It's always fun to plan a syllabus, but you can never expect the universe to unfold in a way that conforms to your reading list. It's all about timing, and every now and then, you get lucky.
This week the Autumn 2012 class of Glenn Fellows is reading Andrew Bacevich's Washington Rules, a searing indictment of military and intelligence spending in support of the "permanent war" that the United States has been waging--against international communism, and more recently against international terror--since the end of World War II. Several fairly inconspicuous stories in today's Washington Post make me think that for once my syllabus actually got the timing right.
Walter Pincus, ordinarily snooze-inducing, devotes today's column to likely Pentagon budget cuts in the wake of President Obama's re-election. "With Tuesday's election results," Pincus's column begins, "President Obama and Congress should take steps to end the 'warfare state' instituted by the George W. Bush White House."
Another story, entitled "Boeing Shrinking Its Defense Division," may be even more telling. It seems that Boeing is disbanding its Missiles and Unmanned Airborne Systems division and cutting back on its number of defense executives by some 30% in order to intensify its concentration on commercial aircraft.
All of this makes me think that maybe someday we'll have a Pentagon budget that reflects what the military is actually asking for, rather than what Congress thinks they should have.
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