Where the strategic bankruptcy meets the budgetary bankruptcy
Sunday, October 29, 2006 at 8:21AM The first story makes the point I've argued many times in the past (even as some persist in the notion that wars make for good long-term business for defense contractors who build platforms):TECHNOLOGY: "Military Repair Work Booms: 'Reset' Contractors Reap a Bonanza Amid Effect of Iraqi Conflict," by Jonathan Karp, Wall Street Journal, 23 October 2006, p. B8.
NATION & WORLD: "The Third Battlefront: Money; Wars and modernization force a stressed Army to fight for $25 billion more (The question now becomes how much money the Army will get--and who pays)," by Anna Mulrine, U.S. News & World Report, 30 October 2006, p. 42.
More than three years of operations in Iraq have strained budgets and resources, leaving the Army scrounging for money to develop a new generation of high-tech weapons. But for now it is flush with funds to patch up existing equipment...To quote a SECDEF: you fix the Army you have in war, not buy the Army you want for the next one.
Rumsfeld looks very bad letting Schoomaker go to Congress to ask for the $25 billion he hasn't been able to free up because he refuses to stop overfeeding the Leviathan while starving the SysAdmin.
I mean, this is exactly what his job is all about. By sending Schoomaker to plead, Rummy's basically saying, "I'm not up to this task. I don't know what to do. You guys free me from the burden of matching strategy to tactics budgetarily. Help me. I've fallen down conceptually in this Long War and I can't get up!"
Schoomaker wants 50k new soldiers, but they cost $100k to find, train and equip. And that just gets them in the game.
Meanwhile, we're begging the same Chinese this administration still holds out as the near-peer competitor excuse for continued high spending on the Leviathan to help us out on North Korea, Iran, Sudan, and wherever else we can't go because of the Iraq tie-down.
Strategic bankruptcy meets budgetary bankruptcy. Is this not clear evidence that the Bush post-presidency has long been in full swing? When a SECDEF basically abdicates his job?
Frankly, no matter how bad the Dems will be back in power on the Hill, it would be better for the troops, the country, the GOP and the world if Bush's administration was thoroughly repudiated in this election. Two more years of this stuff will simply cost way too much--in blood, in treasure, but most of all in strategic opportunity.
Reader Comments (20)
Repudiating Bush ain't gonna do it. Let us review for a moment how we got saddled with this nonentity. A vast, well-funded propaganda/punditocracy/media machine sold him as a strong, determined, decisive leader, and the American people bought the product. We have found he's anything but. Limiting his power to do further harm by depriving him of his Congressional rubber-stamp does nothing to prevent that vast, well-funded propaganda/punditocracy/media machine presenting another one just like him again. What must be buried in the rubble of the Bush Administration is the whole Republican money/propaganda/punditocracy/media machine. Otherwise we'll br right back where we are now.
So, a cabinet secretary is essentially asking for a budgetary pony. And this is different from cabinet secretaries in every other department in every other administration how exactly? Even when the Republicans were asking for the elimination of the Dept. of Ed, to my recollection the actual Secretary in Republican administrations went in there, year in and year out asking for more money.
The hard choices get made after Congress says no. That's been the bipartisan tradition for the entire modern age. Rumsfeld "breaks the mold" in a lot of ways but not this one. That dents his reputation but every other cabinet secretary should be similarly dented by the same behavior or you recognize that this sort of self-restraint isn't normal.
RKKA - Actually we got saddled with this President because the Democrat party is so horrible that even when they swallow their principles, they can't rise above picking a nutjob who slanders his fellow soldiers (see: Kerry "winter soldier" testimony) and aids the enemy in time of war (Kerry meeting with the NV delegation in Paris as well as his VVAW work) and spends many years afterwards fiddling and cleaning his records to cover it. Bush was a weak incumbent that only survived because he had a fatally weaker challenger.
In 2000, Bush was packaged and sold as the guy who would end the electorally damaging Republican reputation of being uncompassionate skinflints. Whatever else you say about the man, he delivered on that promise. The profligacy of this administration is causing internal revolt inside the party and imperiling the GOP's 2006 chances. And the Democrats *still* can't put away their scary people long enough to close the sale with the public.
RKKA: while i don't disagree with criticism of the punditry, we have to place final responsibility squarely on the electorate for buying this stuff, right?
plus, as TM touches on, part of the reason the electorate has bought Repunditry in the past is because the Democrats are so darn out of touch (and i say that as someone who usually votes Democrat). will they ever find a way to reconnect with Middle America (middle income, Midwestern and Southern)?
