Ten aircraft carriers? Ten? We’re hanging by our fingernails with eleven!

Over at the New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker team up to deliver a story on possible cuts in defense spending that, one must say, is not entirely misleading. While picturing Defense Secretary Leo Panetta as straining every nerve and sinew to achieve the near-impossible—cutting our grossly swollen defense budget by 10 percent a year for 10 years (that is to say, cutting projected defense spending by 10 percent a year) they also quote opposing views—for example, Gordon Adams, who handled defense budget issues under President Clinton: “Even at a trillion dollars [more than twice what Panetta has proposed, and a figure he has called “ruinous”], this is a shallower build-down than any of the last three we’ve done. It would still be the world’s most dominant military. We would be in an arms race with ourselves.”

But while Liz and Thom can quote other people talking sense, they’re a bit leery of doing it themselves. “If, say, the Pentagon saves $7 billion over a decade by reducing the number of aircraft carriers to 10 from 11,” they wonder, “would there be sufficient forces in the Pacific to counter an increasingly bold China?”

First off, how is China being “increasingly bold”? They silently swallow, and then loudly regurgitate, the incessant neo-con tripe that China/Iran/Russia/Venezuela/etc. are our relentless adversaries who will fall upon us in an instant if we ever drop our guard.

Secondly, why can’t 10 aircraft carriers adequately “protect” us against a country that has no interest in attacking us, since, as all readers of this blog are aware, China has one terrible, refitted Soviet scow of an aircraft carrier, which will be used entirely for training purposes, to teach Chinese sailors how to operate a vessel that would be entirely useless in battle. One wishes that Liz and Thom were capable of asking, or perhaps even answering, this question, since they are supposed to be the “experts.”

Afterwords
What’s good about the article is that we learn the extent to which the Pentagon’s self-defined budget woes is due to the compulsive generosity of a Congress determined to prove to the voters, over and over again, how much they support our men and women in uniform.*

According to the Times, “the Pentagon spends $181 billion each year, nearly a third of its base budget, on military personnel costs: $107 billion for salaries and allowances, $50 billion for health care and $24 billion in retirement pay.”

Liz and Thom give us a snappy one-liner on this point, obtained from Pentagon consultant Arnold Punaro: ““If we allow the current trend to continue, we’re going to turn the Department of Defense into a benefits company that occasionally kills a terrorist.”

But cutting an admiral’s retirement pay? That sounds a lot tougher than sinking a damn aircraft carrier. Heavy seas ahead, dude! Heavy seas ahead!

*The smaller our armed forces become, particularly when considered as a percentage of the U.S. population, the more they become fetish objects, to be worshipped by those longing to prove their patriotism—without, you know, getting shot at.