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Wednesday, April 08, 2009

The Defense Hawks Have it Wrong

The Obama Administration has released its defense budget plans and they're slashing programs right and left. The F-22 is gone, Future Combat Systems is gone and the Navy will drop below 10 carriers. There's a Wall Street Journal editorial today decrying these cuts, but attributing them to the wrong reason.
In the 1990s, defense cuts helped pay for increased domestic spending, and that is true today. Though Mr. Gates said that his decisions were "almost exclusively influenced by factors other than simply finding a way to balance the books," the broad list of program reductions and terminations suggest otherwise. In fact, he tacitly acknowledged as much by saying the budget plan represented "one of those rare chances to match virtue to necessity" -- the "necessity" of course being the administration's decision to reorder the government's spending priorities.
No, no and no. This is all wrong. When you're planning on printing a trillion dollars to pay for your spending, there are no budget cuts necessary. This has nothing to do with the budget at all. Like everything else this administration does, the reasons are in their actions, not their words.

Obama's Mystical Apology Tour in Europe helps point the way on this one. We're disarming the US because he thinks we're evil. Period. If you still don't believe me, recall the immortal words of his pastor of 20 years.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:16 AM

    Don't forget that Rumsfeld came in an tried to cut big defense programs for similar reasons... cost overruns, stagnant progress, designed for the wrong mission. For trying to make DoD more agile and responsive, he was drummed out (Iraq and the Surge were the final step; he was taking crap for the cuts long before then).

    Of course Obama's probably doing this out of a malice to the military, but he'll get approving kisses from the very same people who couldn't stand Rummy doing the same thing.

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  2. KT, link forthcoming.

    I've got a vested interest in this but I've tried to keep an open mind with respect to picking budgetary winners and losers, as all President's do.

    As such, I've been trying to educate myself on aquisition priorities that fulfill the strategic profile of the DOD - as in, do we really need 15 aircraft carriers?

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  3. Anonymous12:36 PM

    I got a chance to read the WSJ Op-Ed piece, and you do have to wonder if the administration has read any of the strategic documents or doctrine that the DoD is working toward.

    From what I've read elsewhere, DDG-1000 is a good thing to kill, as long as you keep the enhanced littoral capabilities through DDG-51 or LCS. MRAP is a wonderfully inflexible vehicle, and better stuff is coming. The 187 F-22 number is generally followed with the caveat that 187 is 90% of the original order so it's not a big discrepancy.

    But to ignore the strategic bomber issues? To not concentrate on submarine issues? To not beef up irregular warfare options? Somebody's not reading JV2010, etc.

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  4. A friends wife works at Lockhead Martin. Killing the F22 early is going to be huge for them.

    That video is so starkly hypocritical. That man is full of hate.

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