Pentagon Budget

Re “Why Spare the Pentagon Budget?” by Michael T. Klare, Commentary, June 5: Indeed, why do we continue, without serious debate, to fork over taxpayer money for “defense”? Could it have something to do with the military-industrial complex we were warned about way back in 1960? We (they) spent $20 trillion on the “Cold War.” What for? Defense? While over 100,000 young American lives were lost in the Cold War, not a single one of those brave troops were killed defending American soil.

We have 35,000 soldiers (and their dependents) defending South Korea along with tens of thousands protecting Germany and other countries elsewhere in the world. They are there for no apparent reason other than to continue to make big bucks for whoever supplies them. The taxpayers of America furnish the salaries for our troops overseas; guess where they spend it and to whose benefit? Not ours.

Let’s bring our troops (and their dependents) home to save billions and billions rather than slash and burn needed domestic programs for children and the elderly as the greed-heads in the GOP would have it.

ROBERT EMBICK

Dana Point

* Klare’s reflections on the lack of a rational basis for an annual Pentagon budget of $270 billion are well taken. One can only speculate why, following the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union, we need to continue such astronomical military outlays. It is one thing to accuse congressional budget hawks of heartlessness in cutting social welfare programs and another to accuse them of irrationality in preserving a huge Pentagon budget against all good judgment. But the latter is a charge well justified when one examines the dynamics of military appropriations. Hardly anyone of either party is willing to tackle a beast which could ultimately destroy us.

When push comes to shove, military big-spenders resort to arguments like “think of the technological spinoffs” resulting from military spending. My feeling has always been that the military serves a very specific purpose in society and should not be funded on the basis of anything but that specific purpose. To preserve a huge military machine for “spinoffs,” feel-good patriotism, baseless paranoia or teary-eyed nostalgia is ridiculous. The same hard-eyed look that is being cast upon public broadcasting, Medicare and school lunches needs to be turned upon the Pentagon. I suspect that the politician who figures out how to handle the far-reaching yet, so far, intractable problem of post-Cold-War Pentagon spending will be in for some surprisingly pleasant rewards.

JIM SCHRIDER

Pacific Palisades

* Klare states that “sacrifices must be made equitably, with all sectors of society sharing in the resulting hardship.” Excellent idea. Let’s freeze all government spending at its current rate, such as the Republicans are trying to do with the $270-billion Pentagon budget, and wipe out our deficit in less than seven years.

DERRICK PROCTOR

Colton