Obama gutting the military

I've said it before, the old lefty bumper stickers are coming true.

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama unveiled a defense strategy on Thursday that would expand the U.S. military presence in Asia but shrink the overall size of the force as the Pentagon seeks to reduce spending by nearly half a trillion dollars after a decade of war.

The strategy, if carried out, would significantly reshape the world's largest military... Cyberwarfare and unmanned drones would continue to grow in priority, as would countering attempts by China and Iran to block U.S. power projection capabilities in areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. But the size of the U.S. Army and Marines Corps would shrink. So too might the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the U.S. military footprint in Europe.

Troop- and time-intensive counter-insurgency operations ... would be far more limited, with the force no longer sized for large-scale, long-term missions.

.... Administration officials have said they expect Army and Marine Corp personnel levels to be reduced by 10 percent to 15 percent over the next decade as part of the reductions.

The Army's current strength is about 565,000 soldiers and there are 201,000 Marines, meaning an eventual loss of between 76,000 and 114,000 troops....

 

According to Jennifer Rubin, Buck McKeon (chairman of the House Armed Services Committee) "blew a gasket" --

This is a lead from behind strategy for a left-behind America. The President has packaged our retreat from the world in the guise of a new strategy to mask his divestment of our military and national defense. This strategy ensures American decline in exchange for more failed domestic programs. In order to justify massive cuts to our military, he has revoked the guarantee that America will support our allies, defend our interests, and defy our opponents. The President must understand that the world has always had, and will always have a leader. As America steps back, someone else will step forward.

 

I'll never forget what Frank Luntz noted on twitter, Monday March 15, 2009:

Walking into WH event .... Marine pianist playing "Killing Me Softly"....seriously

 

And one more flashback. Most will remember the keynote speech that Obama gave at the Democrats' national convention in Boston 2004, catapulting him into the national spotlight, but few recall the wannabe-"occupiers" of that convention:

 

 

 

"We don't see things as they are,

we see them as we are."

~ Anais Nin

 

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

The unofficial anthem of the world-wide Left -- John Lennon's self-pitying and bathetic "Imagine" -- sheds light on what's going on here. Obama's downsizing and downgrading of the American military could only have occurred in the presidency of a man in thrall to lyrics like these: "Imagine there's no countries/ It isn't hard to do/ Nothing to kill or die for/ ... Imagine all the people, living life in peace." Since the very start of his presidency, Obama has given us proof after proof that he sees this as a world in which there should be no countries -- and nothing to kill or die for. And he's also given us proof after proof that he's sufficiently grandiose -- and sufficiently delusional -- to attempt to transform his imaginings into realities. All of this is scary enough. But what makes it even scarier is the way all the Joint Chiefs lined up behind him yesterday -- stolidly giving the impression that what Obama was doing was militarily sound and worthy of their support. Meanwhile, in Iran ...