It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.
Endless money forms the sinews of war. Nervi belli pecunia infinita.
But see Savile, below
We have sent our troops to war without paying for it. Now, we are bringing them home without saying how we are paying for it.
The truth is that the fall of Napoleon is the hardest blow that our taxing system ever felt. It is now impossible to make people believe that immense fleets and armies are necessary.
The prerogative of preparedness weakens after a war is won; everyone expects some sort of peace dividend.
Early in my term I will also be requesting that all NATO nations promptly pay their bills, which many are not now doing.
We were told this war would be over in a matter of weeks, and that the Iraqis would be able to finance it with oil sales. We were promised it was not a mission of nation building.
The intelligence community is so vast that more people have top secret clearance than live in Washington. The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined.
Wars cost money.
The key to winning a battle is to not burden the general population with military expenses
It may safely be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and credit, and that the largest purse will be the strongest arm.
The Pentagon says that they are too big to be audited. That’s an insult. They spend $700 billion a year. They need to be audited.
Wars have economies. And I don't mean financial economies, although that's often part of it. Why do people continue fighting these wars? There are financial incentives.
We want to make sure the military gets it right and understands that if they're going to have less money, they're going to have to spend it a lot more smartly.
Pentagon dollars are essentially seen as a different kind of funding that doesn't have to stand for itself and make an argument for itself in the house of Congress.
The Pentagon got fed up with its recruits getting ripped off by payday lenders and in 2007 got Congress to make it illegal to extend such loans to members of the military. But civilians remain fair game.
The DoD has never undergone an audit. In 2004, it actually pledged to undergo a full audit by 2007, but that deadline came and went, and then they moved it to 2016. No one, not even the DoD, thinks they'll actually be able to pass it in 2016.
Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) has called for an audit of the Pentagon, so that we finally have some transparency and accountability in how DOD spends taxpayer dollars.