Sunday, May 1, 2011

How To Cut Defense Spending

All Things Considered interviewed Ret. Col. Douglas Macgregor:
This year the U.S. is expected to spend $700 billion on defense. That's twice what was spent in 2001, and as much as is spent on the rest of the world's militaries combined.
Defense is the U.S. government's biggest discretionary expenditure, but given the level of the national debt — and the drive to reduce government spending — calls are louder than ever to find cost savings.
Ret. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor says there are ways to reap major savings when it comes to defense. He recently wrote about the subject in an article titled "Lean, Mean Fighting Machine" for Foreign Policy magazine. He tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that the U.S. simply cannot afford "wars of choice."
"Emphasis on choice," Macgregor says. "If you look at all of the interventions that we have launched since 1945 — beginning with Vietnam in 1965 and moving forward — none of them have changed the international system at all, and none of them have directly benefited us strategically."
World War II was the last military event that really had a strategic global impact, he says. "Americans need to understand that these wars of choice, these interventions of choice, have been both unnecessary, counterproductive, strategically self-defeating and infinitely too expensive for what we can actually afford."
Unfortunately, with one of our political parties being afraid of being called pussies by the idiots and fools in the other party, who only want to spend more on defense, I don't think this will go very far.  Plus, the cuts in defense would increase unemployment immensely.  I'm pretty sure we won't address this issue until it is too late.  In other words, I don't figure on selling my defense stocks yet.

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