“A lead-from-behind strategy for a left-behind America”

January 7, 2012 | Filed under Military,Obama Weakness | Posted by

That from Buck McKeon, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, on Obama’s defense cuts:

ObamaDefenseCutsUnhappyGenPerhaps it was a symbolic accident. On the 40th anniversary of President Nixon’s announcement that America would build a space shuttle to explore new frontiers, Obama announces the results of his typically grandiosely-named Defense Strategic Review.

Readers here will be shocked to learn that Obama remains very much into spending hundreds of billions more dollars on union infrastructure jobs and teachers. But that his new defense policies involve fewer troops and reduced spending.

“Yes,” says the current commander-in-chief, “our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats.”

The world will, however, also know that the United States will no longer be capable of handling two simultaneous conflicts, not that China, Russia, Iran or North Korea would care. And they will know this because the Obama administration proudly announced this as part of its defense budget package, which should please a wobbly chunk of the Chicagoan’s base.

This has become a familiar dodge for the Obama Democrat administration. Want a “reset” in Russian relations with no quid pro quo on Iran and with no allied consultations? Then, kill Bush’s missile defense system in Eastern Europe and claim you can do it some other way in a smarter and cheaper fashion. Which can be seen now where, by the way? And how’d all that resulting Russian help go?

Think that America’s pioneering engineering and scientific leadership in space is passe and want the money for something else? Then, proceed with retiring the space shuttles, rent seats on dubious Russian rockets and claim that through some grandiose partnership with profit-making companies, someday maybe an American could land on an asteroid. Ah, the romance of that!

Don’t want any more Mideast military confrontations? Slap sanctions on a nuclear-weapon-building Iran and call it engagement, extending a hand instead of a fist. Name it progress when others follow the same timid trail. And exactly how well have those sanctions stopped Iran’s progress?

“This,” said Rep. Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, “is a lead-from-behind strategy for a left-behind America. The president has packaged our retreat from the world in the guise of a new strategy to mask his divestment of our military and national defense.”

Head over to the post and read the pic’s caption.  Priceless.

I don’t doubt our defense budget may be ripe for well thought out cuts targeting bloat and inefficiencies or areas where duties overlap and are redundant.  I do doubt Obama’s cuts have anything to do with that.

The Republican field has been handed an opportunity, one that should be taken advantage of sooner rather than later.

Does anyone really believe that a President who has ridiculed the notion of American exceptionalism has this country’s future and well being in mind when he proffers up defense cuts?

Anyone?

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Posted by on January 7, 2012.
Filed under Military, Obama Weakness.
I blog more regularly at my own place where plain thoughts are delivered roughly. My about page gives you more on who I am.

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  • jim_m

    Don’t worry.  Soon we will have pictures of obama stepping off Airforce One waving a treaty with Iran declaring that he has secured “Peace in our time.”

    • herddog505

      That doesn’t worry me quite so much as us getting our a**es kicked somewhere around the world… or even somebody using a nuke on us in the belief that we can’t or won’t retaliate.  And those damned fools on the left would be cheering the bad guys on.

      We’re screwed.  Seriously, I think that it’s just a matter of time before the United States goes completely down the drain.  And about half the country either doesn’t care, or even thinks that would be a good thing.

      • Commander_Chico

        Of course it’s just a matter of time before the USA goes down the drain.  The trajectory from republic to empire to ruin has been coursed before.
        Nothing human is permanent.   Two ways for the USA to go: the centrifugal forces in American politics will lead to a break-up, or it will be ruined by military action, either of its own making through aggression, or another’s aggression.  The only real threat is China, or some combo involving Russia.

        As for nukes, a retired CIA guy told me in 2008 that he wanted to move out of DC “before the nuke goes off, as it inevitably will.”  He observed that fission weapons are 1940s technology, and you could probably build a gun-type weapon in your basement, if you had the HE and the U-235.

        • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

          chika, by that logic (since you will soon be shuffling off this mortal coil) you might just as well open your veins now.

          • Commander_Chico

            No, because I am hedging against those threats.  My ancestors survived, and my descendants will survive and prevail.

    • herddog505

      That doesn’t worry me quite so much as us getting our a**es kicked somewhere around the world… or even somebody using a nuke on us in the belief that we can’t or won’t retaliate.  And those damned fools on the left would be cheering the bad guys on.

      We’re screwed.  Seriously, I think that it’s just a matter of time before the United States goes completely down the drain.  And about half the country either doesn’t care, or even thinks that would be a good thing.

    • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

      And we all know how well that worked out the last time…

  • 914

    Good job Barry! At least your consistent! 

    Like herpes..

  • Commander_Chico

    McKeon’s district is full of weapons-testing military bases (China Lake NAB, Edwards AFB, Ft. Erwin) and the defense contractor pilot fish that go along with them.

    When a Member of Congress’s district lives off of government cheese, I take denunciations of dairy subsidy reductions with a grain of salt.

    It reminds me of the BS about “Clinton cut the military.”  Well, yeah, the USSR and Warsaw Pact dissolved and the USA didn’t have to keep five divisions confronting 10,000 Soviet tanks on the other side of the Iron Curtain, so there was supposed to be a “Peace Dividend.” 

    If we’re out of Iraq and drawing down in Afghanistan, why not save some money?  Oh right, we have to start another war with Iran.

