June McKenzie – 4/10/09

This page was last updated on April 18, 2009.

Defense budget makes right cuts; June McKenzie; Beaver County Times; April 10, 2009.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“On Monday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates proposed a bold defense budget that cuts some weapons programs.

“These cuts would include scaling back on missile defense, the F-22 and the DDG-1000 destroyer. These systems are being built to protect us from threats we no longer face.”

[RWC] “[T]hreats we no longer face?” The last I checked, Russia and Red China weren’t exactly our BFFs. If there’s no threat, why do we have over 80,000 troops deployed in Europe and about 60,000 in Japan and South Korea combined? Are we to ignore nuclear weapon and ballistic missile development that’s going on in Iran and North Korea? And what about Pakistan? Should extremists eventually gain control of Pakistan, it already has demonstrated its ability in these areas and Pakistan’s A. Q. Khan was responsible for selling nuclear weapon technology to countries like Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

“Does it surprise anyone to know that the lobbyists for the contractors of these systems are working overtime to convince members of Congress to vote against these cuts? It certainly matters not to them that, in effect, to go ahead with these systems means billions of tax dollars wasted because they will never be needed.”

[RWC] I’m glad Ms. McKenzie has a crystal ball that lets her declare the systems “will never be needed.”

“How much further those tax dollars would go if they were to be invested in the roads, bridges and mass transit where we could put people to work.”

[RWC] Does Ms. McKenzie believe that what we spend on national defense doesn’t “put people to work?” How does Ms. McKenzie believe these systems get built?

“Donations from defense contractors fund many congressional campaigns, so we constituents will have to let them know where we stand on this issue. Please write or call your representative and senators and tell them to vote to pass the budget Gates has proposed.”

[RWC] The above notwithstanding, I’m no defense expert and don’t know everything we need and what we don’t. I believe that’s true even for our experts because no one can predict the future. While I don’t want to spend money unnecessarily, we need to be ready for both the things we expect and the things we don’t. Folks like Ms. McKenzie don’t seem to get that. When we get into trouble, folks with opinions like Ms. McKenzie tend to be among the first to complain that we haven’t given our troops the very best equipment.