National security officials have repeatedly warned that so-called sequestration cuts pose a threat to the United States, despite the austerity measures leaving the US as the clear dominant military power.
On Wednesday, however, they approached their concerns from a different angle. Boys not being able to play with their toys, they said, leaves Americans less up for defending the Homeland.
“You’re sitting around the classroom looking at your Strike Fighter Hornet, it looks really great but it’s on the tarmac. And that’s not why you joined,” Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the most senior naval official said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
“The idle mind is the devil’s workshop,” he added, claiming that lack of training activity mandated by budget cuts have fueled alcoholism and family strife among sailors.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Walsh backed up his colleague.
“I can’t emphasize my agreement enough with what Jon just said about people not joining this business to sit around. Pilots sitting in a squadron looking out at their airplanes parked on the ramp certainly feel like a hollow force,” he said, referring to a term used by hawks to refer to a post-budget cut military. “Same with the people who wanna fix those airplanes, load weapons on them, support them from the storage areas. They join to be really good at what they do,” he said.
The question they were answering, asked by committee chair John McCain (R-Ariz.), pertained to training. But it was clear that the source of the inquiry–a consistent advocate for truculent policies in almost every region of the world–has an interest in preparedness that dovetails with a bloated military and an eagerness to render it active. When Gen. Walsh read his opening statement and said that “we are now the smallest air force we’ve been,” McCain asked him to repeat the statement. The senior senator later tweeted the factoid with the hashtag #DefenseBudgetFacts. Politifact, however, has noted–in an analysis of similar statements made by failed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney–that “the number of ships or aircraft is not a good measurement of defense strength because their capabilities have increased dramatically in recent decades.”
Despite the intense anguish that seemed to suggest imminent catastrophe, the witnesses did note that necessity is not fueling the desire for both constant readiness and a sentiment that frowns upon soldiers “sitting around the classroom.”
“You have to change what you’re asking us to do,” Adm. Greenert remarked to Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), claiming an imbalance between the US body politic’s appropriations and demands—a statement that did not make it into the Pentagon press office’s write-up of his testimony. “What the country needs the military to do, it doesn’t balance,” he said.
On the whole, the hand-wringing largely dealt with the perception of budgetary crisis and only tangentially touched upon the idea that the US armed forces merit downsizing–despite the fact that they account for 37 percent of global military spending.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) carried the mantle for the more bloat-conscious delegation, telling the witnesses he was disturbed that the Pentagon is currently impossible to audit—a status it’s trying to defenestrate by 2017.
Manchin also bemoaned the fact that contractors and the entire procurement process are so easily manipulable. His constituents, he said, would make great sacrifices for the US military. But, citing the recent “Cromnibus” bill, Manchin intoned that it seems like there was little political will to actually scale back military expenditures.
“There was $5 billion in new equipment for the Department of Defense that, I understand, nobody asked for,” he said. “When Eisenhower said beware of the industrial military complex, man, he knew what he was talking about.”
By the end of the hearing, while wrapping up, Sen. McCain said that his committee would, eventually, attempt to reform the contracting process—perhaps through the annual defense spending bill; perhaps by giving military brass the greater input that they have asked for.
But, ultimately, neither the witnesses nor the senators seemed intent on bringing up the trigger-happiness that has driven the US military to the edge of a fiscal cliff.
Protesters who attended the panel weren’t as squeamish. Before the committee convened and after it adjourned, members of Code Pink–an antiwar group not known for biting its tongue in order to attend hearings–said that appropriations issues and technocratic debates constituted a sideshow.
“Can you explain how you lost the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and you’re coming back to the American people to ask for more money?” one protester said to witnesses before the hearing. “We need money for communities not more war.”
“We didn’t win in Vietnam. We didn’t win in Iraq,” shouted prominent Code Pink organizer Medea Benjamin after the hearing. “If this is the best military in the world, why do we keep losing wars? Maybe we should stop invading countries.”