TM: it would have been better if Rumsfeld had cut more of the pie for the SysAdmin *before* the point in the process when Congress said no.
TML -- dude, word.
The Donks could not beat George W. Bush.
Say that again slowly, roll it around in your mouth.
Don't bother with how 2000 was "stolen". It should not have been close. 2004? The public was desperate for a plausible alternative to the Bush management of Iraq, and the Donks couldn't deliver even that.
The problem is the Democrats are a shambles. Unless and until one of our two major parties starts having an affirmative identity (not just hating Bush and the "religious right") that the majority of people like and want to buy, nothing good is going to happen for them. And by giving the GOP no serious opposition, they are not doing the GOP any favors either. Or the voting public.
The Democrats' problem is the Democrats.
Repudiating isnt gonna do it, #2.
There is much to learn - for sure. But, I also think the other side of the isle would not have engaged the future. Its not one step back, two forward. I have wanted someone to do what Bush did since 1972, not even Ronald R. would. Credit where due; [History will treat this President, better than one thinks.]
Blair said he was more worried about America taking its toys and going home than in acting unilaterally. Me too. The other side of the isle has some pretty different priorities and a large % of them dont include foreign intervention of any kind, at all. Even if they know they have to.
I find it much easier to hold the economy steady while teaching the existing team a new trick from the pressure they are under now, to your commnetary, etc., than to bring in another team who wants to play tennis during a football game. They will eat themselves up internally and the economy externally before their "leaders" get them back on track. Sort of like the fall of Iraq, the subsequent looting and the present social fragmentation.
TPMB: Your posts seem to consistently support ABB (Anyone but Bush) and I can see why you support that. What I haven't heard is what you *do* support. I'd like to hear your strategic view on which party is better equipped for the long war. You're anti-the-current-administration but I'm not clear on what you're in favor of.
"The Donks could not beat George W. Bush."
They couldn't beat the well-funded Republican "personal destruction machine". There's a difference.
Fortunately, Republican ideas have been thoroughly tested the last several years, what with all Federal power having been in their hands. And look where we are. So it looks like they're going to get their ears clipped. Lets hope the well-funded "personal destruction machine" gets wrecked in the process.
"I find it much easier to hold the economy steady while teaching the existing team a new trick from the pressure they are under now, to your commnetary, etc., than to bring in another team who wants to play tennis during a football game. They will eat themselves up internally and the economy externally before their "leaders" get them back on track."
Lets see. The previous management balanced the budget, and expanded NATO. Waged a war, even, one that was brought to conclusion far more quickly than our present effort. Looks like the other team could play football as well. All the present one knows is "cut taxes" and "wage war on a noun".
Sean Meade - Sure, it would have been better for the country if Donald Rumsfeld not only undertook the biggest reorg in the DoD since 1947 but bucked the budgetary norm for cabinet secretaries for the entire history of the Republic. You're absolutely right. And it would be better if all our politicians were George Washington reborn.
Would you like a pony with that?
My point is that Rumsfeld is imperfect, even flawed, but he's also way above average. We should recognize that in our criticism.
RKKA - The "personal destruction machine" operates on both sides of the aisle and is just as nasty when the Dems do it.
As for balancing the budget, anyone can unsustainably goose revenues with loose money but then it's "cleanup on aisle 5" for the next guy. Clinton left Bush with a Dow of 10,587 when he took office but everybody measures against the 2000 high of 11,723. We're now at 12.1k and rising. We hit pretty high budget deficits in the hangover but Bush said (in 2003) by 2009 we'd be back down to 250B deficits and the Dems laughed. We hit that in 2006. If we can provide stability by extending the tax cuts and reforming entitlements to a sustainable course, we can sustainably fix our fiscal problems honorably.
A new round of economic goosing by the Dems is not going to help.
TM LUTAS,
That would be my point; One dog may be old and the other new, but the new one isnt gonna learn any new tricks. It will simply chase the ball, grab the ball, get it all slimey and untouchable and then run off doing its own thing anyway.
Improve what you have. Working with the knowns beats out the simplistic sentiment of "VOTE FOR CHANGE." For Gods sake, Kerry is out there saying "Go to college or go to Iraq! The time warp of the draft is simply....sorry, no words for the stupidity of it all...
Let's not confuse how we would like the new round of leaders to act with how they have acted in the past or even how they claim they will act in the future. We all get to dream that the new electees will execute just what we personally know will work best for the country. However, that is a bunch of GIAG (grass is always greener) garbage. The best answer most people give on the ABB side is that whatever anyone else will do will work "better." That is far short of a plan...