  • Stephen

    Pork! he’s doing away with the good ol Republican pork.

    No wonder the pigs are squealing…

    • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

      Billions for defense, not one damn penny for transfer payments.

    • retired.military

      If they were just cuts I could halfway go along with most of it.  However, I am quite sure that that money will be spent on things like Solyndra, and other wasteful things instead of stuff that we need like umm military security.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    Of course the leftist traitors applaud disarming America, their prime enemy.

    Every time we disarm, we have found the savings imaginary when the next threat comes.  Better to be strong and deterrent than weak and inviting.

    • ackwired

      I don’t think you have to worry about America disarming.  Obama has proven himself to be a strong militarist.  We don’t really need over 700 overseas military bases, over 500,000 people supporting overseas military presence, nor multiple bases in Germany, Japay and the UK.  We currently spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined.  We are broke.  A few modest cuts are in order.

      • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

        Cuts need to be made, but spending OTHER THAN defense and entitlements is what absolutely exploded over the last three years.  That’s where cuts need to come from FIRST.

        We can certainly reduce the number of bases and troops deployed, but not all and not most of them, and not all at once.  It’s still a dangerous world and we don’t watch out for trouble ourselves, no one else is going to do it for us.  And it always costs more in blood and treasure when we disarm, assuming the world will be a safer place – which is the only possible justification

        You sound like a Paul fan.  If Paul’s idiotic policies had been in force since WWII, you would be living in Soviet America today.  Without American bases, navy on the sea lanes, alliances, clandestine ops, and constant vigilance, there would have been no one to oppose Soviet expansion into Western Europe and the Middle East as the ChiComs spread throughout East and Southeast Asia.  They wouldn’t ever have needed to invade; they could have subdued us with an economic siege.

        • 914
          • 914

            OPS!! Was meant for the idiot in the White House!!  Sorry Adjoran!!

        • ackwired

          I don’t know why you are trying to pick a fight.  It sounds like we are pretty much in agreement.

          ________________________________
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          Subject: [wizbang] Re: “A lead-from-behind strategy for a left-behind America”
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          Adjoran wrote, in response to ackwired:
          Cuts need to be made, but spending OTHER THAN defense and entitlements is what absolutely exploded over the last three years.  That’s where cuts need to come from FIRST.
          We can certainly reduce the number of bases and troops deployed, but not all and not most of them.  It’s still a dangerous world and we don’t watch out for trouble ourselves, no one else is going to do it for us.  And it always costs more in blood and treasure when we disarm, assuming the world will be a safer place – which is the only possible justification
          You sound like a Paul fan.  If Paul’s idiotic policies had been in force since WWII, you would be living in Soviet America today.  Without American bases, navy on the sea lanes, alliances, clandestine ops, and constant vigilance, there would have been no one to oppose Soviet expansion into Western Europe and the Middle East as the ChiComs spread throughout East and Southeast Asia.  They wouldn’t ever have needed to invade; they could have subdued us with an economic siege. Link to comment

  • 914

    “A few modest cuts are in order.”

    May I suggest  cutting from the top down? 

    First to go is Barry the clown!

  • Olsoljer

    The government is insane.  Always creating problems with the military.  
    You want to cut defense spending?  That’s great, but lets reduce the budget by eliminating the  political spending aspect of it.  At one time the military ran the PX/BX system, clothing sales, commissary, laundry, and most aspects of family housing.  The government in its infinite wisdom converted the staff and management to non-military government jobs.  What a private did for $86 a month now is being done by a contractor who makes God knows what to “sort of” do the same job.  If a private screwed up, he was reassigned to another job, when a contractor screws up, allowances are made and the screw ups continue .= more expenditures.  Every decision resulted in increased costs of goods and services and a reduction in quality of both, not to mention the number of “civilians” running around the facilities, which at times appears to be more than the number of military personnel assigned to the post.
    Defense contractors make a fortune.  They bid low, with claimed short production periods, fully knowing that “cost over-rides” and miscalculations will result in DOD absorbing the costs, increasing the profit. 
    Apparently there is no responsible oversight of civilian purchasing agents.  Can you imagine a buck sergeant seeing “driving device, metal fastening, w/wooden handle, $120, knowing it meant a hammer, being stupid enough to forward a request for 100 of  them?  How about a buck sergeant in the Air Force seeing, “extinguisher, receptacle,individual, aircraft command  module $179,  knowing it is an ashtray for an aircraft cockpit where smoking is absolutely forbidden? ( Like an F15 pilot would consider smoking over an oxygen bottle with a few ton of explosives right behind him.)
    Sure there are overseas bases that can be closed, Germany comes to mind where there is a German representative following US troops maneuvering, and gleefully charging the US government for any vegetation run over by a vehicle, increasing the rent for civilian housing because the renter is an American.  While we are allegedly protecting them?
    There are places we should be in.  Korea comes to mind.  Without US presence on the DMZ, how long would it take for NK to invade the south if we left? .
    Take the military serving in those unnecessary posts and put them where they are needed instead of reduction in force (the US/Mexico Border comes to mind.)

      When you have rats on a ship, you kill the rats, not sink the ship.

    But what do I know?

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay

      All of the money comes from the Patriot Act, which basically made it far more lucrative to be a contractor than a part of the military.  It’s why we can let go of ground troops but we leave contractors which cost more money.