Quite the editorial today from the NYT. By overreaching on the budget, the Big War crowd is getting revealed for what it is: operationally tone deaf and strategically myopic.
No other comment needed since I've already vented on this subject many times in this space. Good to see the Times catch up to Esquire. Hell, it's just good to realize that the editorial staff reads Esquire.
My favorite lines (and there are so many that basically replicate my slightly polemic piece in the November issue):
Soldiers Versus Defense Contractors
Published: December 15, 2005
New York Times... After the Pentagon's spending orgy over the past five years, there is plenty of scope for cutting, without weakening America's defenses - but only if the cuts come out of the most costly and least needed Air Force and Navy weapons programs, not from the money required to replenish and re-equip the Army and Marine ground forces that have been worn down by Iraq.
Alleviating the dangerous strain on America's overstretched, underrested and increasingly taxed land-based forces must be the Pentagon's highest priority for the next five years ...
Very few critics of the military's spending priorities want the United States to relinquish its current dominance in the skies and on the seas. But in a world where no rival military powers are remotely capable of challenging America, that dominance can be preserved without loading every new plane and ship with every conceivable technological marvel, whether or not it is relevant to the military mission at hand.
Much of the astounding 41 percent increase in military spending over the past five years has gone toward hugely expensive air and sea combat systems - and this in an era when America's toughest battles are being fought on land against foes that have no known air force or navy ...
The Air Force and the Navy can play only secondary roles in wars like Iraq. Their spending plans are increasingly oriented toward the possibility of future military conflict with China. That is not totally absurd. China's military planning is increasingly oriented toward the possibility of future conflict with the United States, like, for example, a clash over the Taiwan Strait. But war with China is a remote, unlikely and avoidable contingency. It should not dominate current military spending--especially if China is simply being used as an excuse to justify expensive equipment the Pentagon wants to buy. Given the huge lead the United States now holds in air and sea technology, the Navy and Air Force can be re-equipped with everything they really need at a more realistic and affordable pace.
... in a world of finite resources, excessive spending on the wrong weapons comes at the expense of real military needs, like building up America's ground forces. Surely $2.3 trillion over the next five years, allocated wisely, ought to be enough to provide for all of America's military needs in all likely combat contingencies. It would be scandalous to spend that kind of money and still come up short in real wars like Iraq.
The full piece is found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/opinion/15thu1.html