Too bad this will probably be more deck chair shuffling than the real Ron Paul-level reductions and ending our usual World Police stance that we need, but it’s a start.
In an unusual appearance at the Pentagon briefing room on Thursday, Mr. Obama outlined a new national defense strategy driven by three realities: the winding down of a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a fiscal crisis demanding hundreds of billions of dollars in Pentagon budget cuts and a rising threat from China and Iran.
A fourth reality, not mentioned in the briefing room, was Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign and the chorus of Republican presidential candidates who have sought to portray him as decimating the Pentagon budget and being weak in his response to Iran.
[…]
Despite the pageantry, many elements of the new strategy had a “back to the future” quality and echoed the goals of a smaller but more technically proficient military advanced by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld before the Sept. 11 attacks.
On the other hand, it’s business as usual.
.. more deck chair shuffling than the real Ron Paul-level reductions and ending our usual World Police stance that we need, but it’s a start..
Yup, the military sacred cow is being challenged which is a good start. I would CUT the cows budget 10% each year for the next 10 years to avoid temper tantrums.
As expected, Teapublicans are OUTRAGED that the cow’s GROWTH is being cut. The sheeple are being frightened that we won’t have enough muskets to fight two invasions. Oh lord
A continuation of what was tried in Iraq, with manpower requirements being outsourced to the National Guard.
Chairman Obama had best NOT piss off the legion or he will have a true home grown terror issue.
In a world where North Korea, China, Russia etc. are Bolstering the Military in their countries, it seems a bit foolish to shrink ours to me. Political grandstanding, so we can come on national T.V during the debates, and give a state of the Union, and proclaim ” We are now on the road to a balanced budget” at who’s expense?
Define what you mean by ‘…foolish to SHRINK our ‘ .
Also, the military budget will remain at more than the next 10 countries – combined. Exactly how large does it need to be?
Foolish in allowing our technological gap we have over countries like China, Russa, and North Korea (whose militaries greatly outnumber our own) to shrink.
Technology is the ONLY thing our country has in leveling the playing field. Maintaining a lead will never be cheap. Once you allow the others to catch up, warfare becomes nothing more than a game of conventional numbers and we’ll lose every time.
That said, Bill Clinton shrank the military down to a skeleton crew far more aggressively time-wise than Bush Sr. had intended and did so in the name of balancing a budget. Part of Clinton’s justification was to utilize the military’s guard and reserve components (because it sounded good on paper).
When Bush Jr. took office and 9/11 occurred, much of the growth was to essentially undo the idealistic damage done by the previous administration. Remember, Bush was faulted for not having body armor for troops or HMMWVs. That’s what he inherited among other things. When the realization that the military needs certain things, those things cannot be defecated on demand. It takes a long time for things to be produced. Therefore you have to be prepared.
Obama inherited a much stronger military than what Bush Jr. inherited. If Obama fails to get re-elected, whoever will be the next president will be in the same position as Bush Jr with Obama’s tactics as Obama increases entitlement spending which is how much of the Federal budget. Entitlement spending easily dwarfs national defense spending.
Military programs ARE entitlement programs.
Anyway, the military isn’t going to actually shrink, it’s just going to be outsourced. You didn’t think ALL of those soon-to-be unemployed soldiers will find jobs as cops, did you?
National Defense is a Constitutional obligation of the Federal government. Entitlement programs are not.
So, I guess the US couldn’t have fought and won the WW2?
Nobody was bringing that up. We’re talking present day.
Regardless, what helped the U.S. during those times was the fact that we were kings of mass production and not that we necessarily had superior technology.
That said, the Nazis (whom some would argue had superior technology to help them win WWII) were severely crippled from within (much like ourselves today).
National Geographic had an interesting show a few years ago on Hitler’s stealth fighters. The brothers who developed this for Hitler didn’t get much in the way of support and when the war ended, guess where they ended up?
The U.S. really started outpacing other countries after WWII when the war kicked off a lot of innovation as well as us providing political amnesty to those who were formerly our enemies.
You’re also forgetting the U.S. was part of a global collective far bigger than what you see today. The United States played a big part, but there were many other countries who contributed to the Allied effort.
