The Missile Defense Joke

By Cernig

Jeff Huber:

This Polish missile defense system walks into a bar one afternoon and orders six shots of vodka and a beer. The bartender says, "How can you afford to get drunk in the middle of a business day?" and the Polish missile defense system says, "I don't work."

And lo it has come to pass that as the End of Bush Days draws near, Dick Cheney and the neocons are taking their last shot at instigating Cold War II by deploying a ballistic missile defense system that doesn't work to defend against ballistic missiles that don't work either.

Jeff notes that on "Bush's watch alone, we'll have tinkled away $63 billion on missile defense." Not exactly huge on the "bailout scale" but a sizeable bit of pork nonetheless. And by the time you add it to the millions and billions for other big-ticket shiny toys for the military, as always inflated to the needs of corporate welfare for the military-industrial complex, it's a bailout a year. Military leaders and neocon think-tankers, working in concert, are trying to lock in missile defense spending, even expanding upon it to include space-based weaponry. And that's just a part of the overall attempt to force Obama's hand.

The uniformed services are trying to lock in the next administration by creating a political cost for holding the line on defense spending. Conservative groups are hoping to ramp up defense spending as a tool to limit options for a Democratic Congress and president to pass new, and potentially costly, social programs, including health care reform.

They also like the idea of creating an unrealistically high baseline of expectations for defense spending that will allow them to claim President Obama has cut defense spending.

...There are so many things wrong with this emerging process that it is hard to address the issue concisely. Promoting overspending on defense in order to forestall popular social spending is undemocratic - it creates a false tension between national security and other public policy goals.

The informal alliance between the services and conservative think tanks threatens to further politicize the military. The abuse of national security arguments to win political arguments is both morally suspect and threatens the security of the nation by delinking strategic assessment from public policy.

Mr Obama, don't buckle. The military is supposed to be under civilian control, and not that of un-elected conservative think-tankers either.

Comments

[smintheus]

Nobody in America has died from missile attacks.

About 60,000 Americans die every year from preventable illness because they lack health coverage. $60B would easily subsidize universal government-run health care for at least one year.

[Peter G.]

It looks like the good ole military-industrial complex desperately wants to head back to the days of yore when Sac ate up the lions share of the military budget to little purpose and to the detriment of all other more important defense technologies and initiatives. Whatever you think of Kissinger his analysis of that situation was spot on.