How to Cut Hundreds of Billions in War Spending

[THP]

The debt limit crisis that's consumed Washington, D.C. created an unexpected silver lining: the first opportunity in a decade to make real cuts to our runaway military budget. The deal reached to allow a rise in the debt limit "includes about $350 billion in guaranteed cuts for the Pentagon and other defense-related programs, plus up to $600 billion in additional reductions that will be triggered if Congress fails to reach a different agreement" to reduce the deficit. These cuts would have been completely unthinkable to D.C. conventional wisdom as recently as a year ago, but rising public opposition to two unpopular wars and concerns about the budget have finally put this bloated spending in danger. If we seize this opportunity, we can make big strides toward correcting a broken foreign policy that's made our weapons, not our ideals, the most prominent face of America abroad.Unfortunately, heavy lobbying by the war industry and their bought-and-paid-for allies are kicking a campaign to stop these cuts into overdrive. Already, contractor lobbyists are shouting about a supposed "sword of Damocles" hanging over our national security, and their allies in the Pentagon like Army Gen. Martin Dempsey are calling these sensible cuts, "extraordinarily difficult and very high risk." (This from the guy who thought the Iraq War was a good idea...) There's going to be a protracted campaign waged by war profiteers and their allies to stop these cuts, and and their first move will be to try to stack the new congressional deficit commission with toadies to protect their profit margins. The only way to seize the opportunity to reign in the Pentagon is to keep compromised war industry allies off the deficit commission. To do that, Americans will have to stand toe-to-toe against the army of contractor lobbyists now descending on Capitol Hill.More...