So many aspects of this, I’ll try to keep my comments to just a few.
I do agree with Cheney on the hypocrisy of Obama’s actions, and with the knowledge that the defense budget is only a teeny percent of overall spending on “entitlements” of every kind.
However, lots of advancement in technology makes it possible for us to send a clear message without involving boots on the ground - but any any cuts in defense personnel “NOW” are no good unless we are training replacements right away, because it’s not easy or fast to ramp up defense.
The problem is that we’ll have to regard who’s left as Obama tools on domestic soil, rather than as -beloved- veterans who know how to manage conflicts and defeat an enemy - foreign or domestic.
A lot of the messages our large army sends are in the form of tripwires, detachments of soldiers not numerous enough to defend themselves but large enough to draw us into the fight for whichever precious ally they are stationed in. Not only is this the ultimate entangling alliance and loss of national freedom of decision, but it puts our soldiers into an initial fight that is stacked against them. The ultimate example of this type of losing deployment was the Philippines in 1941.