By SUA Staff
Last week, Barack Obama delivered a confirmed message from the Pentagon Situation Room speaking to the deep reduction of the Defense Department operating budget over the next ten years. Obama said the Department of Defense would seek smart and strategic spending priorities from this point forward. This comes from the default trigger as the Super Committee failed to come to terms with reduced government spending.
The defense cuts are much larger than the White House and Leon Panetta in fact are revealing. The new military strategy includes $487 billion in cuts over the next decade. An additional $500 billion in cuts could be coming if Congress follows through on plans for deeper reductions. The United States military is aging rapidly and needs funding to keep pace with future technology threats such as Russia, China, and Iran.
Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta supported Obama’s decision to reduce spending which includes drastic reductions in ground troops and an increase in the number of special forces working in cooperation with a militarized CIA force. At first appearance, this possibly reveals that future wars will be fought with nastier weapons, in the cyber world, and in space with satellites being at the core of technology.
The Iranian nuclear threat, partnered with Syria, Russia, and Venezuela, all demonstrated by the IAEA report published late last year is the top priority because it directly threatens our interests, in a way that would be the most likely to need US military intervention. What gets very little attention however, is the fact that a large amount of nuclear material/inventory is owned by countries that have not taken thorough precautions and applied all measures possible to keep them safe from would be terrorists.
There are additional challenges that must be included in the war-gaming dialogue and may be included, but with the exit of troops in Iraq and the drawdown of those in Afghanistan prior to the schedule of 2014, reliance on spies and black operations becomes more important. As the Middle East continues to grow as a threat with deeper partnerships and alliances, ‘trade craft’ and subterfuge are the preferred tools of choice. Opposition to the West by many factions in the Middle East has spread to Latin America as we watch once again, Ahmadinejad completing yet another South America friendship tour. Please review the country by country nuclear index.
Please take a look at this map of worldwide conflicts and who is involved.
The Obama re-election campaign is in full swing and gutting our military as Commander in Chief is reckless pandering to his liberal base, despite re-focusing the message. Obviously, war is expensive on many fronts especially with the risk to warriors being so steep, but not applying all the tools within the Rules of Engagement and making large use of political correctness was reckless, for the sake of the Muslim world and its radical Islamization and Caliphate objectives. This has forced the United States to be at war much longer than our own abilities dictated, wars that should have ended long ago.
But this is a political season, and re-designing the military due to forced economic woes instead of heady, unpressed re-design efforts designed to secure our future, we get deep, dangerous cuts with political spin. This is a recipe for disaster, yet Obama tried to couch it in terms that pre-empt comparisons to past failures of past administrations and his own mis-handling of our current economic crises.
From the Denver Post article: President Obama recruits military to outflank congressional Republicans on defense budget
For a president denounced by Republican rivals as a weak and irresponsible commander in chief, the show of military support represented a political windfall for Obama as he begins campaigning in earnest for a second term.
But it also marked an evolution in Obama’s practice of Washington politics, evidence that after being outmaneuvered by congressional Republicans several times, he does not intend to make the same mistakes in an election year.
Hence, they set up a wonderful photo-op for a speech, and make no mistake, it was a forced photo-op, after-all, as Commander-in-Chief, those soldiers and their brass are mandated to be there, and Leon Panetta is a political appointment he made only recently. From the Star Tribune:
Here we go again. President Obama made the same mistake Thursday in announcing his new military strategy that virtually all of his predecessors have made since the end of World War II.
He said: “Moreover, we have to remember the lessons of history. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past — after World War II, after Vietnam — when our military was left ill-prepared for the future. As commander in chief, I will not let that happen again. Not on my watch.”
Unfortunately, Obama’s plan does exactly that. It forgets the lessons of history.
So, we have a gutted military infrastructure facing our nation, a failed cyber war, and too many lost or foresaken diplomatic victories. That is not leadership. It is clearly political ideology, disguised and veiled under false pretenses to foster “fundamental change’!
