As the war ends in Afghanistan, the federal government should cut at least 250,000 civilian jobs at the Department of Defense [DOD] and return that department’s annual budget to $400 billion or less.

Time Magazine reported [worth reading to discover how spending got out of control at the DOD], “From 2001 to 2012, the active duty military grew by just 3.4 percent. Yet over the same timeframe the number of civilian defense employees grew by 17%, an increase five times greater than the armed forces.”

Here’s my first suggestion to cut the federal budget—start by cutting back the number of civilian contractors who develop and build weapons for the US military.

Second, does the US really need the same number of aircraft carriers as every other nation on the planet combined? China, for example, has one twenty-two-year-old, non-nuclear powered second-hand aircraft carrier, and we hear more about that aircraft carrier in the US media—as of it was a threat to world security—while the U.S. has ten in active service and one in reserve with three more under construction. The only other country with more than one aircraft carrier is Italy and they have two.

The newest aircraft carrier is the Gerald R. Ford, and it cost $13 billion to build with two more to follow—the contracts for the other two should be cancelled saving $26 billion or more.

The U.S. has ten active carriers. The rest of the world combined also has ten, but only France has one that is nuclear powered. All the US carriers are nuclear powered and they are larger—much larger.

Why does the US need such expensive firepower? Where’s the threat?

I’m not going to argue with anyone that the US needs a strong military because at heart I am a hawk who loves what the US is doing as it continues to develop modern weapons second to none in the ability to search out enemies and destroy them—and I think the Gerald R. Ford is way cool, but do we need it? The Gerald R. Ford is an incredible weapon but who was it designed to fight—aliens from another planet?

For god’s sake, we are fighting a gang of international fundamentalist Islamic thugs known as al Qaeda and they don’t even have one aircraft carrier—they don’t even have a country. And the only way they can get an aircraft of any kind is to steal them like they did on 9/11.

Return to or start with Blaming Obama and offering a lame solution: Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

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