Who Defines Defense?
Mintz, Morton
Who Defines Defense? By Morton Mintz For 158 years starting in 1789, we had what was starkly called—surely not on the advice of a public relations man—the Department of War. The National...
...One, Franklin (Chuck) Spinney, has demonstrated how the bills for high-technology weapons cannot help but soar out of control because of the military's "systematic tendency to underestimate future costs...
...In the seagoing Navy, Gordon Rule noted, accountability is strict...
...Fear of possible prosecution aside, there is in this idea an appeal to the bedrock personal honor that bars brazen perjury before the elected representatives of the American people...
...In 1983, he estimated that the administration's $1.6 trillion military buildup—$ 20,000 for the average U.S...
...Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger should stop the hounding and punishing—and start the heeding and honoring—of his embattled in-house truth-tellers...
...Congress should not let military program managers and their civilian secretaries sanitize phony low bids, poor design, and flawed contracts with the term "overly optimistic...
...The Pentagon should not order a weapon into production until after the completion of development and realistic testing, because to abandon the "fly-before-buy" principle—as often happens—is to adopt what Rule termed "the most fundamental, costly, and wasteful practice in defense procurement...
...In doing so, it would dilute the subliminal pro-Pentagon bias that comes into play whenever the word "defense" modifies "budget," "spending," "appropriations," or "outlays" The common substitution of "military" as the modifier could only have a wholesome effect on public dialogue...
...Perhaps we would stop seeing confused quotes such as this recent one from a Colorado congressman: "People are really outraged by big defense expenditures...
...The National Security Act of 1947 renamed it the Department of the Army...
...Some were urged by Gordon W. Rule, an iconoclastic Navy cost-cutter who died in 1982 after waging a relentless 20-year battle against waste and unaccountability in weapons-buying: • Congress should require an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from any Pentagon official who—orally or in writing—justifies a major program, estimates its cost, or reports the preproduction status of the design...
...That name, doubtless well-intended and originally suitable, began long ago to evolve into as misleading and prejudicial a label as would be the "Department of Offense...
...Morton Mintz is a reporter for The Washington Post...
...At the very least, it would be reflected instantly in countless official speeches, news stories, magazine articles, editorials and columns...
...the same goes for the Department of the Navy and the Department of the Air Force...
...A Pentagon name change is but one of many seldom-discussed ideas to curb Pentagon profligacy...
...The difference was once neatly distilled into a single sentence by W. Graham Claytor, former secretary of the navy, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee: "Senator, I have said many times there is nothing wrong with our Navy that money won't fix...
...This is accurate, descriptive, and unbiased...
...In the context of taxes, one may gladly pay one's last dime for defense...
...No one would question that the defense of the United States is the overriding mission of the Pentagon (a neutral word), but few would doubt that one of its principal activities is wasting colossal sums of money—particularly in procuring weapons that, if needed at all, are excessively complex, costly, and ineffective...
...Can one imagine the reaction to a military commander explaining the failure of a military or naval operation by saying, 'Sorry, we were overly optimistic...
...in the "procurement Navy" it is lax...
...What outraged them, I suspect, was big military outlays, the need for some of which they sensibly doubted...
...Secretary Claytor used that term in the 1970s, when he agreed to pay $639 million extra to General Dynamics for cost overruns in building nuclear attack submarines...
...Yet no sharp line is drawn between defense and Defense...
...one may not gladly pay a nickel for Defense...
...The 1947 law also made the three neutrally named armed services parts of a new, larger whole called the Department of Defense...
...With needed social programs facing billions of dollars of cuts to pay for Defense, Congress might at least give the Pentagon a new, value-free name, such as "Department of the Military," "Department of the Armed Forces," or "Department of the Armed Services ." Might a change in Pentagon nomenclature make a useful difference...
...Congress should restructure procurement by setting up those who buy and test weapons in a new department separate and independent from those who request and use weapons, as is done in France and many other countries...
...The term itself should be a red flag to the Congress, but there has been no visible indication to date that they really care," Rule once said...
...But the provision for Defense (not defense) has come to be inimical to the general welfare...
...Anyone challenging a worse-than-useless weapon system is all but certain to be pilloried as "weak on defense"—and maybe in head and heart as well...
...In the Constitution, one stated purpose, to "provide for the common defense," is a precondition for another, to "promote the general welfare...
...household by 1988—would be underfunded by up to 30 percent...
...Meanwhile, the military should stop promoting and start court-martialing officers who gravely mismanage weapons programs instead of discouraging and driving out the brave few who try to do their jobs well...
...As things stand, a congressional or presidential candidate who blesses any of the many wasteful weapons systems is certain to win praise for being "strong on defense" and a stand-tall patriot...
Vol. 17 • April 1985 • No. 3
