International Herald Tribune Editorial - The other defense budget

International Herald Tribune Editorial - The other defense budget
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: February 6, 2007


American troops under fire in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve every penny requested for them in President George W. Bush's new $622 billion Pentagon budget. And the overstretched army and Marine Corps clearly need support, along with the extra troops that will eventually come their way. But that still leaves more than half of the overall request for Congress to carefully scrutinize and significantly prune.

Apart from war costs and personnel increases, this budget slips in more than $40 billion in other spending increases, compared with last year. Since Bush took office, the Pentagon budget has more than doubled. It is now higher, in real terms, than it has been in the past half-century.

Congress should direct particular attention to the roughly $140 billion in weapons procurement, research and development costs that are not part of the Iraq and Afghanistan section of the budget. Far too many of these programs are products of Cold War strategic thinking and have outlived their rationale in a world with no superpower arms race.

Several of these programs can be canceled outright. The air force's F- 22 stealth fighter is one of three new- generation planes, and the most expendable because it was originally designed for air-to-air combat against Soviet-style MIG fighters. Likewise, the Virginia-class attack submarine was designed to track enemy nuclear submarines. The DDG- 1000 stealth destroyer is a blue-water fighting fortress, when what the navy really needs these days is smaller, faster ships that can operate in shallow coastal waters.

It makes sense to provide the navy and air force with adequate means to maintain their current comfortable margins of superiority over any probable foe. That can still be done for billions of dollars less than Bush has just requested.

If the new Democratic-controlled Congress is serious about reducing budget deficits and finding the money to pay for acute domestic needs, it will have to pare back the most extravagant elements of this fantasy weapons wish list. Special responsibility falls on the Armed Services Committee chairmen in both houses. Addiction to military pork is the one area in which bipartisanship has flourished in Washington in the past six years.

The United States can afford to pay for all of its legitimate military needs. What it cannot afford are costly jobs programs disguised as defense and the wasteful weapons projects promoted by an army of well- connected Washington lobbyists.