Letter to WSJ Editor, re: “Pentagon’s Fading Readiness”

I just emailed the following Letter to the Editor to The Wall Street Journal in response to its cited editorial:

While I completely agree with the concerns regarding our military preparedness raised in your editorial, “The Pentagon’s Fading Readiness” (January 16), I find the Journal’s expressions of dismay disappointingly inconsistent with its months of cheerleading for a tax cut that virtually every economist quoted in its News and Finance sections opined would increase the deficit by a trillion dollars or more.  Our ability to invest in defense is now further constrained by the breaks we’ve given primarily to cash-rich corporations and the wealthy at a time of booming national economic growth.  You bemoan the degradation of our security that is resulting from insufficient political and financial support; but if we were indeed determined to dig a trillion dollar-deeper hole in the deficit, perhaps we would at least be more militarily secure if even half of the trillion provided to corporate interests and the well-to-do had instead been devoted to buttressing our national defense.