We could really, really, really stand to cut the DoD’s budget.  And I’m talking about serious, drastic cuts of like 50% in one year and probably 75% further cuts in the following fiscal year.  Let me explain.

I’ve been beating this horse for so many years that it’s gotta be named Sisyphean.  This afternoon, Dan Froomkin over at the HuffPo chimed in with a look at recent report on possible DoD budget cuts:

But in April, a bipartisan group of iconoclasts in Congress led by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) formed their own task force to examine the latter possibility. The group of defense experts released their report on Friday, identifying nearly $1 trillion in defense budget cuts over the next 10 years that could contribute to deficit reduction “while not compromising the essential security of the United States.”

While I’m not going to go so far as to claim that Rep. Fwank is a “defense expert” (you’d think he could have protected his own gay brothel a bit better…), I can really get behind the recommendation that we make HUGE cuts to our military spending.

Think about it:

The DoD budget is what, $700 billion per year? The only two budget items bigger than that are SSI and Medicare (both of which I also find myself strangely comfortable with cutting).

305,000,000 (roughly the population of US) * $1,200 dollars (roughly the cost of a good Colt or Remington made AR-15 ) ~ $420,000,000,000

They could arm every single man, woman, and child in the US for just a *@!# hair over 1/2 of their annual budget.

Even China’s 200 million man army couldn’t take on 300 million armed people spread out over so much landmass. Think about just how much trouble our military has had trying to pacify just two nations, Iraq and Afghanistan, which combined are like the size of the Great State of Texas… 9 years now, they any closer than when they started?

And let’s not even discuss the mobility of the Texas citizens versus that of the average Stone Age peasant living in the mountains in Afghanistan…

Who am I kidding?  Let’s discuss it.  Pick up trucks and firearms = mobility and extremely lethal force. Donkeys and sticks = not so much.

However strong your armies may be, you will always need the favour of the inhabitants to take possession of a province. – Niccoló Machiavelli, The Prince. 1537.

This is not a new idea. Arm the populace, especially in a Republic, and no one else is ever going to invade your nation. There is zero need for the US to spend 3/4 of a trillion dollars every single year when a one time expenditure of half that would promise that the country will never be invaded.

 

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