The $150 Million F-22 Raptor

While House Republicans and the Romney campaign are eager to preserve, if not expand, the Pentagon’s budget, new polling data shows that Americans underestimate the size of the defense budget and, after seeing information on the size of defense spending, endorse defense spending cuts.

The poll, conducted by the Center for Public integrity, the Program for Public Consultation (PPC) and the Stimson Center finds that when shown the discretionary budget for national defense alongside the discretionary budgets for education, veterans’ benefits, homeland security and various other spending areas, 65 percent of respondents found Defense spending to be more than what they had expected. Overall, respondents would cut the budget by 18 percent. Republicans cut an average of 12 percent and Democrats 22 percent.

The respondents’ high support for cutting the defense budget might be explained by the presentation of discretionary defense spending alongside other budget items. “This suggests that Americans generally underestimate the size of the defense budget and that when they receive balanced information about its size they are more likely to cut it to reduce the deficit,” said Steven Kull, director of PPC.

By a large percentage, the poll showed that Americans favored cutting the budget for nuclear weapons (27 percent) but the budget for existing ground forces was picked by respondents for the biggest cuts in dollar terms, $36.2 billion in average cuts or 23 percent.

While the Romney campaign and the GOP-controlled House Armed Services Committee appear intent on protecting existing military spending and introducing new projects for funding — whether the Pentagon asks for it or not — the U.S. public is firmly opposed to the current defense spending levels.

The U.S.’s top military officer today delivered an extraordinary repudiation of a class taught as the U.S. military’s Joint Forces Staff College. The course, “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” used apocalyptic rhetoric and cast Islam as a “barbaric ideology,” employing numerous anti-Muslim tropes. For example, the class taught the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary” in a “total war” against Muslims.

At a press conference today, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey explained how the materials taught in the class were brought to his attention and expressed a harsh criticism of them. He said:

DEMPSEY: As you know, I’ve made an inquiry into a particular course that was brought to my attention by one of the students because he was concerned that it was objectionable and that it was counter to our values — you know, our appreciation for religious freedom and cultural awareness. And the young man who brought it to my attention was absolutely right. It’s totally objectionable.

And so we are looking at how that course was approved, what motivated the individual to adopt that — it was an elective, but what motivated that elective for being part of the curriculum. And we are looking across the institutions that provide our professional military education to make sure there’s nothing like that out there.

It was just totally objectionable, against our values, and it wasn’t academically sound. This wasn’t about pushing back on liberal thought; this was objectionable, academically irresponsible.

Watch the video:

As Dempsey mentioned, he ordered an investigation of the class upon recognizing just how “objectionable” the material therein was. The examination of other teaching materials might find a good place to start by looking into Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, who facilitated the class, remains, for the moment, in his position at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia.

This afternoon in a Pentagon press conference, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey chastised House Republicans for passing a measure to provide funding for an East Coast missile defense system. In what seems to be an attempt to reclaim the mantle of the party of national security this election season, House Republicans included the provision in a bill passed today aimed at boosting military spending at the expense of needed social programs for the poor.

During the DOD presser today, Dempsey said he doesn’t “see a need” for the East Coast missile defense:

Q: The House has added $100 million for missile defense into the budget. Do you think that the East Coast needs a missile defense system. Do they need to do this survey that will cost $100 million that the Pentagon didn’t request or is this politically motivated? [...]

DEMPSEY: On ballistic missile defense, as you know we went through a strategic review in the fall and we mapped our budget to it and what I can tell you Jennifer is in my military judgement the program of record for ballistic missile defense for the homeland as we’ve submitted it is adequate and sufficient to the task and that’s a suite of ground based and sea based interceptors. So I don’t see a need beyond what we’ve submitted in the last budget.

Watch it:

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH,) who supported the East Coast missile defense measure, claims it’s needed “to lessen the threats from both Iran and North Korea.” But the AP reports that Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly, the head of the U.S. missile defense program, told Congress recently that North Korea lacks the testing for a capable system and has made little progress in its spaceflight program. And former CIA Mideast analyst Paul Pillar has noted that “the intelligence community does not believe [the Iranians] are anywhere close to having an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile].”

Moreover, as Dempsey hinted at in the press conference, Danger Room notes that existing systems already have the eastern sea board covered from ICBM threats.

“This is a political move,” said Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) referring to the GOP’s missile defense scheme. “Every time the election comes around, the Republicans run out a national security agenda.”

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor has emerged as a moderate voice in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet. Last month, he split with many of his Likud party colleagues, in arguing that “An attack on Iran wouldn’t add anything to [Israel's] security.” Today, in an interview published in the Times Of Israel, Meridor delivered harsh words to his colleagues who have overseen the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Meridor warned that the current calm in relations with the Palestinians might be producing “an illusion” among Israelis “that this is sustainable in the long term. It is not. It is an anomaly. We need to change it.”

The deputy prime minister urged the government to freeze further settlements “across the line of the [settlement] blocs or the fence or whatever you call it,” a reference to the Israeli West Bank barrier which is partially built along the 1949 armistice line, or “Green Line.”

Meridor emphasized that he was not advocating for a freeze in construction in East Jerusalem, but urged the Prime Minister’s office:

[D]on’t build all over the place, because this is the most damaging of all the things that we are doing to ourselves in the world. Because people say: ‘You offer the Palestinians a state. But if you build there in every place, you don’t really mean it.’

The views expressed in the interview are closer to the Obama administration’s policy of opposing all settlement construction and endorsing a negotiated border between Israel and a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders but with mutually agreed upon land swaps. Meridor said:

I think we are at the beginning of being able to do it. Because President Obama spoke of swaps, not of [an Israel withdrawn to the lines of] ’67… And Bush spoke of it… So we already see a basic understanding of the paradigm. The state won’t be along the ’67 lines. No way. It will be different, with some compensation. But if we build all over the place, we lose. Even if we don’t have an agreement [with the Palestinians], we need to have a rational policy.