I am forever opening the paper to some new head-scratcher of a disconnect. A couple of days ago it was Bunning yowling that not one more cent should go to the unemployed until Congress had a plan (presumably one of which HE approved) to pay for it. This morning, it was a tiny afterthought on the weather page about the Marines landing (again) on Iwo Jima that caught my eye. It seems that, this being the 65th anniversary of that immortal bloodbath/victory, someone at the Pentagon thought it would be a good idea to throw a party:
The Marines flew in trucks, water and food from Washington…The commemorative was to be attended by about 1,000 people including Marine Corps commandant Gen. James Conway, members of Japan’s parliament and representatives of the Iwo Jima survivors’ association…A drill team also arrived on the Island.
Both my Mom and Dad served in WWII; and I understand and appreciate the sacrifice those men made at Iwo Jima, but is this an entirely appropriate use of taxpayer dollars when there are people living in their cars in America because the country has fallen on hard times and all of the safety nets are failing? How much does it cost to fly all of the celebratory paraphernalia and personnel to Iwo Jima, and how much did the staging of the event cost? I think this is a legitimate question as well as why this was necessary on the 65th anniversary of the battle? What happened on the 50th anniversary, the 55th anniversary and the 60th? Will the 75th bring a full-scale reenactment of the battle?
How many other similar commemorative enterprises, toasts and roasts, flying beneath the radar of taxpayer indignation, go undetected every year? In my humble opinion, that sacrosanct Pentagon budget needs a much closer look. How many people did they say die every year in the U.S. for lack of healthcare? If we can’t find the means to care for the living in this country that our forefathers fought to preserve, it is an insult to their memory when we pile any of that desperately need coin on their graves.
Isolationism based on fiscal concerns is just a plain poor argument, it does long term damage in the name of a short term emergency. Growing stronger relationships with our allies and with regional powers ultimately benefits this nation in pretty much every way, from stronger security to increased dialogue to increased trade.
You can of course decry the method, but the current reality is that the US military is the only agency able and willing to make a significant contribution to the frequent events that improve long term relationships anywhere in the world, and most of the ground level diplomacy of this nation is being conducted by 20-25 year old enlisted men and women interacting with their counterparts and local populations. Events such as this are hardly off-the-cuff boondoggles, international events and exercises are nested within each region’s Theater Security Cooperation Plan, a plan developed jointly by the DOD and DOS in recognition of the importance of cooperative military engagements.
Instead of bemoaning the cost you should be celebrating that after a hiatus of several years driven by the demands of back to back combat deployments the US is once again reaching out to allies, in this case allies who within less than a single lifetime were implacable enemies.
Well, that is a pretty good euphemism. I’ll have to remember it.
Mr. Hoffer,
I usually hate that thing people do where they divide a post into sections and repost the comments but I can’t see a way around it on this one so you will have to forgive me.
– “I really have to wonder and worry about your anger and preconceptions”
Thanks, your concern is touching. The only issue I have right now is I will probably need a chiropractor after all the stretching necessary to fit into the two separate categories you and Ms. Prent are trying to bin me in for convenience. You, slyly implying I’m off the rails, presumably from a wicked case of PTSD. She, that I’m a pampered bureaucrat having all my needs met in the comforting arms of Papa Pentagon. I can understand one or the other, but both simultaneously seems contradictory.
– “I don’t recall saying (or implying) anything about the legitimate role of the military”
Sure you did, you actually did in this very post. Let’s recap:
“because they could have (should have?) been doing something else ”
“a ridiculous party on the other side of the world having NOTHING to do with security or military exercises”
“DOD just spent enough money to feed thousands of Haitians”
“what a crock”
– “putting everything in this odd sort of Vietnam era framework.”
That’s a strange one, actually it is what I am trying to do my small part to avoid. Unfortunately post Vietnam certain groups were allowed to seize the narrative and establish a common but largely false view of the war and the military. This led to myths such as the “crazed Vietnam vet” that denigrated and diminished the sacrifice of a generation of service members. Allowing flat out lies and inaccurate statements about the military to stand unchallenged only encourages more fantasies to become accepted parts of the national outlook. If you repeat a lie often enough, especially to an audience that is unequipped to judge its veracity, and no one challenges it the risk is it will be accepted as fact.
– “the Marines may well have been in the region (although we don’t know that)”
Sure we do. From the same article “The Marines who arrived Tuesday from the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force on the island of Okinawa…”
You generally hop-to when someone on this site starts discussing cost, reserving special condemnation for those who make judgments about expenditures with little to no knowledge of actual cost or consideration of actual benefit. In this particular case you made snap judgments having no idea of the size or shape of the expenditure (cost, types of funding), nor any basis to judge the ultimate value of the event. In the absence of knowledge you could arbitrarily decide to place the event anywhere on a scale between “best value ever” to “insanely corrupt waste of cash”. You defaulted to the latter extreme. What, other than the bias and preconceptions you deny, could be the reason?