David Michael Miller
The roar of fighter planes over our heads will increase if the proposal to base the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter at Truax is approved. But, as Mark Greene wrote a few weeks ago in this space (“Those who know,” 9/21/2017), the military wants our support for this proposal.
“What do we need for security?” should be the primary consideration. It’s a question for all citizens to answer in a democratic society, a question of values and priorities. National security is not just military — we cannot be secure if we are not healthy, housed and educated, or if our dams and bridges fail on us.
Undoubtedly, we have runaway military spending in this country. U.S. military expenditures are roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined. Accountability is lacking. The Pentagon has never passed an audit and has been on the list of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) since 1995 for agencies at high risk of waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement. Now the president and Congress want to increase its budget again with no coherent plan. On Sept. 18, the Senate voted to increase the military budget by $81 billion, an increase equivalent to funding the Environtal Protection Agency 10 times over.
The F-35 is a poster child for this runaway military spending. It is a weapon designed for Cold War engagements and does not address today’s security challenges such as terrorism. There is also shocking evidence that the plane cannot meet its performance goals and benchmarks. In June, groups including the Project on Government Oversight and Taxpayers for Common Sense called for a halt to F-35 production until the design was complete and performance problems were solved. The program’s cost was expected to top one trillion dollars even before the Senate voted recently to add 24 more planes and suspend requirements to meet performance benchmarks. Support is shored up by campaign contributions from military contractors that flow to hundreds of members of Congress.
Spending on the F-35 takes real money out of our community. Taxpayers in Madison alone contribute $9.6 million a year toward this plane. Imagine what the city could do with this money instead, educating our children, providing alternatives to incarceration, paving our roads, building bike paths, improving parks, to name just a few worthy projects.
We need to understand the role of the National Guard that goes far beyond protecting the skies above the U.S. or disaster relief. Our National Guard is routinely sent overseas. Are we in Wisconsin or the country “safer” because planes from the Wisconsin Air National Guard flew over Korea during August? That seems highly debatable. Wisconsin National Guard members are also being deployed to the Middle East this fall. In such places, fighter planes like the F-35 are used for bombing raids that kill many civilians, including children, creating resentment and fueling terrorism. In 2016 alone, the U.S. dropped over 26,000 bombs in seven countries, primarily Iraq and Syria.
There is a fair way to handle job impacts of any decision around the F-35. Since only 20 jobs in Wisconsin come from parts manufacture, according to Lockheed-Martin, job concerns center instead on the threat of base closure. The last round of base closures was in 2005 but the Pentagon is asking for more base closures now and estimates it has about 20 percent too many bases. A “just transition” would include programs to put military and civilian workers displaced in this process into jobs society needs. This should include re-employment in jobs with comparable wages, and relocation and retraining assistance. In any case, even the Madison Chamber of Commerce, which is an F-35 booster, promises no “new” jobs for Madison even if we get the F-35. In fact, excessive military spending actually limits the creation of jobs in our community, because dollars spent on military projects create fewer jobs than the same spent in almost any civilian enterprise.
We are in a crisis when it comes to national security and military spending in this country. The grotesque contradictions are there, but our leaders do not have the answers. Therefore it falls on all of us to plug this deficit in critical thinking. We should withhold our support for F-35 fighter planes at Truax. These planes will not net us increased security. As part of his “fiscal fitness” plan when he was last running for office in 2016, Russ Feingold called for an end to the F-35 program. We in Wisconsin should join that call. To join others in Madison concerned about this issue, check out our Facebook page, “No F-35 Fighter Jets in Madison.”
Harry Richardson is a member of the No F-35 Fighter Jets in Madison.
