Time to rename the Department of Defense

Calling it the DOD doesn't quite cover it anymore, as Ivan Eland explains. Very little of the Pentagon's game has to do with defending anything. According to Eland, in fact, "most of the [Pentagon's budget] will be spent on offensively-oriented U.S. forces and enhance their ability to rapidly conduct imperial forays in far-flung corners of the world, including the Middle East."

So instead of DOD, how about DOO, Department of Offense. Doo? Nah. That would be a gaffe along the lines of Operation Iraqi Liberation—OIL. Department of Offensive Measures, DOOM? More like it.

It drives me crazy, but one of the cherished articles of faith among Americans is that "we" need a strong defense. Maybe so, but there is the little matter of having oceans on either side and friendly neighbors north and south. And not many take a second to compare this idea of a strong "defense" with what we actually have—an absurdly expensive and inefficient array of attack equipment, getting more expensive and inefficient by the day:

The Bush administration’s newly released Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), outlining its defense strategy, forces, and weapons programs, and its accompanying defense budget demonstrate that throwing money at national defense won’t make Americans safer at home. This bloated defense budget, already more than $500 billion per year (including the expenses for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), will be hiked by 7 percent. Yet most of that budget will not be spent on “defense,” which is only a small part of the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) budget. Instead, most of the money will be spent on offensively-oriented U.S. forces and enhance their ability to rapidly conduct imperial forays in far-flung corners of the world, including the Middle East. Since retaliation for such adventures is the reason terrorist groups strike U.S. targets, Americans can expect more such attacks at home and abroad. Even the new counterterrorism strategy of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admits that ill-conceived military operations could swell the ranks of terrorists.

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