Obama’s Politics Put our Navy in Harm’s Way

The Obama administration has held up the deployment of the nuclear carrier, U.S.S. Harry Truman to the Persian Gulf as a result of the sequester. Rather than cut fat from elsewhere in the federal budget, Obama chooses to play brinksmanship on the backs of our service men and women as this article from a month ago explains. Further, by keeping the Truman berthed at its homeport of Norfolk when it should be deployed, Obama is playing another very dangerous game. There’s a disturbing email circulating in the veteran community discussing this dangerous breach of strategic security that has occurred under this clueless commander-in-chief. The problem is a concentration of five aircraft carriers at Norfolk Navy base for a period that now extends to several months. These super-carriers are the heart of America’s ability to project immense naval air power forward to virtually anywhere on the globe.

The presence of a carrier strike group throws a wide, cautioning shadow over such disruptive regimes as Iran and North Korea. Their offshore presence has long been America’s big stick in geopolitics. The problem is such strike groups are not in endless supply. We have but eleven and of that number some are always in the naval shipyards for refitting and nuclear refueling. So when five of the eleven are docked side-by-side in Norfolk that gets the antennae quivering among those who know what a hugely foolish strategic blunder this is. To have forty percent of your nuclear carrier displacement concentrated in one docking area where escape to the sea in the event of an impending threat is extremely limited, seems incredibly stupid to those vets aware of the situation. The emails are replete with references to the possibility of a second Pearl Harbor.

Truly, those emails are not far off the mark. A single pleasure vessel, paid for by some Islamist millionaire, a sail boat or motor yacht, with a bootlegged Pakistani nuclear weapon aboard, or even a large enough, non-nuclear, high explosive dirty bomb, could easily maneuver within range to take these powerful but defenseless sea-fortresses off the board. A nuke could do that permanently-a dirty bomb for the many years decontamination would require. Losing five of eleven of these behemoths would cut our Navy to its knees and leave America scrambling to decide where, upon the globe, to project our now very limited power, a position the Chinese, the Russians and even the Islamists would relish.

It would seem that while we possess colossal power, we also harbor colossal stupidity in our command structure. There are unprovable, as yet, rumors flying that this situation only came to be over the outraged protests of the upper Navy brass overruled by an always politics-first White House. We’re left to wonder if this is another one of those signals to the Islamist tyrants of the Middle East, and oppressors worldwide, that the U.S. will not be a looming threat to their ambitions. Looked at realistically, this is nothing more than a sheathing of our weapons, pulling them home to port, holstering our most potent projection of force, a signal to the world that at the first hint of budget constraint, Obama’s Navy is standing down, and you despots are free to pursue your despotism. Measured against everything else coming from this administration, it is difficult to believe that this is anything more than a calculated move to portray Republicans as culprits and America as a weakened force in the world, both typical Obama targets.

Benedict Arnold was but a treacherous general who betrayed this country in a much more limited world and war; that the current commander-in-chief might engage in the undermining of the nation’s strategic strength to petulantly belittle his domestic political enemies, or worse, to level this great nation to parity with the lesser nations of this world, is a travesty that makes Benedict look like a patriot compared to Barack Obama. If the commander-in-chief overrode the wisdom of the admirals in this situation and has put this country’s strategic naval forces in peril, he has proved beyond doubt that he is a political posturer for whom the fortunes of the Democrat party come before those of the nation. He is, in truth doing precisely to our Navy what he has done to our economy: Sinking it.

Crossposted at American Thinker

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Military issues