Obama’s Emasculation of America’s Military Must Be Stopped
By Shaun Kenney | Thursday, January 26th, 2012 | Policy, Politics, Virginia
$500 billion.
Not millions… but b-b-billions. With a capital b.
That’s $500 billion of cuts to the Defense Department over the next 10 years. Not budget cuts, but real and tangible defense spending.
Obama has in just three short years in the White House has done more damage to American prestige and power than Jimmy Carter could have dreamed of accomplishing. Obama has bent over and kowtowed to every anti-American regime in the world, instigated an “Arab Spring” that put Islamists in power over the moderate voices in Islam, emboldened parallel voices in China and Europe to allow them to challenge the Pax Americana…
This list could go on.
Of course, there are liberals cheering across America as our nations men and women in uniform were just told to go to hell. Here’s Senator Mark Warner’s thoughts on the matter:
Addressing our $15 trillion national debt will require a balanced approach that includes entitlement reform, tax reforms that generate additional revenues, and spending cuts across all of our federal spending. No area of government spending should be exempt, but before we authorize another round of base closings and realignments we should first determine if there is excess capacity not just here but also at our overseas installations, especially in Europe.
Translation to America’s troops — jump into a fire and die.
Rep. Randy Forbes (VA-04) didn’t take kindly to the emasculation of American military prestige and power:
The President’s defense strategy embraces weakness by a thousand cuts. PLA Admirals will welcome the news that the President has no plans to catch up to China’s sixty attack submarines nor to invest in a missile defense system that can rival China’s mounting arsenal of missiles. North Koreans will feel more secure as America prepares to dismiss almost 1 in 6 soldiers. Tehran will be pleased that one-third less American cruisers are slated to patrol the world’s sea lanes. Foreign shipyards will embrace a shift toward outsourcing defense manufacturing jobs.
This Administration is not building a military that is lean, agile, and flexible. It is dismantling our nation’s greatest strategic asset and accepting grave risk in the process. Virginians will undoubtedly suffer as a result of this Administration’s budget proposal – so too will our allies – but it is our men and women in uniform who will suffer the most. They are the ones who will face America’s unforeseen enemies under-prepared, under-resourced, overworked and late to the battle. America is a superpower on a dangerous and rapid course towards mediocrity.
Rep. Scott Rigell (VA-02) fires back:
As a strong advocate and voice for Hampton Roads and as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, a BRAC Commission potentially focused on domestic bases is completely unacceptable. With respect to the Secretary’s comments on TRICARE, I firmly oppose to any increase in fees and will fight back against that.
Oh you didn’t know this foolishness involved cuts to military health care? By the way… is anyone wondering aloud why Obama is screwing with private health care when he can’t even fix the military health care system?!
Rep. Rob Wittman (VA-01) nails it:
Our nation’s debt and deficit pose serious challenges, and there’s no doubt that our federal government must be more efficient with taxpayer dollars. That said, providing “for the common defense” as stated in our Constitution must be a top priority. Congress and the House Armed Services Committee have a lot of work ahead of us to assess the risks built into this budget to ensure that the priority is on our strategic needs rather than simply allowing the budget to drive our military strategy. (emphasis added)
…and that right there is what burns Democrats and the progressive left so much. The United States military is in our Constitution.
Massive entitlement systems aren’t. Neither is the massive web of socialist policies that our American military protects so that they can drive electric cars and soak of future generations of Americans with pension plans and other enormities backed by the other half of America working for the luxury of camping in a tent and “occupying” something.
Worse still… the progressive left simply hates America. George Soros would love nothing more than to see the United States demote itself to a first among equals (or something worse). They hate the Pax Americana, because that power prevents the 1% that the left rails against — yet still funds their every protest… ever wonder why that is? — from taking advantage of every Third World nation out there.
The American military is the wall of iron that protects the Jeffersonian “empire of liberty” from the likes of communist China, imperial Russia, or the socialist European left. Under the Pax Americana and in the wake of the fall of Soviet Communism, more of the world lives under democracies than at any time in the history of the world. American power extends across the globe. Free trade has never been better. The world economy, hobbled only by the very socialism we sought to defeat in the 1980s, has enabled more human beings to live free and be prosperous. Americans have never before enjoyed a standard of living higher than what we have experienced in the first decade of the 21st century. Large scale war has devolved into small scale terrorism. Democracy — not totalitarianism – is the order of the world.
Who makes this possible? The American military.
Why would Obama want to dismantle this? Power, plain and simple. Democracies diffuse such power; Soros and his ilk would rather it collected and controlled.
