Trimming defense is the third rail in US politics - Boston Globe

I MUST comment on a glaring omission in your June 19 editorial on the cuts needed to bring the federal budget under control (“Nation needs long-term cuts, not a clash over current deficit’’). Nowhere do you explicitly mention the large part of the federal budget devoted to defense costs. After winning the Cold War, reaching a stage where we are pulling out of Iraq and plan to reduce forces in Afghanistan, taking Osama bin Laden out of the picture, and generally making significant progress against international terrorism, it is time that American taxpayers started receiving the benefits from the substantial investment we have made in our defense sector.

Significantly reducing defense spending could go a long way toward solving our budget problems. To their credit, top Defense Department officials see this as a likely move, and even Republican presidential candidates are starting to voice concern. But opinion shapers such as your editorial writers and our elected officials need to start focusing on this issue.

Trimming our defense budget seems to have replaced Social Security and other entitlement programs as the third rail in politics, but this topic needs to be on the table with the others you cited in order for there to be a meaningful debate and a fair and lasting solution to our budget problems.

Fiscal irresponsibility is at the heart of her opposition to war

RE “OBAMA outlines Afghan drawdown’’ (Page A1, June 23): As a 20-year-old college student and political activist, I care about ending this war because this country’s future is my future. I was only 10 on Sept. 11, 2001, and am of a generation of young people for whom our country has been at war almost our entire lives.

Yet at the heart of my opposition to the war is its fiscal irresponsibility. As someone who has begun earning enough money to pay taxes, I have a stake in how my money is being spent.

It is time to responsibly and quickly end the war in Afghanistan. I commend President Obama’s efforts to secure a lasting peace there as well as his announcement that 33,000 troops will be brought home by the summer of 2012. However, I am disappointed that the president will not end the war sooner, and that there will still be 68,000 service men and women in Afghanistan.

When Obama said that it was “time to focus on nation-building here at home,’’ I thought of the students I know who need more federal money to make college affordable and the young people who are graduating into an uncertain job market. It is investment in these and other important priorities, such as the environment, infrastructure, and public education, that I want my tax dollars to fund.

As Obama charts our future course in Afghanistan, I encourage him to think about what kind of nation he wants to build for the young people of today.

Alana Eichner
Somerville
The writer is a communications and development intern at Women’s Action for New Directions.

Category: Politics