’s task list now includes not only preventive war, regime change, and nation building, but also vague efforts to ’shape the strategic environment’ and stem the emergence of threats. It is time to prune some of these missions and restore an emphasis on defense and deterrence.”

The ultimate purpose of the letter is to bolster the defense cuts recommended last week by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the chairmen of the deficit commission. But it tries to cast those cuts in terms defense hawks might applaud: by increasing “mission effectiveness,” in the words of signatory Gordon Adams, an American University professor and former White House budget official. Except they’d do that by not overtaxing the military — that is, they’d ask troops to do less, rather than just spend less. Hawks won’t be happy about that.

more

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/want-to-cut-defense-maybe-give-the-military-a-breather-then/

Emphasis mine)

[DCKit]

1. Dupe

[DCKit]

2. They stole our plan, but omitted the 50% MIC budget cuts we proposed. n/t