The Defense Department makes a lot of mistakes. Whether it’s the inability to pass an audit, the endless bureaucratic inertia that results in the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, or the $4.6 million spent on shellfish in 2018, the Pentagon is not exactly the best steward of U.S. taxpayer money or the most efficient organization in the U.S. government.
The department, however, is about to make one of its biggest mistakes. The Pentagon delivered a memo to the Stars and Stripes newspaper that all but told the publication to prepare to close up shop. Based on the Pentagon’s orders, the top brass at the fabled military newspaper will have to submit a plan to dissolve by Sept. 15, including a “specific timeline for vacating government owned/leased space worldwide.”
This isn’t the first time Stars and Stripes has been on the chopping block. Yet, never before has the Pentagon gone so far as to mandate the full closure of a paper that millions of U.S. service members read on a daily basis.
The Trump administration has had the paper in its sights since the beginning of the year, when the Pentagon’s 2021 budget request included a $7 million cut to its operating budget. Lawmakers are so concerned about the demise of the paper that they wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sept. 2 urging him to postpone the plans, calling Stars and Stripes “an essential part of our nation’s freedom of the press that serves the very population charged with defending that freedom.”
On the surface, the Pentagon’s targeting of the publication looks like a simple game of antiseptic number-crunching. But there is nothing dispassionate about forcing the closure of a media organization that provides the men and women of the military with the high-quality journalism they crave, particularly when deployed overseas.
Stars and Stripes is not some official press outfit for the Defense Department regurgitating scrubbed talking points or press releases from senior defense officials but an outfit with editorial independence the hard-working reporters of which are some of the best investigators in the business. Whether it’s breaking news about the Pentagon hiring a public relations firm to push journalists into reporting the war in Afghanistan in a more positive light or publishing a series of stories about the U.S. military’s battle with the COVID-19 pandemic, Stars and Stripes is as much of a public service as other newspapers. To shut it down would be an insult to the kind of freedom of the press the United States stands for (full disclosure: I’ve written some op-eds for Stars and Stripes in the past).
As retired Rear Adm. Michael Smith, a 30-year Navy veteran, senior strategist for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former commander of Carrier Strike Group Three, told me, “The Stars and Stripes is a vital connection to home for our service members overseas. It certainly helped my morale when I was stationed in Italy or when copies would be delivered to my ships on deployment. This is just one more example of the administration shutting down things that our military members and their families depend on.”
The Pentagon’s supposed fiscal-mindedness doesn’t pass the laugh test. The department allocates about $15 million to $16 million a year to Stars and Stripes, which helps the paper with budget items such as security when its reporters operate in war zones (like most newspapers, subscription and advertising make up the bulk of its revenue streams). Compare this meager amount of money to the $4 billion the U.S. spends on the Afghan national security forces every year, the $876 million it requested for the advanced medium-range air-to-air missile, or the nearly $18 billion the administration wants for modernizing the nuclear enterprise.
The Pentagon’s claim that closing Stars and Stripes is about fiscal responsibility is an insult to public intelligence.
If the Pentagon wants to save money, it doesn’t need to abolish a newspaper that has demonstrated its value time and time again. For instance, it could make a serious push on Capitol Hill to eliminate the 22% of military infrastructure U.S. defense officials admit they don’t need anymore, a project that would save $2 billion a year by 2027. It could cut down on the steak and lobster dinners. It could recommend to the Trump administration that it extend the New START nuclear weapons treaty, which in addition to the security benefits would save taxpayer cash otherwise used to build more nuclear warheads and launch platforms. It’s not as if there is a shortage of useless Pentagon programs that could be eliminated or refined.
We should welcome and encourage cost-cutting at the Pentagon. Stars and Stripes is not the place to start. Getting rid of a publication that sheds light on an often secretive department and that informs the men and women in uniform of the very force they chose to serve in helps no one.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