They’ve used all sorts of tactics thus far: the environment, a bad economy, terrorism, population scares, bad news, anything to play on the fears and concerns of an American people too good-natured not to care.
Obama and his masters are hoping — praying to whatever gods they recognize — that the American people will not stand by the American soldier.
Time to prove them wrong.
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About the author
Shaun Kenney is the Chairman of the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors, former Communications Director for the Republican Party of Virginia, and an active blogger since 2002. Shaun lives in Thomas Jefferson's backyard with his wife, six children, and a modest attempt at a farm in Kents Store, Virginia.
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25 Responses to "Obama’s Emasculation of America’s Military Must Be Stopped"
But, but the GOP wants smaller government. So the military will just have to go. Maybe they will turn the Blackwater’s of the world into a UN contractor paid peacekeeping force projecting a Clark-Sohn designed world peace through world law. Or maybe they will be a super PAC with guns.
As of today $16.4 Trillion is how much we can now be in the hole. That’s another 1.2 Trillion increase that will max out before election day. Warner voted for it. A 50 billion a year military reduction will do what compared to this?
Darrell,
The military is in our Constitution. Our national defense is a necessity. Entitlement spending is an add on.
Which do you thing should be addressed first? A massive expansion in entitlements with ObamaCare, as well as entitlements that have well outgrown their original intent in Social Security and Medicare, or our ability to counter external threats?
The Republicans want constitutional government.
Big freakin’ difference.
In my Constitution, it reads very specifically — “provide for the common defence” — right there, black and white, no equivocation.
In a modern world, the Pax Americana is what’s at risk. Those who chip away at that put American lives at risk, both military and civilian, and frankly, are unworthy of public office.
Sorry but military members, retirees and dependants cost big bucks. You all wanted smaller government and less gov spending. Your getting it, so stop crying. You sound like a liberal whinning about your losing something you never earned.
You can’t have it both ways…
Congress may choose to provide for the common defense, or not. It would seem that the legislative body is choosing NOT to provide for the common defense. This is also a factor in various treaties that the US is party to.
Just as America has turned more military duties over to civilian contractor personnel, so too will the UN as countries refuse to send their military on peacekeeping missions.
A really smart guy named Louis Henkin had quite a bit to say about the nation’s military and the Constitution way back when. Oh and Google ‘outsourcing peacekeepers’. Pax Americana is on it’s way out because we are as broke as the Romans were just before their darkest days.
First, how many commenters here have actually served in the military?
Second, Darrell, how many Blackwater and other contractors have been hired by the Defense Department as opposed to the State Department, NGO’s, and other organizations?
This thread is ignorance feeding on misinformation.
I have to ask this simply question. How many other countries have armed troops in he U.S. or U.S. territories in defense of their country? Are the over 600 U.S. bases in foreign countries defense or occupation? Don’t confuse military spending with defense spending.
Regretfully, the demagoguery has already started on this issue. Too bad, of all issues, this is one we Americans must get right. To me, we must restructure the military, actually continue the work started by Rumsfeld. That means leaner, more mobile, oriented to counter insurgency, and more stealthy. The cold war infrastructure must be dismantled, then the remains reformed, and weapons procurement must be scaled to new threats.
That said, we must scale down, and frankly, I think the majority of Americans think that is so. But reason generally does not prevail in election years. My intent is to call out any politician of either party who escalates the war of words on this topic.
Today, that starts with Senator McCain, who this morning on NPR saeverely criticized the President for not intervening militarily in Iran. I’m sorry, my respect for the Senator went down quite few notches based upon that observation.
Wally Erb,
First, I would like to see your list of “over 600 US bases in foreign countries.” That sounds like a stock-in-trade Ron Paul talking point. In fact, there are less than 90 foreign US bases and all of them are authorized by mutual defense treaties (principally the North Atlantic Treaty) and all of them are governed by a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the host nation. You couldn’t get to 600 “bases” even if you counted every embassy Marine guard detachment as a base. But, hey, the Paulistinians never let the truth get in the way of a good talking point.
Second, have you ever heard of the National Defense Act of 1947? Military spending, by definition, is defense spending. Your semantic gymnastics aside, it is the stated national security strategy of the United States to only use military force when the vital national security interests of our country are at stake. Isolationism sounds good, but we have tried it several times in the history of the republic and it always turned out badly for both us and for our allies. Despite what you and Dr. Paul might believe, we do not live alone on this planet and there are evil people out there who wish us harm, regardless of whether we engage them or ignore them. We tried cashing in the “peace dividend” after the Cold War and 9-11 was one of the results. If we have to go to abroad to kill America’s enemies, then that is far preferable to fighting them in downtown New York and Washington.