I guess Guyver is right. We shouldn’t learn from success. Korea and Vietnam are really better models since the US was really “outpacing other countries after WWII”.
Korea & Vietnam? Are you suggesting that the U.S. didn’t have problems internally between those two “wars”?
I guess you missed the part where I pointed out how many would say the Nazis had better technologies than ourselves but had internal problems.
Hopefully an oversight on your part instead of intellectual dishonesty.
“Foolish in allowing our technological gap we have over countries like China, Russa, and North Korea (whose militaries greatly outnumber our own) to shrink.”
Or was that just a brain fart? 😉
Really? You’re confusing the Korean War which happened less than a decade after WWII to my comments of maintaining a technological gap over countries like North Korea, China, and Russia?
Are you just arguing out of ignorance and trying to sound intelligent?
The only country in the world that would possibly cause any problems right now is Iran and they are deterred by planes, drones and aircraft carriers. Russia also is a slightly potential issue (they invaded some former Soviet state with tanks a few years back) and they can be Europe’s domestic problem if they get to be feisty over natural gas prices with Europe or Ukraine.
The Middle East is busy with civil unrest/civil rights, either open or brewing beneath the surface.
North Korea is busy with their experiment of making an inexperienced 29-year-old run the country. Hugo Chavez is too busy with cancer. Fidel is too busy in the retirement home.
Not much need for a large military for at least the next several years barring something ridiculous happening.
All I want to know is why a military toilet costs a thousand dollars for a group of people who are often forced to squat in the bushes.
Do you think if we could get them (the military) to shop Home Depot or Lowes that we might get some our (tax) money’s worth?
Foolish gits worrying about being invaded by Iran, North Korea, etc. How much time do you waste looking under your bed every night?
Cowards and wimps.
Fiscal conservatives should consider the cost of maintaining troops abroad is more than double of doing the same in the country we’re supposed to be “defending”. We have troops in 176 countries that could be doing something at least a little useful – like repairing roads and bridges.
HELLO!
The total population of North Korea is 25± million. The population of the US is 306± million. That’s over 12 times the size.
HELLO!
If we wanted to we could just march our asses down there and take over their shit-hole country, bring all the fucking soldiers credit cards and offer ’em all a free shopping spree at a store with some actual merchandise in it and a year’s worth of free music downloads at iTunes if they would stop being such dicks.
The only reason we don’t is because we actually respect national borders.
HELLO!
What is the headcount of North Korea’s military compared to our military? They’re bigger than us.
We can put them in check because of technology and not because our military is bigger than theirs. Our military is smaller than theirs.
China has a total of ~ 4.6 million troops.
North Korea has nearly ~ 9.5 million troops.
The Russian Federation has nearly ~ 21.5 million troops.
The U.S. has ~ 2.9 million troops.
http://tinyurl.com/yex83pa
Putting things another way, the United States has the 8th largest military in the world followed by Taiwan, Brazil, and Pakistan.
The following countries have larger militaries than the U.S. (in order by size):
1. Russian Federation
2. North Korea
3. South Korea
4. Vietnam
5. India
6. China
7. Iran
Obviously Russia and North Korea must be the happiest places on the planet. I hear they have rainbows. And unicorns. And a rubber duck in every bathtub.
Problem is that his (vague) plan speaks only of 3 things: cutting the number of soldiers, cutting soldier pay and benefits, cutting money for new technology. All hampering abilities, none truly restructuring.
Savings greater than proposed (at least doubling, maybe tripling hinted numbers) than can really improve:
1) Rethinking “protection of the World”. Leave at least 90% of standing army and facilities overseas (EU, Asia,…). Bring those people home. This alone guarantees savings TWICE the Obama “novel” cutting. Without ANY equipment or human cuts.
2) Truly overhaul (from the very roots) military procurement system. That is part of the military that suffers from a BigGovernment syndrome of waste ant ineptitude. Put real world business people into new system design. Savings could easily equal whole Obama proposed plan. Again, no human or equipment cuts.
Than think of restructuring.
