Since the start of hostilities, there have been some genuinely intriguing observations over at the National Review. Kevin D. Willaimson writes in response to some derision regarding the use of our military dollars:
"With all due respect to Mr. Felzenberg and Mr. Gray, I’m not sure that our Libya campaign shows the folly of cuts in defense spending. One might argue as easily that our $1 trillion or more in defense spending shows the folly of the Libya campaign. We’re lobbing missiles that go for about $750,000 a copy into a country for the entirety of which I would not trade the change behind my sofa cushions, inasmuch as Libya strikes me the very definition of a negative asset, one that we are in the process of taking custodianship over."
"Yes, I wrote $1 trillion. Even though the last DOD budget was only — only! — about $550 billion, supplementary war funding brings the number up to about $663 billion. But lots of military spending takes place outside of DOD: at NASA, at DOE, DHS, Veterans’ Affairs, etc. And NASCAR, for Pete’s sake. Throw in all that, and the interest payments on debt incurred for previous military spending, and you get a number between $1 trillion and $1.4 trillion, depending on how you count it up. I’ll be conservative and call it a cool trillion. That’s a lot of money for a national-security system that has repeatedly, predictably, reliably failed to address our actual security threats."
Although I disagree, at points strenuously, with Williamson's recommendations for change, it is refreshing to see the truth about our defense budgets so plainly stated at NRO.
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