Since we can’t have both guns and butter, may as well switch to a smaller Canadian/European/Japanese style defensive military. Our military has just become makework for many people who whine as soon as they’re deployed anyway; just shut it down. We shouldn’t be sending our people to die in such God-forsaken places anyway, and Vladimir Putin will now protect Western Civilization.
Sure, whatever. Let us give up our custodies and sovereignty and call that “victory”. I am sure abandoning consciousness to the whims of materialists inMoscow will work great.
The article doesn’t mention the forcing function. You can’t just park the aircraft and wait for funding later. If you don’t fly an aircraft something like every 90 days you lose its airworthiness certificate. Once that happens you have to box the aircraft up, send it to the desert, it’s then rebuilt, flown, recertified and returned to service. When Clinton was in office, he spent the spares money on non-military missions. Therefore they had insufficient engines, radios, radars, etc. So a plane would fly, get cannibalized for parts, so other planes could fly, then they’d try to rebuild it in time to fly again in (90 days?) By the time Clinton left office 50% of the air force and navy planes could not fly on any given day.
Another problem is the manufacturer of spares most likely will go out of the business. So, although the military may own the design, the guy with the secret sauce is now retired and living on a beach in Panama.
Congress could, in theory, supply just money for the military and hold up other funding. They’d say, “Okay, Obama, we’re going to hold your feet to the fire over immigration ‘reform’ and Obamacare, but here’s a couple of billion to keep the military running.” What Clinton did was repurpose the military to spend money on social projects. He had troops in full combat gear diapering AIDS babies in sub-Saharan Africa. So, Obama could say, “Fine. I’ll just man the Obamacare offices with the military.” It would become the War On Healthcare, just as Clinton had the War On Aids.
If we are going to seriously wound the military, now would probably be better than later. Russia and China will be much bigger in the coming years than they are now. Hopefully, America will learn its lesson for the next 20 years or so and not have future intercourse with socialism.