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The Imminent Golf Course Crisis
History professor Andrew J. Bacevich questions why every major politician wants to add some 100,000 troops and increase defense spending. "What is the use?" he asks.
At the Agonist Ian Welsh has a related question. How does the most expensive military in the world manages to lose two small wars against rag-tag insurgencies?
There are two answers to this.
The first by McDonalds’ Boeing’s CEO talking about the danger of diets imminent threats:
US
defence spending needs to be kept at record levels to cope with the
threat of global terrorism and the emergence of China as a military
rival, the head of Boeing’s defence business has warned.
More sales like this one would certainly help his personal retirement plan.
The second answer comes via an Agonist commentator:
The US military has 1,426,713 active service personal [and 165 golf courses] giving a golf course ratio of: 8647 soldiers to protect each golf course
…
The city of Philadelphia has a much better protection rate with a ratio of 243,880 citizens per golf course.
As the commentator further explains, there are only 34 active duty field bands, some 20 reserve field bands and 52 National Guard bands. Not nearly enough to have one band play at each military golf course to deter the enemy.
In an emergency Air Force and Navy bands could probably help out a bit, thanks to Boeing, but still only some 85% of the battle space could be covered with sufficient musical deterrence. Even Philadelphia is much better off with bands than that.
The current resources are certainly not enough to deter China from playing a serious tee shot.
Therefore in my judgement, Clinton, Obama, Edwards as well as every Republican candidate are certainly right to see a need of an immediate rise in U.S. military capacities.
At the opposite end of the earth, where the first hydrogen
bombs were tested in the South Pacific, the US military
still keeps a tiny listening post, and an obsolete missile
range named after an obsolete president, Ronald Reagan.
In fact, for forty years, from 1960’s until 9/11, a very well
paid and tax-free group of white lab coat welfare workers and
their thin Army clients on the verandah attempted to “hit the
birdie” without success. Think Nike-Zeus and Nikita’s Shoe.
Two full generations of white lab coat welfare in paradise.
Local natives, schleped from radioactive atoll to radioactive atoll, are barged in daily like cattle to serve as laborers,
cooks, maids, store clerks and pleasure girls. At night they
get to fill one five gallon jug of water, then get barged
back to their sandspit, where they “live” crowded 12 to a
room in tarpaper shacks, sleeping in shifts for floor space.
The aerospace-defense contractors and their Army wannabees
live in air-conditioned comfort, all you can eat, outdoor
movie theatre, golf course, bowling alley, nightclub, beach bar, deep sea fishing and diving, beach volleyball by the
barbie. The PX has fancy goods from around the world. You
can buy tropical hardwood furniture for pennies, that the
Army will ship home to CONUS when your tour is completed,
a ton of it for free on the US taxpayer.
A mile away through the surf, the local’s tiny sandspit
broils in the equatorial sun. No power, except in fits
and spurts, and no water or sewer. The natives’ diet is
Ramen, eaten raw, Spam from the can, and Pepsi, drunk warm.
The chief causes of death are cholera, and self-hanging.
Their shop owners are Korean, their landlords the royals,
living in Europe, sending their children to Harvard.
And what does ‘Our Team’ do all day long? Once or twice a
year, they stage an elaborate missile charade, targeting
one missile to hit the other. Even that’s been outsourced
to Alaska. Now all that’s left is the radars, listening,
and the endless poch and schuss of the pulsing surf….
$80,000 a year salary, tax-free, all expenses paid, three round trip vacations to anywhere in the world, every year,
of this mythical Endless Summer with no Sunset Clause.
“That’s one small step for man, …
and one giant leap for aerospace-defense welfare.”
Posted by: Stoli Chnya | Jun 19 2007 6:28 utc | 6
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