The following is a Detroit Free Press Editorial of August 10, 1995. Since it's about pork and unecessary and dubious military spending, it is very relevant to the Camp Grayling issue.
In the best of times, it would be bothersome to see Congress hell-bent to expand its order for B-2 bombers and to revive the mythic Star Wars defense system.
But with Congress whacking away at the poor, pushing to cut Medicare benefits to rationalize a general tax reduction with substantial benefits for the wealthy, and cutting funds to support federal initiatives as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, the reverence for things military is downright obscene.
The Pentagon didn't ask for the extra B-2s. It has gotten a report that suggests the B-2 at worst is a turkey that can barely fly as advertised and can't always tell a cloud from a mountain, and at best is a strategic weapon that no longer has a clear purpose.
And the Star Wars effort was mostly a figment of Ronald Reagon's imagination - a useful myth, maybe, for worrying the Russians, but a myth that we should now see in perspective. It has limited, if any, relevance in the post-Cold War world.
The solicitude for dubious and redundant weapons systems has led too many in Congress to employ a variety of pseudo-Cold War arguments, such as that the Clinton administration has permitted our military to become a "hollow army," and cannot be trusted to ask for what the military really needs - a claim even the conservative Cato Institute says is not true.
There's the argument that China is the new enemy to replace the old Soviet Union, which misstates China's recent military history and exaggerates the threat it poses. There's the argument that the new Russia is as menacing as the old Soviet Union, and that we have to be redundant because it's such a dangerous world out there.
The real reason for the renewed enthusiasm for military spending seems to lie in what the late Dwight Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex," and the fact that it and the politicians subservient to it are reluctant to give up the privileged position they have enjoyed in American society since the end of World War II. The Pentagon budget, despite its decline as a percentage of the nation's gross domestic product, remains a huge source of pork.
Some members of Congress who wouldn't think twice about demanding that welfare clients give up their federal subsidies insist that the Pentagon should get more weapons than it has asked for, to support missions it is no longer assigned. Talk about the need to change our priorities: Getting rid of the congressional fetish for dubious military projects should be No. 1 on this country's post-Cold War wish list. RWOL
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