And so it goes, the waxing and waning of political perception of how much military we really need based on what we can afford. If we stand down the military as we know it as Paul suggests, and bring those kids home and stick them in the unemployment lines, then we have to be prepared for the consequences. As manmade disasters cascade into conflicts and conflicts into wars, the collateral effects on our economy and on our national peace of mind will be tested to see how much isolationism we will tolerate. Out of the global turmoil, how many terrorist incidents will we tolerate in our cities, how many container and war ships will we allow to be scuttled or pirated and how many hostages will we write off as not being worth it? If some rogue Islamists get nukes and start lobbing them at Israel, then why should we care so long as the Jet Stream doesn’t carry the radiation over the US? If China and North Korea start dominating the Pacific Rim countries, then why would we bother, other than maybe we can trade some of our debt for a free pass to invade our former allies? So, isolationism may be the answer to see how much military we really need based on some simple tradeoffs Paul is willing to make. While Ron Paul is busy getting rid of the 16th Amendment, he can also pencil in some edits to the Preamble to our Constitution “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” by changing those strong and declarative words into suggestions.
Tim J,
When you write stuff like that, you almost bring a tear to my eye. Really, no sarcasm.
The problem of unemployment and reintegration of our military veterans is already an issue of vital concern, even without Ron Paul’s reckless and irresponsible proposals. The Pentagon budgets cuts announced by the SECDEF this week will reduce the Army alone by almost 15%. And that reduction will not be possible by attrition. Mid-career NCO’s and officers will be forced out involuntarily long before reaching retirement eligibility. Meanwhile, the Defense industry will see a contraction that we have not experienced since the end of World War II. Tens of thousands of trained and skilled former military members will be competing for fewer living-wage jobs. Ron Paul and his sycophants have no plans or solutions for that coming wave, much less the tsunami their foreign policy would create if implemented.
There are three significant benefits to maintaining forward-deployed military forces. The first one is obvious: to have combat forces and their sustaining logistics one ocean closer to a potential crisis than they would be in the United States. The other two are not so apparent to the average civilian. First, the presence of US military forces in a country without long-established democratic traditions and institutions is a stabilizing influence. Are we occupying the country? Of course not, we are proving support and credibility to a government that was chosen by the self-determination of the population–that is what allies do. Does that make us the world’s policeman? Most certainly, unless you hate America and reject the entire concept of American exceptionalism. Second, close military cooperation between our forces and the military forces of our allies creates markets for our Defense industry. This, in turn, drives down the per unit cost of our necessary weapon systems, small and large. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) allows us to recycle older equipment that would otherwise be scrapped and to maintain our industrial production base for future surge requirements.
Finally, your citation of the Preamble is appropriate. However, long before that document was drafted, the Continental Congress in 1775 created an Army and a Navy. Americans have always understood the need to provide for the common defense and, as Thomas Jefferson demonstrated by sending the fleet to North Africa in 1801-02, you cannot provide for the common defense from the shores of North America.
“Darrell, how many Blackwater and other contractors have been hired by the Defense Department as opposed to the State Department, NGO’s, and other organizations?”
I would say 90 percent have been hired by the Defense Department. Otherwise they would not have gotten a job at Blackwater.
And instead of playing Constitutional pomposity over the proper role of government, you should be happy the politicians are openly cutting off the military. That’s how we got a Reagan instead of a Romney.
Darrell,
And I would say that you are wrong. The DoD has never hired any private security firm for overseas work. Blackwater and the other security contractors in the CENTCOM AOR were hired by DOS, other Federal civilian agencies, and NGO’s. The DoD has only hired translators, cultural trainers, and other unarmed support contractors. No one working on a DoD contract is allowed or authorized to carry any weapons.
Where do you think they learned the trade craft that got them hired by Blackwater?
Darrell,
You are drifting farther and farther afield. What does it matter that Blackwater employees are military veterans? How does that support your assertion that the DoD is “outsourcing” peacekeepers if the DoD doesn’t hire private security firms? You are trying to build a strawman here that says that the DoD is promoting mercenaries. That is a crock of crap.
There won’t be a DoD to outsource anything ;o.
MD Russ: Where did you site your source to limit the count to “less than 90″ foreign bases?
