America’s Republican politicians complain that “entitlements,”
by which they mean pensions and medical care, are leading the country to
bankruptcy even as they fatten the spending on the Pentagon, which now takes 12
percent of the overall budget. And it should be noted that while workers contribute
to the social programs during all their years of employment, the money that
goes to the military comes straight out of the pockets of taxpayers before
being wasted in ways that scarcely benefit the average citizen unless one
seriously thinks that folks over in Syria, Iran and Afghanistan actually do
threaten the survival of the United States of America.
I was in a Virginia supermarket the other day checking out when
the woman behind the cash register in a perky voice asked me “Will you give $5
to support our troops?” I responded “No. Our troops already get way too much of
our money.” She replied, “Hee, hee that’s a funny joke” and I said “It’s not a
joke.” Her face dropped and she signaled to her boss over in customer service
and asked her to take over, saying that I had been rude.
If there is any group in the United States that exceeds the
sheer greed of our politicians it is the military, which believes itself to be
“entitled” as a consequence of its role in the global war on terror. I am a
veteran who began service in a largely draftee army in which we were paid
“twenty-one dollars a day once a month” as the old World War 2 song goes. When
we got out, the GI Bill gave us $175 a month to go back to college, which did
not cover much.
Today’s
United States has 2,083,000 soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen on active
duty plus reserves. Now that the military is an all-volunteer rather than a
conscript force, it is understandable that pay and benefits should be close to
or equivalent to civilian pay scales. Currently, a sergeant first class with 10
years in service gets paid $3968 a month. A captain with ten years gets $6271.
That amounts to $47,616 and $75,252 a year respectively plus healthcare, food,
housing, cost of living increases and bonuses to include combat pay.
Though there are several options for retirement, generally
speaking a soldier, sailor Marine or airman can retire after 20 years with half
of his or her final “high three” pay as a pension, which means an 18-year-old
who enlists right out of high school will be 38 and if he or she makes sergeant
first class (E-7) he or she will be collecting $2338 a month or more for a rest
of his or her life adjusted for cost of living,
Many Americans would be astonished at the pensions that general
officers and admirals receive, particularly since 80% of them also land in
“retirement” generously remunerated positions with defense contractors either
in active positions soliciting new contracts from their former peers or sitting
on boards. General David Petraeus, whom The Nation describes as the “general who
lost two wars,” pulls in a pension of $220,000 even though he was forced to
resign as CIA Director due to passing classified information to his mistress.
He is also chairman of a New York City based company KKR Global, which is part
of a private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts. He reportedly is paid in six
figures plus bonuses for “oversee[ing] the institute’s thought leadership
platform focused on geopolitical and macro-economic trends, as well as
environmental, social, and governance issues.”
It apparently is difficult to take money away from general and
flag officers. An Air Force four-star general named Arthur Lichte was reduced in rank to a two-star in 2017
after he was found guilty of having raped a lower ranking woman officer. His
pension went down from $216,000 to $156,000 due to the reduction. Normally,
however, America’s 1,000 general and flag officers can look forward to
comfortable retirements.
But on top of that rather generous bit of cash there are the
considerable other benefits, as the old recruiting sergeants would put it, the
“bennies.” Military retirees can receive full tuition and expenses at a college
or technical school if they choose to go back to school. This is why one sees
so many ads for online universities on television – they are trolling for
soldier dollars knowing that it’s free money. The retiree will also have access
to heavily subsidized medical care for him or herself plus family. The medical
care is a significant bonus under the Tricare system, which describes itself on
its website as “the gold standard for medical coverage, [that] is government
managed health insurance.” A friend who is retired recently had a hip
replacement operation that would have cost $39,000 for only a few hundred
dollars through Tricare.
What is significant is that even enlisted military personnel can
start a second career on top of their pension, given that many of them are
still in their thirties. Some that have security clearances can jump into
highly paid jobs with defense contractors immediately while others also find
places in the bureaucracy with the Department of Homeland Security. Working for
the government twice is called “double dipping.”
Some would argue that military personnel deserve what they get
because the jobs are by their very nature dangerous, sometimes fatal. Indeed,
the number of maimed and PTSD-afflicted soldiers returning from the endless
wars is a national tragedy and caring for them should be a top priority. But
the truth is that only a very small fraction, by some estimates far less than
20% of Army and Marine personnel in so-called “combat arms,” ever are in
danger. Air Force and Navy personnel rarely experience combat at all apart from
bombing targets far below or launching cruise missiles against Syrians. It is true
that given the volatile nature of war against insurgents in places like
Afghanistan many soldiers in support roles can come under fire, but it is far
from normal and most men and women in service never experience a gun fired in
anger.
Some numbers-crunchers in the Pentagon have already raised the
alarm that the current pay, benefits and retirement levels for military
personnel is unsustainable if the United States continues its worldwide mission
against terrorists and allegedly rogue regimes. And it is also unsustainable if
the U.S. seeks to return to a constitutional arrangement whereby the nation is
actually defended by its military, not subordinated to it and being bankrupted
by its costs.
Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.
