Hats off to Bob Gates for being a true patriot. For realizing that the real threat to our national security isn’t a group of angry beards in a Pakistani cave or a gaggle of rogue nations whose combined defense spending doesn’t approach one-tenth of ours, but rather the waste and cozy corruption within our own country. Most cabinet secretaries jealously guard their resources and territory, resisting any attempts to trim budgets and curtail authority, to reign in the largesse they hand out to private contractors and corporate interests. Instead, Gates has made it his personal crusade to cut the fat at the Defense Department and give resources back to Congress. And Congress has refused him.
Congress has refused him? Trillion dollar deficits, a national debt approaching levels not seen since World War II, an aging population unable to sustain its dependents, and Congress is refusing savings? Well, if it’s related to defense dollars, and the jobs and political contributions tied to them, then, yes. A case in point is the “back-up” engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter- a cool half a billion dollar price tag just in case the primary engine for the plane doesn’t measure up. Doesn’t measure up? When the government asks you to build something and it doesn’t measure up, then you either fix it or pay the money back, with interest. But General Electric and Rolls Royce, the corporations who would like to build the back-up engine, don’t see it that way. They (and their well paid lobbyists in Washington) think the government should hedge its bets and create some “competition” by giving them a piece of the action. Gates rightly points out that if they wanted a piece of the action, they should have been more competitive in the original tender for the fighter, which was won by Lockheed Martin and its engine partner, Pratt & Whitney.
But this is not how our defense industry or Congress works. Peel back the veil of “competitive bids” and “strict contracting standards.” Dig deep. If you’re Congress, you need to spread the greenbacks around a bit, to the hundreds of counties, communities and states that manufacture disparate parts for weapon systems that we will largely never use. (As myself and others have said before, don’t count on getting into any dog fights with Al Qaeda any time soon, not when they can penetrate our defenses with an impoverished teenager wearing loaded underwear). This is the game board that Gates would like to shake up- the defense industry’s shrewd battle map of key political and economic constituencies across the nation and the federal contracts that keep the money, jobs and profits flowing to them and their representatives. It’s not about national security at all. On the contrary, it’s about the political insecurity of our elected men and women and their penchant to put their careers ahead of what’s right for the country. It’s not surprising that it takes an un-elected official to challenge them.