Going straight to the source, according to the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report, as of 2009, the US military maintained 662 foreign sites in 38 countries around the world. That number represents a reduction from numbers reported by DOD just a few years ago.
But in reality, there are the apparently deliberate omissions from the tally. When scanning the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report for sites in Afghanistan, reading through all 206 pages you won’t find a mention of them, not a citation, not a single reference, not an inkling that the United States has even one base in Afghanistan, let alone more than 400. Nor were there any mention of any sites in Iraq.
Wally,
You are hilarious. The Base Structure Report is an real estate inventory of “sites,” not bases. One base can have as many as 100 sites, ranging from a headquarters building to an air field complex. According to the report, there are 221 military sites in Virginia. Really? 221 military bases in Virginia?
Let me try to explain this in terms that you can understand. How many police stations are there in Virginia Beach? 500? Using your interpretation of the Base Structure Report, every Virginia Beach cop in a patrol car is a “police station.”
This misinformation is so typical of the exaggerations and outright lies propagated by the Ron Paul crowd. Here is another one for you: “The Fed has never been audited.” Google “GAO audit Federal Reserve July 2011″ and read the audit report for yourself.
BTW, Wally, there is a reason that none of our bases in Afghanistan and Iraq are in the Base Structure Report–we don’t own any real estate there. Try looking up the number of bases in Antarctica. We don’t have any there, either. I’ll bet that comes as a big surprise to every military member who has been awarded the Antarctica Service Medal, esp. the ones who have the “Wintered Over” bar on it. It must have been a bitch sleeping at night.
Oops. I made a mistake. There are actually 231 military sites in Virginia, according to the 2010 Base Structure Report. Hey, Wally. I can only count 20 military bases in Virginia, even if I count the Pentagon and the Navy Annex as separate bases. Any idea what the other 211 military bases in Virginia are?
And, yes, I am taunting you. That is what happens when you regurgitate talking points that you haven’t verified and can’t understand.
MD Russ: Me thinks you back peddle too much. If you are going to talk “real estate” ownership of the dirt has no relationship to the report. You make remarks without reference. All things being equal sites are places with personnel not fictitious consolidations as you would have them. I challenge you to produce a reference that limits overseas entities to “less than” you grab out of the derriere statistics.
Wally,
I’m not back peddling at all. I am running up your back as you lie face-down on the ground. You are the one who tried to justify the “more than 600 US bases in foreign countries” using a misinterpreted real estate report. Name 100 US military bases not in the United States. Otherwise, you are simply spouting Ron Paul bullshit.
Why is it that liberals and Deomorats as want spending cuts in the Military only? Washington asking it’s military to do more than ever before. In the past 24
months alone, U.S. military forces have conducted their 10th year of combat operations in Afghanistan, wound down operations in Iraq, started a new no-fly zone in Libya, dramatically escalated counterterrorism operations in Yemen, maintained counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and elsewhere,
sent troops to aid in disaster relief in Haiti and Japan, and even maintained the commitment to keep 1,200 National Guard troops along the southwest border—to
name a few things keeping the military busy these days.
As long as politicians continue asking the military to shoulder ever-increasing burdens in pursuit of America’s national interests, Washington cannot expect
those in uniform to simply get by or “make do” with lower budgets Defense cuts in the 1990s led to direct consequences and casualties when America went to war
after 9/11. When U.S. forces were sent to Iraq without adequate body armor protection or up-armored vehicles, the country was outraged. Families were
forced to mail body armor to soldiers overseas, troop transports lacking modernized armor were left unnecessarily vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks,
combat operations were doubled in length and possibly cost lives, and conditions at medical centers such as Walter Reed reached inexcusable levels.
The military and their families suffer many problems now: over 20% of military are problem drinkers; 25% or more have financial problems; 12% have thoughts of
feeling lonely; 5% have suicidal thoughts (DOD cohort study). In addition, to problems of post trauma stress, family problems of separation, and multiple
tours of duties. Recent statistics from National organization for homeless states that on any given night in Virginia there are 100,000 homeless veterans
on the streets! To expect the military soldiers and their families to even do more will only exasperate the multitude of existing problems to a breaking
point! I military and families are at a point of burnout now and Washington wants them to do more??
Ok.
Proverbs 29:9
If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet.
He who corrects an arrogant man earns insult; and he who reproves a wicked man incurs opprobrium. Reprove not an arrogant man, let he hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Instruct a wise man, and he becomes still wiser; teach a just man, and he advances in learning.
– Proverbs 9:7-9
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