High points of "Smart Security: Reducing Military Spending to Fund Urgent Needs at Home," 32nd annual conference of the Coalition of Peace Action, Princeton, New Jersey.

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13 November 2011: Smart Security or Dumb Dollar$?

The urgent need for U.S. budget priorities to shift from war to peace was the theme of the Thirty-Second Annual Conference of the Coalition for Peace Action (CFPA) on the Princeton University Campus today.

Among the featured speakers were Dr. Gordon Adams, a professor of foreign policy at American University who worked as a senior advisor to the president on national security and foreign policy, and Judith LeBlanc, National Field Director of Peace Action and former national co-chair of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ).

A resident of Washington, DC, Adams (pictured above) spoke of his hometown as a "puzzle palace" faced with two major issues at a crucial point in history he referred to as an "inflection point": correct budget allocations and appropriate relations with the rest of the world.

"We can no longer afford what we're doing here and in the rest of the world," he said.

$30 bn to $60 bn of military funding has mysteriously disappeared from military funds, unaccounted for.

The good news is that we're ending one war and winding down on another; our economic focus should not be the deficit but jobs. U.S. entitlements have grown from $6 tn to $12 tn in the previous ten years.

Our attitude toward the military, in a complete about-face from the nineteen seventies, is overly fearful and reverent. At the same time, national security ranks only number ten in a list of priorities measured by a Gallup poll from a sampling of Americans. Money, jobs, and health care are far more important to us today.

As to the Supercommittee, their nervously awaited decision is really meaningless and completely subject to the whims of Congress and will not be enforceable until January 2013 anyway--and we all know what major event happens before that.

Adams called the committee's decision process an "Indonesian Shadow Play," that is, two-dimensional puppets as pantomiming silhouettes behind backlit white cloth.

Military spending was cut every twenty years most recently: in the decades following 1950, 1970, and 1990--each time the budget was slashed by 30 percent; now that 2010 has arrived, a little "push" is needed, said Adams. Leon Pannetta, Secretary of Defense, is worried about the loss of $450 bn, 8 percent of the projected military budget.

Military budgeting aside, the second important aspect of this inflection point in time is how to engage with the world. We have a unique opportunity to rethink this relationship. There is no longer a need to "reset" our weaponry--it is entirely up-to-date and in good condition and sufficiently diversified.

Will money saved on this aspect of our national security be redirected to the needs of the people at home? A substantial percentage of our military are noncombatants "running the back office," as Adams put it--there is a 33 percent overhead.

In 1989, at the end of the Cold War, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell cut military forces by fifty thousand; throughout the following decade, 700,000 military troops were cut, as were 300,000 from civil service.

In the District of Columbia, said the professor, the U.S. is said to "shape" the world, as its "system administrator." The world is our "global commons." Are we indispensable? We must rethink this issue. Two points have made it to the table: 1) "coin," that is "counterinsurgency," which justifies our nearly ubiquitous presence in so many troubled areas around the world; and 2) $30 bn is spent annually on our nuclear armaments, the number of which must be reduced to zero.

"What do we need a military for?" he challenged us. Think about it.

For land war? Where? Not Iran or Pakistan. We must stay away from others' ground wars. No welcome mat awaited us during the Arab Spring.

There is no threat of terrorist attacks or any other argument for maintaining a large military.

Is there a need to secure the Internet? Outer space? Our waters?

No, no, and no.

But the real problem is uncertainty. That is why we need a military, Adams was told. But, he told us, the traditional threats are no longer threatening us.

We can shrink the military. We are safer than we were during the cold war. There are no existential threats--no doffed shoes hitting desk tops, no threats that we will be buried by an enemy.

We must alter the narrative.

Adams ended his presentation with two poems: one by Kavafi, "Waiting for the Barbarians," which questions how civilization as we know it can exist without the immanent threat of invasion; and another that he wrote that ends with a child's plea to end wars and bring his daddy home.

Judith LeBlanc (pictured above) was pleased to be addressing a live audience in this age of cyberspace and telephone communication, backgrounding what she called "the fierce urgency of now," quoting Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1966, MLK also said that "nothing is more tragic than to sleep through a revolution."

How, then, can we bring the Occupation movement (I will refer to it as OWS) into the political mainstream?

Evoking Adams's linguistic dexterity, LeBlanc referred to it as our "magic movement moment."

Three-quarters of the American public share the main concerns of OWS: the economy, tax breaks for the rich, unemployment, homelessness, the huge number of uninsured Americans, and so on.

We must parent major political shifts to bring about peace and justice--no small endeavor. We must be proactive at the level of international politics, that is, our interactions with the world. The AFL-CIO has called for demilitarization of our foreign policy, joining OWS in this demand.

We are in a revenue crisis, not a deficit crisis, said LeBlanc. The grassroots must assert this, the 99 percent. David is fighting Goliath. We must build a human needs budget, not a defense budget.

"If facts could win the day, no one would smoke cigarettes," she told us.

Solidarity with other groups is essential. We need a new peace and justice movement, bringing together peace groups, workers, faith communities, and others in strategic alliances.

Jimmy Hoffa has corroborated this need for solidarity. Quoting MLK again, LeBlanc said that bombs dropped on Afghanistan harm our communities at home.

Next week, on November 17, OWS will celebrate its two months of existence with a party, joined by Rebuild the Dream, centered around the need to bring our tax dollars home from war.

The first action will be to attempt to stop the opening bell on Wall Street. Townhall meetings will be held in the subways. A line of cabs will next accompany lines of Occupiers crossing the Brooklyn Bridge.

Inspiration will be drawn from walking many miles in other people's shoes, she said.

Problems do exist with OWS, including flareups caused by agents provocateurs and the presence of chronically homeless people among them. In response, OWS is offering workshops on nonviolent resistence and other means of effective communication with opponents.

Given that 42 percent of the world's military spending comes from the coffers of one country, the United States, an amount that exceeds that spent by the next sixteen countries combined; and given that the $2.5 bn cut from LIHEAP, a program that provides heating and air conditioning to indigents, is equal to forty hours of Pentagon spending; and given that the $2.2 bn deducted from Community Development Block Grants is equal to thirty-five hours of Pentagon spending; and given that some 39 percent of our 2011 budget consists of military expenses--

all of the above according to Jo Comerford, director of the National Priorities Project in Northampton, Massachusetts--

how can thoughts emanating from MLK, Mahatma Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela not keep us awake at night instead of letting us sleep through the revolution?

The founder of the 25% Solution, Professor Prasannan Parthasarathi of Boston College, lauded Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) for putting military spending "on the table" in Congress--how can our pressing needs be neglected?

As Swami Tattvavidananda Saraswati said, seeking security will keep us insecure.

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Authors Website: http://www.wordsunltd.com

Authors Bio:

Marta Steele is an author/editor/blogger who has been writing for Opednews.com since 2006. She is also author of the 2012 book "Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement's Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People's Vote, 2000-2008" (Columbus, Free Press) and a member of the Election Integrity movement since 2001. Her original website, WordsUnLtd.com, first entered the blogosphere in 2003. She recently became a senior editor for Opednews.com. She has in the past taught college and worked as a full-time as well as freelance reporter. She has been a peace and election integrity activist since 1999. Her undergraduate and graduate educational background are in Spanish, classical philology, and historical and comparative linguistics. Her biography is most recently listed in "Who's Who in America" 2019 and in 2018 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who.