That seems unlikely; there just aren’t many nations less benevolent than we are towards outsiders. Yes, it’s better to live in America than it is in China or was to live in the USSR; but that has never made our foreign policy any nicer than theirs. Being tortured in an “evil totalitarian” nation backed by the USSR hurt just as much as being tortured in a “noble authoritarian” nation backed by the US. Being shot by an American soldier come to steal your oil is just as fatal as being shot by a Chinese soldier.
Would a nuclear missile sub be operated by the Department of Offense or Department of Defense?
Which department handles the protection of sea lanes?
79 “just repeated the phrase”?
No need to be rude. For example, I take the time to provide an explanation in post 79. How about:
“Ah I see post 79, second half, thank you. However I am still not clear what you mean by XY & Z …”
Sub is a weapon and gains its character from how it is used.
“Protection of” tells you all you need to know.
As the military is a weapon which gains its character from how it’s employed by the government. Do you think doubling its infrastructure and bureaucracy will change that? Do you think the name of the department will matter to the President?
No, it doesn’t.
It is about bringing proper accountability to government: A defense department; the personnel sign up with a prohibition on aggressive conduct, including a duty to refuse orders. The department’s equipment is correspondingly limited.
An exception: For those governments and members of the public who want to sign up to it, an offense force within that same military. No confusion and everybody wins.
Every branch of government and department operates under rules and accountability. Defense is unique in the relaxed and loose character of its rules. Hence the bloat and spending on hookers, blow, champagne and other party goods. Tight discipline is what it needs.
edit: “Protection of” is defense.
So let me sum this up: you state that I don’t understand the extent to which laws can restrict actions by the government, and imply that I don’t understand the issue of waste within the Defense Department. I inform you that I am actually quite expert in these matters, to which you wave your hands and try to change the subject.
I submit to you that there is no area of government which has more rules and accountability than the armed forces. The Constitution establishes more stringent checks and balances over the military than probably any other function of government (perhaps with the exception of elections).
The Defense Department has to have its budget approved every year by Congress; the same is not true of social programs like Social Security and Medicare. (Both of which are good things, BTW.) The promotion of every military officer above the grade of major is subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. Congress makes substantive policy changes to how the DOD runs every year, and the same cannot be said of any domestic agency. The Inspectors General of the armed forces easily outnumber those of any other agency, and roughly a fifth of GAO’s audits are on our national security establishment, which is exactly in line with the percentage of the Federal budget that goes to defense. I could go on and on.
The problem here is not that the armed forces are not subject to strict rules; the issue is that you simply do not like those rules as they have been decided by the popularly elected government. There is a big difference.
We already have a fully-staffed, all-volunteer military that has signed up to take war to whatever enemies may arise, whether the war is offensive or defensive. You seem to have in your mind that if people had to choose between joining an offensive or defensive military, that the defensive would be preferable – but you’re ignoring the fact that the roughly 2.8 million Americans who serve in uniform have, in essence, already decided to join the offensive military.
If you think we should cut the military, make it smaller, and withdraw from the world, that’s a reasonable position to take. But instead of directly advocating that, you come up with some convoluted, subjective scheme that simply has no chance of working. It is a ludicrous proposal when it would be simpler and more effective simply to advocate huge cuts to the military.
As to the scenarios you were asked to categorize as offensive or defensive, I’m simply guessing that you assigned those categories based on whether you supported or opposed each of those missions. Let me guess: you opposed Israel bombing Iraq, you oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you supported World War II. Things you oppose are offensive, things you support are defensive. Am I close?
Because I have no clue how you can categorize the bombing of Tokyo as a defensive action. It beggars belief.
I wasn’t being rude, and I am sorry if you thought I was. I was simply pointing out that the post you directed me to quoted the phrase I didn’t understand, with no further explanation, thus leaving me pretty much as illuminated on its meaning as I was before it was repeated verbatim.
This line, right here, explain it or reword it for me please, because I don’t know what it means:
Good idea.
You agree the Defense budget is used for purposes which are not the defense of the United States?
