America, let's call President Obama's sequester bluff

WASHINGTON – For the first time since Election Day, President Obama is on the defensive. That's because on March 1, automatic spending cuts ("sequestration") go into effect -- $1.2 trillion over 10 years, half from domestic (discretionary) programs, half from defense.

The idea had been proposed and promoted by the White House during the July 2011 debt-ceiling negotiations. The political calculation was that such draconian defense cuts would drive the GOP to offer concessions.

It backfired. The Republicans have offered no concessions. Obama's bluff is being called and he's the desperate party. He abhors the domestic cuts. And as commander in chief he must worry about indiscriminate Pentagon cuts that his own defense secretary calls catastrophic.

So Tuesday, Obama urgently called on Congress to head off the sequester with a short-term fix. But instead of offering an alternative $1.2 trillion in cuts, Obama demanded a "balanced approach," coupling any cuts with new tax increases.

It is not possible to determine if the Sequestration military cuts are bad or good until we define the mission of the military. If the mission is consistent with the Constitution, i.e. defense of the homeland itself, there may be room for even more cuts. If the mission is to be able to fight in any part of the globe whenever the president has a whim to do so as we have since WWII, the Sequestration cuts may be too much.

The current problem is we never have a national debate about the proper role of the military or any program of the government. We assume the department heads are correct when they say they don’t have enough.

For what it is worth, my personal opinion is:

1) We cannot afford to project forces around the world at the whim of the president. We also cannot continue to fund the defense of Europe, Japan, Korea, and other “allies” who benefit greatly by not having to fund their own defense while the American taxpayer is crushed under the burden of a military that can project overwhelming power across the planet at any time. We need a military to defend the homeland from attack, not to occupy countries for decades in order to force our version of democracy on people whose culture is hostile to the concept.

2) If we do not use Sequestration to force cuts to government spending, it won’t matter in 2-3 years how much we spend on the military today. When the dollar collapses and our economy is completely destroyed not only will we not be able to afford the military the generals want to preserve, we won’t have anything to defend.

3) The current general staff has permitted the destruction of the military by failing to speak out against the current administration’s social engineering experiments. In fact they have celebrated homosexuality and the introduction of women into combat roles. Why should I believe a flag officer’s protests against cuts to budgets when she/he claims social engineering is good for the military?

4) What are the real external threats to the homeland and is our current military investment protecting us? EMP attack from Iran or North Korea. We are defenseless yet that is a real possibility in the next 2-3 years and it would be devastating. Millions of illegals crossing our borders every year. The military is not involved in defending us from this very real situation at all. What is really the difference between a million man army crossing the border and occupying part of our country and a million illegal immigrants taking up residence and utilizing billions of dollars of social services? What about daily cyberattacks from China, India, Russia and eastern Europe? Is the real threat to our nation’s security a shooting war with the Chinese army or is the the destruction of our electrical grid and banking system via a massive cyberattack? If the latter, we are currently spending too much on traditional weapons and not enough to defend ourselves against 21st century warfare.

Saying that cutting the military is dangerous without first defining the threat and the mission is no different that a liberal Democrat Congresswoman claiming this week the reason we need to save billions in domestic spending programs from Sequestration is that 6000 AIDS patients won’t receive taxpayer funded treatment. No consideration as to whether or not these patients can afford to pay for their own treatment or if charities can pay. No discussion as to whether or not it is the mission of government to pay for treatment for a disease contracted through people choosing voluntarily to engage in risky behavior. Once again, no definition of the role of government (i.e. the mission).

Our profligate spending has gotten us to the point where the nation’s future is in jeopardy. This is the 11th hour and if we do nothing there will be nothing to defend. Better to cut defense and social programs than cut nothing and watch the dollar and the economic system collapse. With respect to where to start on defense cuts, how about the number of uniformed flag officers which at 7 per 10,000 men is way beyond the 2 per 10,000 men required to fight WWII. In fact, the Navy today has over 2/3 of the number of flag officers as it has ships.

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