So, if you all could point out a good site where the potential new leaders of our country answer the important questions of Long War, economy, strategic relations, etc.... that would go a whole lot further then the typical "My party good, your party bad" pep rally bunk. If I wanted that, I could turn on AM radio. The current "plan" has blunders, reactions, actions, successes, and failures. There is possibly more troops, different troops, and so on. We have data on the current administration's -plan-. What is on the potential plan side -- as put forth by the next set of planners should the ABB crowd get their wish?
TM: you can keep your snark. i was trying to emphasize the point i think Tom was making. do you disagree that that was Tom's point? if not, ask him if he wants a pony.
"RKKA - The "personal destruction machine" operates on both sides of the aisle and is just as nasty when the Dems do it. "
Yeah, sure. Who is spending $90 mil on negative ads this week. Ain't the Dems...
"As for balancing the budget, anyone can unsustainably goose revenues with loose money but then it's "cleanup on aisle 5" for the next guy."
Make me laugh. Clinton goosed revenues with loose money? Here's a link to the history of the Federal Funds Rate, set by the Federal Reserve:
http://www.harpfinancial.com/InterestRateHistory/FederalFundsRate.htm
For Clinton, it bottomed out at 3% in 1993, rising to 4.5%-6% for the rest of his term, and getting to 6.5% for the 2000 elections, despite low inflation and a balanced budget.
For Bush, Greenspan started reducing rates immediately, actually getting below 1% in December 2003 and not rising above 4% until November 2005. So if anyone was getting Federal revenues goosed by "loose money", it was Dubya.
"Clinton left Bush with a Dow of 10,587 when he took office but everybody measures against the 2000 high of 11,723."
Yes, it was quite an interest rate headwind Greenspan was blowing against Clinton.
"We're now at 12.1k and rising."
And its taken quite a while to get there, considering that Greenspan was putting out "free money" for most of Dubya's term in office.
"We hit pretty high budget deficits in the hangover but Bush said (in 2003) by 2009 we'd be back down to 250B deficits and the Dems laughed. We hit that in 2006. If we can provide stability by extending the tax cuts and reforming entitlements to a sustainable course, we can sustainably fix our fiscal problems honorably."
Thanks to "Borrow and Spend Republican" Prezes Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, interest is the fastest-growing segment of the Federal budget.
"A new round of economic goosing by the Dems is not going to help."
A Federal Funds rate of 6.5% in a 3%-inflation environment like Clinton had in 2000 ain't "goosing".
A Federal Funds rate of 1% in an environment of 2.5%-3% inflation like Dubya had in 2003 and early 2004 is definitely "goosing".
Sean - Rereading what I wrote, I did come loaded with snark, sorry. That was uncalled for. I just remember the early budget battles where Rumsfeld really tried to cut those expensive Leviathan systems Tom's talking about cutting. Do you remember the political minefield called "killing Crusader"?
Now what happens when you have McClellan type general officers playing politics with their favorite Leviathan toys while a popular rap is that we aren't giving the boys in the field the tools they need to win the war (hilbilly armor, inadequate body armor)? Michael Savage regularly tells 20+ million that we should be rolling with B52s and faulting Bush for going so light on the Leviathan stuff. Is it realistic to slim down Leviathan systems in the present political climate? I just don't see how as a practical matter.
If you or Tom can explain to me how we're supposed to avoid peeling off support from the Jacksonian right (the strongest support left for the war) while slimming down Leviathan with repeated "Crusader" type political pit fights I'll eat a full serving of crow. Until somebody figures out how to do it, we're going to have a lot of uniformed requests for budgetary ponies and it isn't going to change in the new administration. Could a President Clinton or Bayh or Obama carry through with Leviathan slimming by killing programs?
I think a better measure would be how many new "Crusaders" are being born under this administration. In the optimistic practical scenario, we're stringing the current crop along and will bring them on board but future programs are more sysadmin support. I confess that I don't have the data to tell whether the optimistic scenario is really happening, do you? In other words, what are the budget monsters of the future that Rumsfeld is green lighting but shouldn't be?
This vision has us undergoing a slower shift to Sysadmin over the next 10 years or so and a larger defense budget where the current Leviathan toys maintain funding but new stuff goes to the Sysadmin side. If we can grow our economy fast enough to fund it all, we'll end up ok. There'll be a lot of wasted money in the defense budget in this scenario but I think it's sustainable.
