Dangerous Illusions About National Security

For nearly all of us, U.S. "national security" involves policies and practices remote from our personal experience. What we know about this subject comes for the most part from what we see on television or read about in the newspapers. As a result, we tend to fall prey to disinformation broadcast by parties with an axe to grind. The U.S. administration is always the most important such interested party. Now more than ever, as the government prosecutes a so-called war on terrorism without a visible enemy or a definable resolution, it behooves us to separate illusions from realities.

Illusion #1: The U.S. Defense Department protects the American people in America.

Reality #1: The Defense Department occupies itself overwhelmingly in preparing for, or engaging in, foreign wars against persons who do not pose serious threats to the American people in America. The proposals now being considered for the creation of a Department of Homeland Security highlight the fact that heretofore the defense and intelligence establishments have given little thought and directed few of their actions toward defending U.S. citizens on their own soil.

During the Cold War, the Defense Department prepared for wars in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere, against the Soviet Union and its surrogates. In doing so, the U.S. military establishment routinely protected regimes that at least pretended to oppose communism—no matter how tyrannical or murderous those regimes were.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Defense Department has undertaken to defend certain persons—many of them none too savory—in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Kurdistan, and southern Iraq; in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo; as well as the usual suspects—Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Very little of this activity has had a direct connection with actually protecting the American people in America, and much of it has had no genuine connection whatsoever.

Illusion #2: The Defense Department has the motivation and the capacity to manage effectively the vast resources placed at its disposal, in a way that enhances the security of the American people in America.

Reality #2: The Defense Department is either unable or unwilling to deal seriously with its decades-long engagement in massive waste, fraud, and mismanagement, especially (but not exclusively) in its relations with the big defense contracting companies.

The Defense Department will not even obey the laws with regard to its own accounting practices. According to a report by the department’s own inspector general, dated Feb. 15, 2001:

We identified $1.1 trillion in department-level accounting entries to financial data used to prepare DoD component financial statements that were not supported by adequate audit trails or by sufficient evidence to determine their validity. In addition, we also identified $107 billion in department-level accounting entries to financial data used to prepare DoD component financial statements that were improper because the entries were illogical or did not follow accounting principles. . . . [Further] DoD did not fully comply with the laws and regulations that had a direct and material effect on its ability to determine financial statement amounts.

The government’s audit agencies also found the accounts of the individual armed services in a mess, so that those records could not be audited. According to the memorandum previously cited, "The Military Department audit agencies attempted to audit those financial statements and issued disclaimers of opinion." However, the DoD inspector general did report, "The financial data reported on the FY 2000 financial statements for Army, Navy, and Air Force General Funds; the Army, Navy, and Air Force Working Capital Funds; and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Civil Works Program, were unauditable and comprise a significant portion of the financial data reported on the DoD Agency-wide Financial Statements for FY 2000."