On this Veterans Day, it is important to honor all of our veterans for their service and sacrifices. Many young people will not know that, prior to World War II, this day was called Armistice Day - in honor of the "war to end all wars" - World War I. Obviously, that designation was a misnomer.
As we sit in our comfortable offices and homes, we also need to reflect upon the terrible toll that wars inflict upon a country and its citizens. Since the founding of this Republic, more than 1,300,000 military have perished in all of the wars, here and abroad, in which this country has been involved. In addition, the lives of the loved ones and those who have been left behind have been forever profoundly diminished and saddened.
Since the events of September 11, 2001, this country has been continuously involved in two major misbegotten foreign adventures and a series of other counter-productive and disastrous incursions in the Middle East in which we are viewed as the invaders and in which we had little prospect of achieving "favorable outcomes." In addition to the 6700 military whose lives were lost, thousands more have been physically injured or traumatized, and hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan have been killed and maimed.
When all of the accounts have been tallied and reconciled,the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, including medical care for wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a military depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a study by a Harvard University professor Linda J. Bilmes, in a report that was released in March of 2013.
According to a another recent report prepared by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the United States today spends more on defense than the next 8 countries combined. "Defense spending accounts for about 20 percent of all federal spending - nearly as much as Social Security, or the combined spending for Medicare and Medicaid. The sheer size of the defense budget suggests that it should be part of any serious effort to address America's long-term fiscal challenges." The report quotes Admiral Mike Mullen, the past Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "The single greatest threat to our national security is our debt."
As of August 2013, despite the putative end of U.S. involvement in Iraq and the winding down of the of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, there were approximately 1.43 million active-duty military personnel on duty in the armed forces of the U.S. States and more than 850,000 in the active duty reserves of all branches.
For the fiscal year 2015, the U.S. Department of Defense and military-related budget is $756.4 billion. That sum includes $495.6 billion for the base budget of the Department of Defense; $85.4 billion for Overseas Contingency Funds for the wind-down of the War in Afghanistan; $175.4 billion for defense-related agencies and functions; $65.3 for the Veterans Administration ; $42.6 billion for the State Department; 38.2 billion for Homeland Security; $17.6 billion for FBI and Cybersecurity in the Department of Justice; and $11.7 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration in the Department of Energy. Because of the newly announced initiative to confront ISIL, that estimate is likely to be far too conservative.
Further, a recent "Base Structure Report" of the Department of Defense stated that "the Department's physical assets consist of As one of the Federal government's larger holders of real estate, the DOD manages a global real property portfolio hat consists of more than 557,000facilities (buildings, structures, and linear structures), located on over 5,000 sites worldwide and covering over 27.7 million acres." Most of these locations listed are within the continental United States, but 96 of them are located in U.S. territories around the globe, and 702 are situated in foreign countries.
Currently also, the United States has active duty personnel stationed in more than 150 countries. While many of these deployments involve assignments to American embassies and special training projects overseas, the presence of U.S. active duty military personnel throughout Europe, and in Japan and Korea remains significant, sixty-nine years after the end of World War II in Europe and sixty-one years after an armistice was declared in Korea.
More than 100,000 active-duty American military are presently assigned to these three regions, the cost of which is still largely borne by U.S. taxpayers. Because of the U.S. military shield, the European countries, especially Germany, and Japan and South Korea have been able to invest in the modernization of their manufacturing sectors and to increase the number of their exports to the United States at a time when American manufacturing has been increasingly out-sourced to third world countries. Japan and Korea, in particular, have adopted onerous, restrictive trade policies that make it almost impossible for American automobile companies and heavy equipment manufacturers to compete successfully in those countries.
Since conscription was ended as a result of the Vietnam War protests, and the idea of an "all-volunteer" military gained enthusiastic favor among military planners and defense contractors, ever fewer Americans have been forced to decide, from a very personal perspective, their support for foreign military adventures.
As our professional officer corps has increasingly become composed of the children of previous officers, and the ranks of enlisted troops increasingly beckon to men and women to whom our country has extended few other options, the concept of the citizen-soldier has receded from the consciousness of most Americans. "Out-of-sight" has become "out-of-mind." For that reason, President Eisenhower's prophetic warning about the growth of the military-industrial complex has metamorphosed into our collective nightmare and has become a detriment to our ability to address urgent domestic needs.
War exacts a terrible toll on its perpetrators as well as its victims. We are all diminished as citizens and as human beings because of our indifference in the face of such horror. The best pledge that we can make to one another on this Veterans Day is to demand an end to our "welfare through-warfare" economy. We need to bring our troops home and support international institutions that will promote ways to create a more peaceful future for all of God's creation.