Defense Budget Sacred Cows

Lorelei Kelly has a post over at Democracy Arsenal taking aim at the sacred cows of the American defense budget that’s worth a read. I admit to being a missile defense skeptic myself, more for strategic reasons than for technological ones. Maybe I’m just a prisoner of a Cold War childhood, but the ABM Treaty always struck me as an island of reason in a MAD world.

In passing, Kelly also takes a shot at growing the military by 90,000 troops, which seems to have passed from proposal to foregone conclusion. She wonders what we’re going to do with them. I wonder how we’re going to get them, given the anemic enlistment rates the army’s been posting. What doesn’t seem to get much attention, though, is the way in which the transformation of the Army Reserves from a strategic to an operational reserve has already in essence grown the military. There are currently roughly 24,000 Reserve and National Guard personnel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Anyway, consider this an open thread on ways we can get more security from our defense spending. Drop me a line if you’ve got a pet peeve at judah_worldpoliticsreview_com (fill in the blanks before sending).

More World Politics Review