How Brutally Ineffective the US Military Machine has Become
Column: Politics
Region: USA in the World
The less time the Obama aministration has till the end of its term, the more dirty secrets that it tried to hide emerge, showing the true face of US elected officials.
At this point it is safe to say that Barack Obama and his government were more concerned with personal enrichment than with any other goal, while taking advantage of hardworking taxpayers, offering ruin, corruption and rapidly deteriorating security situation in return.
Just take a look at the Washington Post reporting that the Pentagon buries 125 billion dollars over the last five years in spending on frivolous bureaucracy. That number comes out more wasted per year than all but the biggest countries spend on their militaries.
The journalist investigation carried out by the above mentioned media source revealed how senior Pentagon officials buried an internal study that exposed more than 100 billion dollars in administrative waste amid fears that Congress would use the findings to slash its defense budget.
The data provided by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows that this five-year sum is nearly double the 66.4 billion dollars that Russia that is being accused of carrying out aggressive foreign policies spent on its military in 2015.
As the direct result of this “ frivolous” corruption, the US army undergoes the process of gradual decomposition, which has been displayed by the growing number of military jet crashes in the US amid concerns that insufficient training and an aging fleet hobbled by a shortage of spare parts are contributing factors. A recent investigation reveals that, overall, the entire US military saw a 48% increase in non-combat aviation crashes in 2014 and 2015 compared with the two prior years, based on press reports.
According to statistics provided by the US Navy, only 21% of its early model Navy F-18 Hornets can fly — and only half of its newer Super Hornets can as well. Over 100 Super Hornets are not flying due to shortages in critical spare parts. The Navy’s fleet of MH-60 helicopters is not much better. Only 57% of its 412 helicopters can fly.
The US Air Force in recent years has been the unofficial “leader” of indiscriminate bombings in the whole world, and those strikes are still being carried on. Just last Saturday as a result the US Air Force has stricken a residential area in Iraq’s Mosul, leaving 90 people dead and more than a 100 more injured. Earlier it was reported that as the result of US-led coalition air strikes in the Syrian province of Raqqa 20 civilians were murdered.
There can be no doubt that the Obama administration has done everything it could to bury the myth about the role that the US foreign policy plays on the international stage, as the prolonged military conflicts in the Middle East have buried the myth about the effectiveness of the US Army.
But could one expect with the US military lobby in power, that is only ever concerned about stealing more money, instead of building more tanks. But who will bear responsibility for this, and who is to be held responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians? Or the American-style democracy does not imply there must be punishment of those responsible when they are the members of the ruling elite?
Grete Mautner is an indepenent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
http://journal-neo.org/2016/12/14/how-brutally-ineffective-the-us-military-machine-has-become/
