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Planned Pentagon Cuts Are Trivial, HUFFINGTON POST, by Aaron Belkin: 11/6/11  Poor, poor Leon Panetta. Our Secretary of Defense has to find a way to cut $45 billion per year out of our $700 billion military budget. That’s right, five percent.

At a moment when my students take on ever more debt because of steep tuition hikes which reflect years of education cuts, when our consumption of oil continues to grow because our public transportation is so terrible, when our assistance to poor and homeless people pales in comparison to what other modern societies provide, the Pentagon is forced to shave five percent off its pornographically bloated budget. How sad.

I don’t blame Secretary Panetta for the bloated budget. He is a good man who inherited a monster. Rather, the fault lies at least in part with progressives, who, rather than honestly explaining the dangers of our bloated military, run away from their own ideas and resort to framing and slick messaging to try to make themselves seem hawkish on defense and tough on terrorism.

So, what do progressives need to say? Three things:

First, our bloated military is completely unnecessary. The vast majority of the Pentagon budget is a waste, pure and simple. Why? Because the threats this country faces are not military threats…..

Second, our bloated military actually makes us less secure. How so? For one thing, our huge military provides political leaders with a constant temptation to get involved in bloody wars (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq) that end up doing no good.

Perhaps even worse, we use our military might to prop up dictators who torture their own people, many of whom come to hate the U.S. and some of whom end up as terrorists. …

Third, our military is not bloated because the U.S. faces threats to its security. It is bloated because of the military-industrial-Congressional complex that President Eisenhower warned about more than fifty years ago….

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-belkin/planned-pentagon-cuts-are_b_1079039.html