Of course. The Department of Defense runs a school system, a child care system, a health care system, grocery stores, and tons of other things that don’t make the US any safer.
But who cares? The name of an agency doesn’t limit the scope of its responsibilities.
The State Department has very little to do with states. In fact, it has responsibilities that have nothing to do with foreign affairs, such as being the steward of the Great Seal of the United States. The Department of Energy has responsibilities that aren’t really in line with setting the nation’s energy policy, such as maintaining our nuclear weapons stockpile. One could argue that by the name alone, the FBI should be part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice. And, oh, my god, the Secret Service really isn’t all that secret!
Would all your troubles be allayed if we renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of the Armed Forces, or the Department of the Military? Could they then go about their business without this invented crisis of nomenclature?
Our military has dreamed up foes to justify the huge waste of money they want. After Russia broke up, we still had the evil commies to build up for. If corporations can bring down the evil Chinese ,all we have left is Cuba. We all know they are no threat.
So now it is the bad Muslims who live to kill Americans. We have terrorists who force us to spend billions fighting off their aggression. (what aggression is that, dare to fight back).
We are incredibly expensive rent a soldiers, gobbling up tax money. They have a pipeline to our treasury. They will not give it up easily. They own the politicians who oversee them. The bloat will never end.
That is your argument: Name does not limit responsibilities. That is a direct path to words have no meaning and an overdue recognition of Mr Orwell’s place in this debate.
The fact is words do have meaning and control the functions of government agencies all the time. Indeed accounting cannot occur without this. Or course Mr Orwell was prescient and the US has made policy choices to do violence to language when it comes to names and terminology of every kind.
The good news is that the habit is not a one-way path and looked at calmly it is a hard practice to defend. “Well everyone does it” just won’t wash. By far the worst of this is seen in the ‘defense’ field. Proportionately, ‘defense’ is the very place to start rolling it back. If you want to have a military for your wars of aggression, and vengeance; say so.
See, if you did this:
their business and their draw on the public purse would both change.
No, the mission of the department would not change, because the authorities granted to the department (whatever it’s name) in Title 10 of the US Code would be the same.
As to the “words have meaning” point: are you upset that the White House is called that? It really should be the White House and Government Office Building, no? Would the whole business of the presidency change if we acknowledged that the White House is more than just a residence?
I’m a military Officer working in finance for DoD and as a fiscal conservative, DoD’s budget concerns me as well. But a couple of points:
-You can call it the department of Defense, of War or of Tidily Winks, but it’s all the same thing. The name doesn’t matter. Defending American, and in many ways Western interests across the world is what DoD does. For good or bad, the military has shaped the world and defended these interests. The world would be different if the military is markedly stronger. South Korea, Taiwan, Israel and Africa for starters will be drastically different.
-DoD has takes some significant reduction to manpower and equipment (especially ships, aircraft carriers etc) in the last 10-20 years as it is.
I think if you asked the folks that work at the pentagon, they could cut outr military budget in half if they could spend the money the way THEY wanted to spend it rather than the way politicians wanted to spend it.
They recently had some congfressional hearings on some cost cutting that Secretatry of defense Gates proposed. They weren’t actually even cost cuts. He proposed implementinga policy whereby each branch could cut its own costs and keep half the savings for whatever project THEY thought would be most beneficial for their branch. It became really fuucking obvious which military programs had been forced on the military.
Think about it. You are told that you will only get $0.50 back on the dollar for anything you cut and reallocate and there is immediate vocal bipartisan opposition to the idea because each of them has some project that they have forced down then military’s collective throats.
We want to ensure the living conditions and safety of the soldiers but other than that, I don’t see why we have any sacred cows in military spending. If the navy thinks that it would be better to have 6 aircraft carriers and a LOT more submarines, why are we forcing 11 aircraft carrier groups on them?
You want to find waste in government, don’t look in the civilian sector, if you gave each civilian department head the same deal as Gates wants for the military branches, there would not be a lot of savings because civilian government operationsn has already seen enough cost cutting over the last 30 years to make it relatively lean.