Posted on 01/18/2011 11:20:49 AM PST by Qbert
The military is one of the very few things our federal government is actually authorized to spend money on. And yet, every proposal to cut the budget starts with the military.
Nice going Rand. You can axe every bit of the rest of the budget for all I care, but stop playing into China’s game plan with the military cuts.
We’ve already helped them enough, or hadn’t you noticed yet?
There is waste even in the military which should be rooted out, but you may have missed a couple of key points. Paul wants to eliminate the Department of Energy, and transfer its functions to the DOD. He also wants to shift the Coast Guard away from Homeland Security to the DOD. So defense comes out smelling like a rose under his plan.
Our military is grossly understaffed today. We barely have a one-theater preparedness level. That means that when we’re mired in a place like the Iraq Afghanistan theater, we’re not going to be able to fully execute Western Pacific operations.
Yes, these folks talk a good game. They pick one of the only things the federal government is authorized to do, and suggest we cut it further. Hell NO!
Perhaps you didn’t quite understand. HELL NO!
We have less than half the ships our Navy had at the end of Reagan’s term. We have closed military bases across this nation. We have canceled very important aircraft purchases. The ground is being set the cancel another one. We are now poised to rely on our older aircraft long into the future. And yet, you support Rand in his effort to cut more.
Did I say HELL NO yet?
I'm sure you're right, but inevitably there WILL be(and is) "the admiral's/general's pet project", which does not support the military's main purpose. The two are NOT mutually exclusive.
I’m not sure I fully understood your point, but I do agree that there will be pet projects. I’m not convinced there aren’t some less than stellar ones out there either. Where there are, they should be terminated.
My short term concern is that the military is going to be sliced and diced just as the Chinese global master plan comes on line.
We’re kidding ourselves, if we think we can continue to cut, as China continues to build.
We are sending a message that we are prepared to accept a decline in the projection of our values around the planet.
That is suicidal. Not only does it lead the enemy to think he can do things he shouldn’t, but it can easily lead to a very high toll as we prove to him he can’t.
Lets just say that I have very little (if any) confidence in our elected officials getting the reductions right. When it comes to this administration, I have grave concerns about us tackling this job at all right now.
Gates would sell us out lock stock and barrel for a wink from the almighty Obama.
There's ALWAYS things that can be cut. Done correctly, it can even make the military more effective. The problem is deciding what can appropriately be cut and what cannot, and along with the cuts, what needs MORE funding.
"My short term concern is that the military is going to be sliced and diced just as the Chinese global master plan comes on line.
A legitimate concern, which goes with my comment above about about cuts that are appropriate to furthering the military's mission, and those that will be damaging.
Right now we have Obama, Gates (that Obama seems to lead around on a leash), the Republican House, and the Democrat Senate. Even in the Republican House we have RINOs that would sell our nation out in a split second, if the mood struck them. And in the Senate we have idiots that are moved to praise Obama every few days.
So if we’re talking about making some reasoned cuts right now, count me not on board.
The F-22 program was one program too far for me, when it came to scratching the thing off our inventory. The thing was a marvelous aircraft. While there were problems with it, there isn’t any aircraft that doesn’t have them. And now the F-35 is being criticized in the same manner. A year ago it’s was supposedly perfect, and used to prove we didn’t need the F-22. I told folks at the time, you watch, within a short period they’ll be trying to kill that program too. And here we are.
I may not trust the defense industry, but they’ve got more of a leg up with me than Gates does. And as for Obama, well, we’ll agree there I’m convinced.
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