Reality Check
I seem to be at nearly 100% accurate at stating the obvious.
Well, obvious to most readers here, at least. My only saving grace is that I’ve been doing it for quite a while.
Aside: I rarely watch videos on-line because I’m on a satellite ISP. So have probably missed someone already posting this here?
Got this from MaryAnn on FB.
Krauthammer: Obama military reforms a ‘road map of American decline’
“This budget strategy is a road map of American decline,” Krauthammer said. “It is going to reduce our capacity. It does exactly what the president had said he was not going to do, which is it will adapt our capacity and our strategies to fit a budget.”
One of the premises of the Obama strategy is the notion that the United States won’t be involved in another large-scale ground war. Krauthammer noted that such wars aren’t always planned for.
“Sometimes a Pearl Harbor happens or an invasion of South Korea or a 9/11. Then ground war is thrust upon you. It’s not as if it’s a choice,” he said. “This is a budget that is going to reduce American capacity. It will make it extremely hard to carry on the role that we have for 70 years.”
I sometimes earnestly disagree with Krauthammer, but not this time. On the other hand? YMMV!
Category: Geezer Alert!, Reality Check
Quiet
Stop
Listen
That is the voice of Charlie Chaplin
I think it’s a bit hyperbolic to state that defense cuts are “a road map of American decline”. But Krauthammer is on a team, and when at bat, he does his best to score points.
Defense strategy is at it’s essence, about evaluating threats and prioritizing resources against them. It’s not ramping up against the most dangerous COA, it’s about being ready for the most likely COA. I think the current cuts are probably too drastic, but there is certainly waste to trim.
The current strategic focus and tactical training agenda’s are points to be debated, without a doubt. I simply wish they weren’t debated by media-twits wielding partisan axes.
What a lot of folks don’t know is: for the last several years, we’ve NEVER had enough troops on site in our 2 wars. I worked in some places in Iraq where there was only a company of folks covering an area that needed 5 times that many to do the job. It wore the troops out, little time for rest and never enough troops to engage the insurgents and take the fight out of them.
For some fat ass sitting in Washington, who’s never been in a war, a “leaner” military sounds great, but we have no fat right now. We don’t have enough and they want to cut more.
Seems to me that this administration is leaning on drones and cyber as it’s primary defense posture…people always forget that it’s boots on ground that holds the turf. Oh well.
All I need to know is that men were deployed, re-deployed, re-re-deployed, re-re-re-deployed…. That always struck me as wrong, notwithstanding the fact that fighting men go where the fighting is. There should have been a limit and I can only guess that the repeated deployments had to have something to do with troop strength. But I don’t pretend to know that. What I do firmly believe, however, is that repeated deployments are just not right. I’d like to know what others think about this, especially the Iraq/Afghanistan guys.
The problem with the re-deployments is that the military has a large group of soldiers/marines who are skilled at avoiding hazardous/uncomfortable duty stations…and they are rewarded by being allowed to remain on active duty while the warriors, who didn’t get all the admin boxes checked off are booted out.
But the bloated flag officer ranks, support these non-warriors because that is how they advanced thru the ranks.
What appears obvious to some of us is that war was declared against us quite a long time ago and we are suffering death by a thousand cuts by refusing to take appropriate action against the threat.
Whether we like it or not, we ARE at war, but are refusing to fight that war. The result is a complete waste of our resources, the most precious of which is our people.
#3 Dead on! I completely agree, I’ve made the same points elsewhere.