As for idiotic plan to reduce military pay and benefits: there is almost 8 million Federal civilian employees most of whom do mundane tasks of far less importance than military, many doing (theoretically) un-Constitutional work vs. definite Constitutional defense. Before ONE soldier have cut in pay or benefits, every single one of those leeches MUST have greater cut. Before any reduction in military employees numbers – Government civilian workforce which is 16 TIMES greater burden on economy must be cut in greater proportion. 20 fired Government employees for each soldier fired is about right.
You overstate USG employees by 400%!
http://opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/ExecutiveBranchSince1940.asp
Sure. Cut our troop strength. My understanding is they will be more or less replaced with drones and robots. So bring home thousands of soldiers, give them their discharges and put them on unemployment. I’ll bet the proposed timetable doesn’t let this happen until after November…
UncDave – nice find about the exercises in Israel. That had escaped my attention. Very interesting. First thing that occurred to me was not that we were setting up to invade Iran but that it was a great way to sneak materiel, especially missile defense systems into Israel. But there has been considerable theorizing that the US might launch an attack on Tehran long about September because people tend to not like changing leaders in the middle of a war. Lots of fodder for theorizing …
Perhaps some of the thinking [using the term loosely] runs along these lines:
Who needs boots on the ground when the skies are filled with drones?!
Problem is, they’re going to be our skies.
But you’re essentially correct.
After looking at the number of military that ARE IN the military around the world..
We have something over 1 million military..
Japan, Vietnam, Korea,…,…
and this ISNT for supply and backup of the war.
We could have a FRIENDLY military, helping around the world, and HELPING..(if you watched Haiti, it didnt happen)
now for the questions:
What do you do with 100,000 returning military?
WHY did we HIRE merc’s?
WHAT the hell is McD’s doing in the war??
WHO paid for all this?
If I build a house, and I get all the materials, setup and ready to build..the DAILY cost to build the house is only LABOR. So, after we got ALL SETUP, why did the amount needed to STAY THERE go up, and up and up??
PS..
Where is the OIL that was to PAY for this extravaganza??
The oil pays back the energy companies that helped buy that pols that made the war. They weren’t talking about the US, as a country, getting paid back.
Perhaps he could have avoided a war with Libya if he wanted to save money. Instead he sent a message, don’t cut a deal with America to get rid of your WMD, we will kill you.
Japan was just a tiny country far away no threat to America too. He could just continue the previous policies of downsizing Germany and Korea, and ending wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. But Obama is too solicitous of Europeans to ever do anything that might upset them. Instead he begs the Taliban to open a diplomatic office so he can surrender to them.
“Japan was just a tiny country far away no threat to America too.”
Don’t anyone mention that Pearl Harbor thingie.
Especially don’t mention the “New Pearl Harbor” thingy.
Seriously? Griffin? Nice.
That’s the point. You don’t know what’s going to happen. People are just saying well the only real threat is Iran ad they won’t attack us.
Yeah we need the tecnology to fight the wars.
The bombs are smart so our soldiers don’t have to be.
Well you get what you pay for. 20K on average for a Private. That is only 3k more than they could make working the grill at a fast food joint.
Wow what a bargain. 3K more to live in shit and risk getting shot or have your legs blown off. Versus smelling like grease until you take a shower and having someone yell at you to get more ten to ones up.
Cursor_
Alright, so the Republicans are furious about Obama wanting to cut the military down to “reasonable” levels. But how were we supposed to pay for this huge military? What do the Republicans want to cut? Highways? Welfare? Entitlements? Air traffic control? What? Since they refuse to raise Donald Trump’s taxes one freakin’ cent to pay for anything, just what do they want to cut in order to pay for the HUGE military they want while cutting everything else to get to a balanced budget? Just WHAT? The silence is deafening.
Those other countries over in the world play soccer, not football. That makes them weak.
We are well and truly screwed.
Shrinking the military budget is reasonable but a lot of that should occur in Washington DC. We have way to many officers at the top.
Obama seems to be determined to use the military all over the freaking place. Doing that while shrinking combat forces is going to cause a man and materials problem which in turn can get a lot of people killed.