Hoping to reverse Pentagon spending cuts imposed by sequestration, defense industry lobbyists have launched an offensive on Capitol Hill.

Most Americans understand the importance of military security, but many also believe that with the United States spending as much as the next 13 countries combined on defense — and accounting for 39 percent of global military spending — there is room for cost cutting. There also are suspicions that pressure to restore Pentagon spending cuts has more to do with defense contractors’ profits and jobs than national defense.

Concern is focused not only on the size of the military budget, but on how the dollars are spent. Multibillion-dollar cost overruns for high-tech fighter jets or Navy ships are too common. Adding to questionable spending, Congress sometimes forced the military to continue making a particular jet or tank only because the jobs at risk are in an influential senator’s state.

Beyond concerns over the “military-industrial complex” as President Dwight Eisenhower warned in 1962, there are more reasons to question maintaining military spending at current levels. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have revealed massive amounts of waste and mismanagement, suggesting defense dollars are not being efficiently spent.

The independent and bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan reported a year ago that “At least $31 billion, and possibly as much as $60 billion, has been lost to contract waste and fraud in America’s contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Military brass and hawks in Congress don’t talk about that.

Contract spending in those two wars amounted to about $210 billion and if the amount wasted to mismanagement and fraud is $31 billion to $60 billion, that’s not a good record for spending taxpayers’ money.

A mind-boggling example of waste in the Afghanistan war effort was reported earlier this month by the Washington Post. A 64,000-square-foot building, costing $34 million, was constructed in southwestern Afghanistan several years after U.S. military leaders there told their superiors that the facility was not needed or wanted.

The just-completed building features a large, high-tech operations center rivaling the best in the military, plus a briefing theater, large offices and a powerful air conditioning system. The building was conceived in 2009, as President Obama decided on a troop surge into Afghanistan. When the commander at Camp Leatherneck heard about the plans for a new building, he told his superiors in Kabul that his current plywood-walled building was adequate. But his recommendation was ignored and after contracts were awarded, work eventually began in November 2011, just about the time the troop surge was ending. As troop levels in the area dropped from 20,000 to 7,000, the building’s foundation was set and steel beams and electrical wiring were put in place. Despite the ongoing withdrawal of troops, construction continued. Crates of new furniture arrived on site before the decision to stop construction was finally made.

The Washington Post story on wasteful spending in Afghanistan also mentioned $45 million spent on a facility to repair armored vehicles that was completed just in time to serve as a staging site for equipment being shipped out of the country. And in another part of the country, the State Department spent $80 million in construction on a large building to be used as a U.S. consulate. Only after spending the $80 million and signing a 10-year contract was it decided that the facility was too vulnerable to military attacks, so it was abandoned.

Debate over sequestration and the proper level of defense spending is worthwhile. But Washington officials cannot claim that taxpayers’ money has been well spent. With billions of dollars of wasteful spending by military leaders — and politicians in Congress — it’s hard to support those opposing cuts in the Pentagon budget. Smarter spending, meaning less waste, would get the military more bang for buck — something taxpayers would appreciate.