Posted on 07/01/2011 6:36:22 AM PDT by Clairity
It will be tempting to accede to the White House's proposal to carve out $400 billion, if not more, from the national security budget by 2023. It would also be a grievous mistake.
The critical difference between today and past eras, however, is that the proliferation of biological, chemical and even nuclear weapons means that America's margin for error is considerably more modest.
Defense spending is now 19% of federal outlays and declining. This is the lowest percentage since before World War II. At 4.7% of GDP, the defense budget is dwarfed by the cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which exceed 10% of GDP. Even if President Obama tomorrow brought home each and every troop in Iraq and Afghanistan, tore down the Pentagon, shuttered the CIA and the national security agencies of government, and pink-slipped the three million men and women defending the country, it would not solve America's financial woes.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Nice post and excellent article. Sadly, there are too many all too eager to start hacking at our military. I hope these leftist traitors are paid back in full some day.
Who is “Donal Rumsfeld”?
The most important area of cutting he mentions IMO is some of our overseas bases. Especially the ones in Western Europe. The Soviets aren’t coming through the Fulda Gap anytime soon. This was the whole basis for some of these huge bases during the cold war. Sure, we probably need to have airforce bases in some of these places so we can transport our personnel but our forward deployed overseas bases need to be concentrated in the Middle East and the Pacific. These are where our current threats are. We have these bases already. We need to close a lot of the ones in Western Europe.
And remember, we must spend our way into a sea of debt so our NATO allies don't have to sweat too hard for their own defense.
You may be right. Those bases, however, are popular duty stations for troops (join the military and see the world), and that may be a consideration for decision makers. Also, cutting all the bases may make sense in the light of current threat, but what about future threat? They may turn out to be crucial. It's hard to negotiate the establishment of a new base when negotiating from the position of great need.
yep...well written and on target article, and he’s right...the consequences of Premier Hussein’s decisions now won’t be obvious for years, and it will be too late to fix them when the problems finally do manifest themselves.
But some problems are already obvious. The so-called “Arab Street” rose up in the vacuum left when the US Navy withdrew its standing aircraft carrier task force from the Mediterranean. One of the only reasons Libya toed the line for so long is because Kadaffy knew the US Navy was always in range, and ready to intervene the moment he acted up. By the time Premier Hussein decided to intervene it was far too late to do much of anything because the situation was allowed to go beyond any reasonable control.
I’m not trying to make an argument for further intervention in Libya; but I do believe we could have nipped it in the bud long ago and our failure to do so is why the fighting continues today.
My misbehaving keyboard! I hate it when it happens, and in the title, too... ;(
LOL
He's right. Get rid of Socialist Security and Mediscam, too!
Not sure what the reason was, but this year is the first time in something like 35 years that there has been no continuous carrier task force in the Med, and I know that because I deployed a number of times in support of those carrier task forces...
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