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April 25, 2011

Obama's Machete Hacks Up Defense Budget

Jed Babbin writes of Obama's "Queen of Hearts" theory of defense spending by which he sets the amount of funding to be cut and then tells the Pentagon to do a study to justify it. The dangers that such an approach poses are numerous and significant:

[...] Begin with the questionable claim that $400 billion in "wasteful" spending (spread over ten years) has already been cut. We don't know if the $400 billion was wasteful because the cuts were imposed before the Pentagon performed its "Quadrennial Defense Review," a statutorily-required study which is supposed to measure our military forces against the threats they're expected to meet and then provide a budget to accomplish the missions. Obama and Gates set the level of cuts and Gates then papered it over with a QDR that justified the predetermined cuts.

Now the president wants to take the machete to the Pentagon budget again. He wants the analysis to find an additional $400 billion to cut from the Pentagon budget in the same ten years and redefine our "role in a changing world." It's both necessary and proper to make the analysis the president proposed. But, once again, he's set the amount to be cut before performing the essential threat analysis.

Since 2008, as George W. Bush's defense secretary, Gates has derided the idea that we will ever have to fight another conventional war. He regularly condemns "next war-it is," which he defined as "…the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in a future conflict."

Gates, in forcing the abandonment of "next war-itis," has imposed a change in American military thought and planning that served us well since World War II.

That change is revolutionary and dangerous. We will no longer plan for the future and invest in the tools of war we will foreseeably need. The cuts Obama and Gates have already made will result in a force that is shaped differently from the one we might need were an enemy to disagree with Dr. Gates' belief that we won't have to fight another conventional war. Or if American satellites were attacked in space. Or if we were to suffer the kind of cyber attacks that were made on Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia by Putin's Russia. Or if any number of other real threats were to be realized.

As troubling as Obama's "Queen of Hearts" approach to Defense cuts indeed is, it surely comes as no surprise. His actions simply prove his conviction that America should not maintain its role as a superpower and that it is just another nation ... no more exceptional than any other. And no one can say that he didn't warn us back during campaign 08:

That's the "change" people voted for?

Meanwhile, as Obama is reducing our ability to defend ourselves, the Middle East and Africa are in utter chaos, Iran is nearing completion of its first nuclear weapons and has even stated it would attack the U.S. and Israel with them, gas prices are skyrocketing with some predicting $5 a gallon gas in the U.S. by mid-summer, some are saying our economy is headed toward catastrophe as food prices are near record highs, empowered by Obama - radical Islam is on the march ... and things are far more likely to get worse, not better.

More of that "change" people voted for? A reasonable person might say it takes a lot of gall on the part of Barry Hussein to run for reelection. Could people actually be that naive? Please, don't bother to answer that, I already know the answer.

Posted by Richard at April 25, 2011 7:26 AM

• Obama's Machete Hacks Up Defense Budget - Apr 25, 2011