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Military Spending

The United States spends more money on its military than all other countries. It spends more than the combined military budgets of the dozen or more largest countries on Earth. In a few more years, the military budget is expected to be over one trillion dollars.

The military budget has been steadily increasing, and military appropriations bills usually pass Congress easily, even though groups on both sides of the political spectrum are calling for limits on military spending. Cable TV news seldom covers military spending issues unless there's a disagreement between the political parties like there is now (in the summer of 2023). Republican Congressmen are trying to restrict military families from traveling to other states for reproductive health care. They're holding appropriations and promotions hostage to do it.

In this issue of The Gap, and future issues, we will have stories that are critical of the military. As taxpayers*, we deserve a report card on how well the military performs, and the results it achieves given the vast sums of money we spend on it.

* Given The Gap's readership, we will use the classic idea that taxpayers help fund government spending. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) changes that idea but will likely confuse many or most of our readers, given that cable news generally does not use MMT when covering the news.

Can’t teach an Old Navy New Tricks

On February 7, 1932, almost ten years before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Rear Admiral Harry E. Yarnell launched a mock attack on Pearl Harbor using the aircraft carriers USS Saratoga (CV-3) and USS Lexington (CV-2) during an exercise named Army/Navy Grand Joint Exercise 4 (GJE-4).

Yarnell disagreed with the Navy's doctrine of battleships being their primary weapon. He thought battleships were obsolete and that modern warfare should rely on air power. He set out to prove it.

He launched his air attack at dawn on a Sunday morning when sailors were least prepared for an attack. He attacked from a point north-northeast of Oahu to make it seem that the planes were friendly aircraft from the mainland. The attacking aircraft dropped bags of flour, marking the spots where the “bombs” hit, and took photos of positions their guns would have strafed and ships their torpedoes would have hit. The Navy umpires declared his attack a complete success.

The Navy brass objected to the findings on the basis that dawn on a Sunday morning was an inappropriate time for an attack and that attacking from the north-northeast was a trick that a real enemy would not use. “Most importantly,” the Navy argued, “the low-level precision bombing of battleships at anchor was unrealistic since everyone knew that Asians lacked sufficient hand-eye coordination to engage in that kind of precision bombing.”

The Navy invalidated the umpires' findings. Steeped in battleship thinking, they learned nothing from Yarnell's successful mock attack. The U.S. press revealed the details of the exercise and its results in February 1933, thus alerting the Japanese.

Eight years later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, mimicking Yarnell's mock attack. They succeeded just as Yarnell did, but this time with real bombs and torpedoes. Over 2,400 Americans were killed, and the Navy's Pacific battleship fleet was incapacitated. Four battleships were sunk, and four were severely damaged. Numerous other ships and 349 aircraft were destroyed or damaged.

Yarnell failed to convince the Navy that battleships were obsolete, but Japan succeeded. Could the war in the Pacific been avoided if the Navy had listened to Yarnell and other military aviation visionaries like Billy Mitchell?

Afghanistan and Iraq Wars a Bipartisan Disaster

A study by Brown University puts the total cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the neighborhood of $8 trillion. That's eight million million or eight-thousand billion dollars. It's over $53,000 per taxpayer.

These wars began during the administration of George W. Bush, continued during the Barack Obama and the Donald Trump administrations, and finally ended—over 20 years later—with Joe Biden. What was accomplished? What did that money buy us?

Little or nothing and it made many things worse, such as abandoning thousands of Humvees and other weaponry to the Taliban. It was a gigantic waste of money that could have been put to far better use.

There were mileposts during the wars when they could have been wound down. Here are a few obvious ones:

1. On March 13, 2002, President George W. Bush was asked about Osama bin Laden at a press conference. He answered, “I truly am not that concerned about him,” Yet, Bush continued the war and invaded Iraq in 2003. Here's his statement to the press:
   
2. On March 1, 2003, Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” during a speech he gave on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. The mission may have been accomplished, but the wars continued:
   
3. During a 2005 press conference, Bush said he no longer thinks about Osama bin Laden—another opportunity for withdrawal, but no.
4. On July 3, 2006, the CIA closed down the unit named Alec Station that was searching for Osama bin Laden. The search for bin Laden may have been over but the wars weren't.
5. On December 13, 2006, Saddam Hussein was captured and executed. President George W. Bush could have used this to justify an end to the war, but the wars continued.
   
