The Big Hustle - Part 2

by Leon Felkins

In the previous segment of this essay, I presented the primary political/economic reasons why the political/military/industrial complex would prefer to spend the taxpayer's generous contributions on complex systems rather than troops. In this section, I will discuss issues more related to the military aspects than the direct selfish interests of the participants of this scam. It should be noted, however, that all the issues are interrelated with considerable overlap.

Military Issues:

Complex Military Systems are Exciting and Challenging

This is an important factor. Everyone, including politicians, is impressed by the sophistication in modern weapon systems. Think about how much TV time during the Golf War was devoted to the pinpoint destruction (maybe exaggerated just a bit) wrought by the intelligent missiles launched by our military compared to what the troops were doing. Politicians and the Pentagon thrive on attention. They get it with sophistication -- not the primitive activities of a bunch of dog-faced soldiers.

Complex systems require highly educated and trained personnel to support them. This in turn requires that universities turn out more scientists and engineers. You need very little of that with the troops.

The Spending is Massive with Military Systems and Difficult to Control

Politicians like vagueness when it comes to spending -- the more the better. They also like situations in which money has to flow but there is "little they can do about it". Notice how they slobber over each other with delight whenever there is a natural disaster.Surely no one can object to spending (in excess of the budget) when some part of the contrary has been hit by a natural disaster! That would be heartless. When a large military system's budget is out of control, we have a similar situation.

First off, the spending is massive for military projects. We have planes now that cost a million dollars each! The more massive, the less attention is paid to an overrun in absolute amounts. That is if you have a two million dollar project and it over runs by a million, then people notice. But what if it is a billion dollar project? One million overrun is insignificant.

And the higher the stakes the more difficult it is to limit the spending. If we have already spent 50 billion dollars on some flaky new guided missile system that still doesn't work, do we want to cancel the program? Tough decision. And they know it.

On the other hand, consider how straightforward the spending for troops is. There is no gamble. With a simple spreadsheet you can pretty well determine what your costs will be. Just multiply the average salary of each troop by the total number and add a little for provisions and retirement. Not too difficult. That's why they don't like it.

Destroying Troops Raises a Bigger Ruckus than Destroying Hardware

Of course, both the military and the politicians like to use their resources. For one thing, it is fun to play war games and for another, you can't buy new stuff unless the old stuff is used up (or becomes obsolete!). The problem is that the folks back home -- particularly the "Soccer Moms" that are the source of so many votes -- are likely to get bent out of shape over a few hundred troops getting pulverized. Not so, with missiles, radars, and tanks. Who cares if they are blown up are simply left to rot somewhere (billions of dollars worth of stuff was trashed and/or abandoned in Vietnam in our hasty exit).

Hand to Hand Combat is No Longer a Favored Form of Warfare

While guiding a multi-million dollar missile through the exhaust vent of a communications building from 200 miles away is quite an impressive feat for the TV audience, it is actually not all that effective in a real war. In spite of the success of these techniques in the barren deserts of Iraq, bombing is notoriously ineffective in most wartime situations. The troops of World War II were hit with massive resistance in the islands of the Pacific after they had been pulverized for days with continuous bombing. It seems to be most effective against civilian targets. In a real war, hand-to-hand combat by the foot soldiers would still be necessary -- as was demonstrated by our failed war in Vietnam.

But we Americans have lost the will to combat in a face to face situation. We prefer to drop our load of bombs from 15,000 feet and let "God pick up the pieces". That is, the killing of civilians and other random destruction that results from high altitude carpet bombing does not bother our conscience like face-to-face killing does. It is a characteristic of humans, at least modern humans, that extensive mayhem with much death and destruction, not actually seen is not acknowledged by our consciences. This, of course, is a great benefit for the highly sophisticated weapon systems. Not so good for the innocent civilian on the ground, however.

Summary

The government never, never makes any cutback for your benefit and mine. There is always a selfish reason, usually not stated. The TV Talking Heads state that the reason for the troop cutback is to make the military more "efficient". Nonsense. In time of war, trained troops may turn out to be very useful. The point to remember is that the concept being blathered about has not been proven. And it is not likely to be. Because they are simply not interested.

What they are interested in is the marketing of large, complex, expensive weapon systems. There is profit to be made all around and votes to be harvested by the contributing politicians (not just votes either, they have been known to accept small financial contributions).

Sorry, you lose again!

More of Leon's essays may be found on his homepage.