Not only has the United States failed to win a war in recent years, not only is it inefficient and over- staffed – it hides up the facts.
Recently the Pentagon buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste. The study found that almost a quarter of the defense budget is spent on “business operations”, meaning admin, and $580 billion on overhead in general – accounting, human resources, logistics and property management. It pays no less than 1,014,000 contractors, civilians and uniformed personnel to fill back- office jobs far from any front line. Military contractors number 199,661, according to McKinsey, thus exceeding the combined civil workforce of 7 other Federal departments. The purchasing function alone employs 207,000 people; property employs 192,000 and human resources 84,000 people.
The top people at the Pengagon have claimed for years that the armed forces are starved of funds, which is nonsense – there is no incentive to be efficient. The warriors in Congress can usually be relied on to keep shoveling money in their direction, regardless of the poor performance. But recently, with these revelations, the top brass are worried that Congress, which holds the purse- strings will now make cuts. They rely on the new Trump people to stew up the fear of terrorism to ensure that no cuts are made.
In any case, the internal study was hidden up and the data that proved the waste was made secret. A 77 page summary report on the scandal was removed from the Pentagon website. If you want to hide up your incompetence you have reports stamped “classified”, which is what happened to most of the report last year into CIA torture. Mind you, this is what most governments do – the British are masters of this sort of thing.
The US Defense Department is the “world’s largest corporate enterprise”, and is notable for not analysing its own efficieny. The technique has been, when faced with inquiries, to wait out the studies with a “this too will pass” attitude. McKinsey estimated that the overhead cost between 15 and 20% of the Pentagon operation, but basically threw their hands up and admitted they really had no idea.
Spending gigantic sums of money on sophisticated weaponry does not prevent terrorism. What you need to do is have human spies (“assets”) with their ears and eyes wide open. Mass electronic spying on everyone in sight has proved ineffectual. My wife and I met a recently retired secret service officer who told us precisely this years ago. The truth, also, is that the Pentagon is not there just to prosecute never-ending war – it is there to plan for and pay for the development of weaponry that can be sold to countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel.