OpEd Contributor
Time to end Gates' secret budget tribunals
By: John R. Guardiano, OpEd Contributor
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March 30, 2009
When then-First Lady Hillary Clinton convened a secret task force in 1993 to redesign and nationalize the American healthcare system, policymakers and the public were rightly outraged.
They demanded, and ultimately got, a more open and transparent decision-making process that comported with the American political tradition of self-rule by the people and not elite rule by an anointed oligarchy.
“This country has learned, over two centuries, that a free and unfettered exchange in public is the best medicine for any of our nation's problems,” said the late Rep. Gerald B. H. Solomon, R-NY. Solomon, a former Marine, added that “in the end, as the First Lady will soon learn, the truth will out.”
Compare that to what is now transpiring within the Department of Defense (DOD). There, uniformed military officers and civilian government employees have been forced to sign a secrecy oath while they meet privately, behind closed doors, to decide the fate of nation’s defense budget.
“Everybody who’s participating in this process - these are the highest-ranking people in this department - were asked to sign… an agreement in which they would agree not to speak to any of the matters that they are working on as part of the budget process,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters Feb. 25.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Morrell added, “wants to keep [that process] out of the limelight. He wants to keep it secret because ultimately it needs to be judged on the whole and not bits and pieces which may leak out.”
The problem with information being “leaked out” or shared with the public is obvious: The public may disagree with what these uniformed military officers and government civilians are deciding and that in turn may alter or disrupt their decision-making process.
After all, that’s how democracy works. Democracy can be messy and untidy, noisy and boisterous; it can disrupt the work of the ruling class, who think they know better than we the people. That’s why media blackouts and censorship are, sadly, the norm in human history. The ruling class - the self-anointed “experts” - don’t want their perfectly laid plans disrupted. After all, they know best.
Indeed, as Morell explained to reporters, Gates “wants people to participate in this with the confidence of knowing that what they are saying is not being leaked, it's not being disseminated, and therefore we can work together perhaps in a more collegial and honest way and come up with a better product.”
Of course. It’s all for the greater good, don’t you see? The secrecy oaths are being imposed on uniformed military officers and government civilians for the public’s own good, so that we can get a “better product,” a better defense budget.
Dictators and tyrants, oligarchs and bureaucrats have always used such self-serving rationales to deny the public its right to participate in the democratic decision-making process. That’s not new. What is new is the slavish obedience of our elected public officials, who have raised nary a word of objection to these secret proceedings.
The media’s blind acceptance of this media blackout also is startling, though perhaps not surprising, given the media’s strong ideological predilections and bias. Most reporters and editors are liberals and leftists. They like the secret proceedings because Gates has clearly intimated that he intends to use these secret proceedings to cut the defense procurement budget and perhaps even cancel key weapon systems.
Indeed, the media have reported on Gates’ efforts with unabashed admiration and portrayed him as a hero for supposedly standing athwart the dreaded “military-industrial complex.” Gates, they report, is fighting for what is militarily right and just, while narrow-minded parochial interests within Congress and the defense industry try to derail his noble reform efforts.
For example, the Boston Globe’s Bryan Bender reported that the DOD head is “girding for a showdown with Congress,” and so “took the unusual step of making the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other participants in budget deliberations sign nondisclosure agreements to prevent leaks.”
“But already,” Bender breathlessly continued, “lawmakers and defense contractors are preparing to fight back. Lockheed, maker of the F-22 jet, recently launched an ad campaign to protect its fighter. Northrop Grumman, which could face cutbacks to its ship-building programs, has hired consultants to write op-eds. Unions are raising alarms about job losses.
“Even his closest friends acknowledge Gates is in the bureaucratic fight of his life,” Bender concluded.
Now, Gates may well be right. Key weapon systems perhaps should be scaled back or eliminated. However, Gates and his team might also mistakenly cut crucial weapon systems. Defense Department personnel, remember, are the same geniuses who gave us defense budgets without up-armored Humvees and inadequate body armor. Soldiers and Marines were needlessly killed as a result.
But whether Gates is right or wrong is irrelevant. Defense Department budgetary decisions should not be made in secret; they should be made in public. America is not the Soviet Union or China; America is a democratic republic. Here the people rule.
What makes the secret deliberations even more unconscionable is that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior military leaders will be forced to pledge allegiance to Gates’ ultimate decisions. The American people, consequently, will never know whether and why senior military leaders disagreed with specific defense cuts.
But unless we understand, in all its rich detail and complexity, the reasoning and thought process that undergirded this process, we the people cannot make wise and informed decisions about our defense budget.
Congress needs to intervene and demand an end to these secret proceedings and the secret oaths. Congress also must subpoena and swear under oath all key participants in these deliberations, including but not limited to, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior three- and four-star Generals and Admirals.
We need to learn the truth about how defense budgetary decisions were reached and decided. This is America. Here the people rule.
John R. Guardiano served as a Marine in Iraq (2003) and now provides consulting services to the U.S. military. The views expressed here are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. military or his employer, a defense contractor.
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