I think the point Tom is making is that Rumsfeld still wants to have it both ways: lean and mean with missle shield and big guns in between. QDR said it loud and clear.
JRRichard - I think I get Tom's point but I don't see how he is reconciling it with Rumsfeld's real life attempt to get even one major program cancelled on the Leviathan side. We're holding on to the present policy of repudiating ineffective, amoral "realism" by a thread with people across the spectrum talking supporting yet another round of "our bastards".
PenGun - If "the US is crazy mad" and we are "not to be trusted with anything important", because "the problem is the American people" then you'd be seeing France, the UK, FRG, Italy, all the "sane" powers raising their defense budgets to 3-5% of GDP in order to supplant the uniqueness of the US Leviathan force and allow the remaining grown ups to get on with the needed business of properly policing the planet.
But that's not what's going on. Instead you get a lot of cotton candy rhetoric slamming the US but with very little practical follow through because even the people uttering this tripe don't really believe it to the point that they act on it.
In other news, the Air Force just killed the F-117. This is progress.
PenGun - So how is Darfur working out using alternate methods?
Since I can’t think for myself I will have to repeat what my media and political masters have told me to say:
The thing is that the United States, including our “stupid” leaders, realize that you need many different approaches. This includes sometimes the big army approach and sometimes the European (here’s some cash now we don’t feel so bad approach). Remember we were willing to work with the Europeans in Iraq half said no, half yes. We are the ones that want six party talks in North Korea, we are the ones that want sanctions on Iran. It was the Europeans that came begging us to use our big army in the former Yugoslavia. They haven’t realized there are other ways than war they just have realized that the U.S. can do it cleaner and more efficiently. Add to this the fact that a lot of east Europe’s economies are hurting, their native populations are falling and their immigrants (that they need) are a bit unhappy. What you have are nations that need internal attention than the United States and are willing to let us do the heavy lifting. A thank you will be sufficient.
Those numbers were false. The methods that MIT used was so flawed that I think that they did it that way to gin-up an outcome. I wasn't talking about a thank you from the Iraqis, I was thanked by almost every one of them that I met and I even had one save my life. I was talking about the Europeans and the rest of the world that rely on the US to do there dirty work for them because they seem to either lack moral courage or are just plain self-centered.
The US has plenty of problems don’t get me wrong and I know that we could make a list of all the things that we have done in the past that were not pretty. We learn though, we do better the next time and we try to make things right. Our idealism is our greatest strength but sometimes the rest of the world has trouble figuring us out. Like the entrepreneur that has the vision other often have trouble visualizing so they think that he is “crazy” until he makes his vision reality. The US has a vision of what the world can be, we just have to try and convince others that it can be a reality.
PenGun - Even the study authors don't claim that the deaths they found were innocent. Had Saddam's family been hit by the surveyers (and who knows maybe some of them were) Uday and Qusay would have qualified for inclusion into the study. Now it's quite clear that the study doesn't pass basic sanity checks. For instance, they claim that 77% of Iraqi deaths prior to OIF were male and that this portion did not substantially change during or after OIF. That's just absurd.
Once you've come to the conclusion that the pre-war death tolls are wildly inaccurate, there's no basis for retaining any of the study figures as all the other figures depend on the pre-war figures being accurate.
Seth Benge - Those Europeans whom Jacques Chirac tends to say "sit down and shut up" are pretty thankful for the US and we shouldn't forget it. That they deeply depend on France, Germany, and the rest of the ingrate brigade mutes those thanks as a practical matter.
TM thank you for pointing out there are those in Europe that have other thoughts about America than what it is reported. It's hard to keep that in mind when we are being lectured about our stupid irresponsible behavior. I have worked with French contractors and if you knew nothing else about France you would think that they were adamantly pro-US. These guys were also worried about the future of their nation because of some of the anti-American sentiment put out by their leaders. Good to keep in mind so that we can help our allies within other countries.
Good response to those numbers. In a place, like Iraq, where having dead family members gets you paid money and where the enemy can be any member of the community it is very difficult to tell what are the real numbers. In addition MIT used only 50 neighborhoods. Since Iraq has a tribal system even in the cities you could easily get cross reporting when you ask if a family member has been killed. Also, it would depend on what neighborhoods you go to and in what cities. The south and north are peaceful, so there your count would be low unless of course you came to a neighborhood where there was a tribal conflict. The fact that the report and the previous John Hopkins report came out right before elections speaks volumes.