Congress readies military smorgasbord

In February, President Bush asked Congress for the biggest increase in defense spending since 1966, and the House this week passed a military spending bill that would raise that amount by $4 billion.

The Senate is still working on its version.

There are good and bad reasons for increasing defense spending, and the House bill includes plenty of both.

On the positive side, there is badly needed spending to clean up some of the rust accumulating in the war-fighting abilities of the forces entrusted with defense missions in Asia. Hawai'i-based Pacific Forces commanders have complained for years that their aircraft and ships are aging, and spare parts and ordnance are in short supply. And the House provides reasonably for about 4 percent in raises for GIs.

On the negative side are insistence on programs the Pentagon has decided it doesn't want, like a giant, self-propelled howitzer, the Crusader, that is perfectly suited to fighting a Soviet invasion of Europe, but limited in mountainous terrain like Korea and Afghanistan and useless for chasing guerrillas in Philippine or Colombian jungles.

"Bunker busters"

The House also favors — imprudently, we think — the development of nuclear-tipped "bunker-buster" missiles. The whole point of nuclear armaments in the Cold War was that their use was unthinkable, and these are likely to be regarded as handy, useful tools. Increasing American willingness to resort to first-use nuclear weapons is not a helpful example for the rest of the world.

The House bill would also allow the military to bypass key portions of the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act. We worry that the Pentagon may be taking advantage of the post-Sept. 11 crisis atmosphere to exempt itself from laws it feels are inconvenient. But war on terror or not, these laws remain critical to the environment — most especially in Hawai'i.

This provision is especially disturbing since the military here in Hawai'i has pronounced itself a willing and excellent steward of the land.

Fighting terrorism

From a broader, strategic perspective, it is clear that neither Congress nor the Bush administration is yet clear what military spending is required for this war we're in the middle of, the war on terrorism. The Pentagon was not badly prepared for operations in Afghanistan and the Philippines, or in Yugoslavia before that.

But the equation is radically different if the Pentagon's hawks have their way. A Bush official delivered a speech this week that listed three more countries — Cuba, Libya and Syria — that pose an imminent danger to the U.S. That would bring the "axis of evil" — from Iraq, Iran and North Korea — up to six.

These hawks are deadly serious about mounting a Desert Storm-scale invasion of Iraq, and who knows what they have in mind for the other five?

If this is the road we're headed down — and if so, we'd urge wiser heads to prevail — then huge amounts of money are now being spent on programs that will prove useless. Nothing is so wasteful as planning and spending for the wrong war.