6. On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by SEAL Team Six on orders from the Commander in Chief. President Barack Obama could have used that opportunity to stop the wars but didn't.
   
7. In February 2020, President Donald Trump negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, freed 5,000 Taliban soldiers, and set a withdrawal date of May 1, 2021. That withdrawal was completed on August 30, 2021, during Joe Biden's presidency.

A week after the World Trade Center attack in 2001, Congress voted on the joint resolution titled Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which granted the president the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” to fight those responsible. Everyone in Congress voted for the resolution except U.S. Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), who cautioned that “we not become the evil we deplore.”

She was the subject of intense criticism and received death threats. History now shows she was correct.

Molten Earth

A Fox News watcher recently said we shouldn't worry about climate change because the Earth will probably explode soon. He learned that the Earth has a molten iron core and concluded that it would eventually explode because of it. The reality is much different.

That molten iron core protects the planet's atmosphere from being carried away by the solar wind. It's one of the main reasons why air-breathing life thrives on this planet. That protection relies on the molten core circulating or rotating, thus creating a magneto effect that surrounds the planet with a magnetosphere. This magnetic field deflects the solar wind and keeps our atmosphere in place.

That magnetic field is weakest at Earth's poles, so some of our atmosphere is lost through these gaps. Also, some of the sun's solar wind (its plasma particles) enters our atmosphere through the gaps, and that's why we see the Aurora—the Northern and Southern Lights.

Territorial Voting

Which U.S. colonies can vote for president?

From time to time, the talking heads on cable news and the people they interview claim that residents of U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico, are not U.S. citizens because they can't vote in presidential elections. Citizenship and voting are separate things. There are millions of citizens who can't vote.

Citizens of Puerto Rico have been U.S. citizens since 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act, giving Puerto Ricans U.S. statutory citizenship. Today, about 2.3 million Puerto Ricans are registered voters. However, the federal government does not conduct elections—states conduct elections. Since Puerto Rico is not a state, presidential elections are not held there. If Puerto Ricans move to a U.S. state, they are eligible to vote there.

Similarly, residents of Guam became U.S. citizens in 1950 because of the Guam Organic Act of 1950. There are approximately 57,000 registered voters there. Citizens of the Northern Mariana Islands were given U.S. citizenship in 1986. There are about 18,000 voters there. These citizens could vote if they moved to a U.S. state and registered there.

American Samoa's 16,341 registered voters are not U.S. citizens—they're U.S. nationals who can't vote even if they move to a state. The 30,892 registered voters in the U.S. Virgin Islands are also not U.S. citizens, and cannot vote in presidential elections.

Government Regulations

Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup was a patent medication containing morphine and alcohol that killed thousands of children in the late 1800s. Although reports of it killing children began appearing in newspapers in 1881, that didn't stop the company from running ads in newspapers for decades following. Here's an example of an ad:

Consumer protection didn't exist in any meaningful way back then. Those protections were put in place by government regulation starting in the early 1900s. But now, some politicians are calling for the repeal of some of those protections to “get the government out of our business.”

Do we value our children and ourselves so little that we should prioritize business profits over the safety of our children and ourselves?

COVID Origin

The Democrats and Republicans have been battling since the start of COVID over its origin. Both parties agreed that its origin was China, but the Dems pushed the explanation of the “wet market,” and the GOP pushed the lab leak theory. The Democrats (and their voters) were solidly behind the wet market theory until Jon Stewart poked fun at it during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. That planted some seeds of doubt.

There is no proof of its origin yet, but recent publicized correspondence between scientists adds fuel to the Lab Leak theory. Regardless of which theory of COVID origin eventually prevails, understand that the process of reaching a scientific consensus is not a failure of science and most scientists. Making the COVID origin story a political blame game is a failure of the intersection of politics and science.