I totally agree with your March 7 editorial, “Military war waste shameful.” The military and Congress, trying to appease their military-industrial constituents and lobbyists, commit too many defense dollars on projects that are useless, and sometimes eventually waste more money than originally intended.
Thus, it is that I greet each of the columnist Tom Philpott’s columns on Congress’s special Tricare (military health program) committee, with suspicion — not of the author, but what he reports that the committee says is necessary to “save” Tricare benefits for all beneficiaries.
The committee says that “the program is not sustainable,” even though in recent years money budgeted but not used has been returned to the treasure chest. There is also the claim that “the generals need money for training.” When you are a member of the military and see how the generals waste money flying around to visit training, staying in cushy hotels and eating in restaurants while their troops slog through the mud and are out in the elements, and on the other hand, spend $3 million — and then cancel — eight boats (quoting your editorial, here) for patrolling in Afghanistan — “eight patrol boats for “landlocked Afghanistan. As of 2014, the boats were still sitting unused at a Navy warehouse in Yorktown, Virginia.”
Tricare directly benefits the troops and their families. Three million dollars worth of boats wasting away in a warehouse in Virginia? That would be a drop in the bucket for Tricare, however, add the following to the misdeeds of those budgeting/spending for Afghanistan:
How about that $36 million spent on a facility that several generals in Afghanistan didn’t want? Never used. Total waste of money. Much like the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure program in which the Army Reserve closed many of its centers in order to build all new joint centers with the National Guard and/or other reserve organizations? How does closing some and building brand new elsewhere “save money,” which is, supposedly, the intent of BRAC? Some of the old, closed centers were taken over by cities with excellent plans for reuse. But here in Seattle, the center at Fort Lawton is closed, empty, and there is not an acceptable plan for use. The center had been build in 1972. How “old” is that? It had been kept constantly updated; meanwhile, the historic center, truly old and outdated center in Vancouver Barracks, Washington, was also ordered closed, but saved by its “historic” designation. Boggles the mind.
Who authorized a $43 million gas station in Afghanistan? Contractors who built it made 140 more times than they should have. I’m willing to bet they were American contractors, overseeing local labor which is many times cheaper than here in the United States. Some fat-cat contractor made an unbelievable amount of profit on the backs of the American taxpayers.
Who allowed the lobby for the American Soybean Association to influence the spending of $34.4 million to teach Afghans to grow soybeans in a country where poppies are the main crop? Afghans aren’t going to plant soybeans instead of poppies. Growing soybeans is not a cash crop for them. Yes, it was a weak attempt to turn Afghans from producing the poppies from which opium is made, but it failed, miserably.
How about the hospital — mentioned in your editorial — supposedly for infants where they babies were washed in dirty river water. But then, you’re talking about representatives from a country where a governor of a state doesn’t know what to do when he has citizens in the city of Flint, Michigan, dealing with and sickening people from the poisoned water in their taps.
How can anyone involved in any of that justify charging more for Tricare for soldiers, their family members, and retirees and their family members, when such blatant waste continues?
Defense needs to be funded; but the expenditure of these funds needs to be more closely monitored, especially when those funds support military servicemembers who spend their time, their life’s blood, assuring that this is a free, secure nation. There are many programs here at home, as well, where taxpayer money could be better spent.
Please, be active in government. Write to your elected representatives and demand that this stop, and if you don’t hear from them, call their offices and repeat your demands. Congress needs to hear that they aren’t allowed to unilaterally decide what is funded and what isn’t! They are responsive to their constituency, or they are out!
The election is coming. Vote accordingly.
Pam Garrison lives in Everett.
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