Penny Wise and Pound Foolish?! [Reader Post]

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Ben Franklin warned government with his clever sayings. I expect several would apply to Obama devastating the military ground forces today. We may be saving a few billion dollars now, but is may cost us 100’s of billions in the near future.

The current administration currently plans to reduce US Army ground forces by as much as 20 Brigade Combat Teams. This is the equivalent of 5-6 Divisions. To put this in perspective, this is more combat power than the US had in Iraq at any one time.

So, what does this mean to non military people? It means we cannot sustain a ground battle like Iraq unless the US keeps the troops in theater until the fighting is complete. There will only be enough troops to replace them with no reserve. In the event there is fighting in Korea and somewhere in the middle east, the US will not have the capability to fight and win in both theaters.

While Obama explains he is planning on increasing air and sea power, history has showed that no war has ever been won without taking and holding the ground. Air and sea power project power but cannot by themselves win.

I remember the Carter military reductions. There was no money to maintain the bases. At FT Benning, there was money for painting buildings, but not repairing buildings. Remember the Clinton “peace dividend”? The Democratic Congress and Clinton made major force reductions to pay for domestic programs. A great number of excellent soldiers were released. After 9/11, their expertise was needed but absent.

If the US must fight a foreign war, will there be adequate assets left to defend the homeland? There are currently more than known 80 Hezbollah cells already in the US. Only God knows how many terrorist cells there really are in the US. Can we fight China’s expanding military and the terrorists at home? If the military is so greatly reduced, will there be the capability for them to “defend the country against all enemies foreign and domestic”? Just like the Carter and Clinton administration, it looks like we again are using a strategy that is penny wise and pound foolish!

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As will be the case, this country will eventually end up in another unforeseen war because our enemies will view us as weak just like OBL did prior to 9/11. We will be even less prepared than before and just as the case was in the past, good men and women serving their country will die because of it. About the only war we were prepared for was the Gulf War. We weren’t prepared for either World War, Korea, Vietnam, or even GWOT.

Obama is trying desperately to shore up his base. This is just one of the many actions he is undertaking to do so.

The United States currently spends more on defense than the next three top spending nations (China, India, and Russia) combined. We account for more than one third of the entire world’s total annual defense spending. World Wide Military Expenditures, 2011

It wouldn’t be so bad if we were collecting enough taxes to pay for it. Since we aren’t, the excess spending is probably as big of a threat to the nation’s long-term security as any of the nations we consider to be our enemies.

If the right wants to keep shoveling cash into the furnaces of the military industrial complex, perhaps they’ll consider agreeing to the tax increases necessary to prevent all that shoveling from bankrupting us. The next time we set out on a new war, maybe we should make plans regarding how we’ll pay for it.

@Greggie: Yeah, that’s our problem.

Uncontrolled, runaway military spending.

The entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are entirely self sufficient, right Greggie?

@Greg: If it wasn’t for the evil military, you wouldn’t be able to come here and claim that Obama killed OBL like you have.

It’s one of the two major components of the spending part of our problem, the other being the uncontrolled growth of entitlement spending. Both must be reduced. Revenue collection must then be increased to match the total spending that we’re left with.

Blaming it all on either defense spending or social spending is a dodge. Suggesting that we can balance the budget without collecting more taxes is a fairy tale.

@another vet, #5:

No one suggested that the military is evil. I did a year in Vietnam myself, with an RA prefix on my service number. My father was a WW2 bomber pilot who flew 38 missions. His uncle was a U.S. motorcycle courier in France during WW1. (He started out riding a horse. I have a photo of him in his AEF uniform, mounted on horseback.) I had great great grandfathers on each during the Civil war. I’m not anti-military, but I am anti-militarism.

While we are defunding the military, why don’t we get cut the police forces by 50%? After all, the police usually get there only in time to collect information to apprehend the perb. We can issue people the M-16s and M-4s the military will not need any more to defend themselves. I am sure everyone will feel safer.

Maybe, we should reduce the number of fire departments; after all, they hardly ever get there in time to prevent the fire? They just cause us to have more debris that must be sent to a land fill. Maybe having a bucket brigade that can respond faster would be more tax effective.

Why do we need teachers anymore? After all, one only needs to read the lefty blogs to know anything that is worth knowing? Look at the tax money we can save.

I wonder, would we would enjoy our current standard of living is we all spoke German or Japanese. Would it be better if we all spoke Arabic or Chinese and attend services at the Mosque every day? Having a strong military assures us that we can live the lives that we choose, not the life that others impose on us. We have fire and police departments to protect us and our loved ones. We support teachers because for the most part, they provide perspective and knowledge to our children. These services are necessary to maintain our way of life.

On the other hand, are individual entitlement programs important to maintaining our way of life? Could the explosion of individual entitlements be the primary reason incompetent politicians get reelected? Is encouraging nearly 50% of our citizens dependent on government entitlements as important to maintaining our way of life as important as preventing others from imposing their way of life on us? It is past time that all individuals contribute to the welfare of our country. The forty-seven percent of the population who are now takers should be contributors, not takers!

In the event there is fighting in Korea and somewhere in the middle east, the US will not have the capability to fight and win in both theaters.

Okay, you lost me right here. South Korea does not NEED the US military for protection. The only trump card, if you can call it that, that the N.Koreans have over the South is their anemic nuclear weapons program. And we could blow them off the map a hundred times over.

No reason to keep troops in SK any longer.

@Ivan: Ivan, you do not need to have troops stationed in S Korea to end up fighting there. There are such things as planes and transport ships that can take our troops there if there are any troops left to transport!

@Greg: I am against militarism as well but there is a difference between that and maintaining a strong military which these cuts will not do. It seems as though the military is the only place where this POTUS wants to cut. There is no doubt waste that can be trimmed from the Defense budget. Gutting the military and talking tough about China is not smart. A similar type strategy was tried in that part of the world once before and it didn’t work out too well. FDR tried tried to check Japan’s growing influence in the region utilizing military and economic means. The Japanese looked at how unprepared our military was and how divided the country was, especially racially. They believed (erronoeusly) that the United States would not unite to fight a war. It was that false sense of confidence that led them to attack us. There are more than a few historians out there who believe that was in fact FDR’s strategy. He needed a war to get us out of the Depression and needed someone other than us to fire the first shot. Whether true or not, we don’t need to make the same mistake twice. If we are going to publicly state that we are going to change our military emphasis to China, we best be able to back it up from a position of strength lest we risk being caught off guard and unprepared again. We took a lot of needless losses in the first year of the war in the Pacific because of being caught off guard and unprepared.

Have you ever researched your relatives history with regards to the Civil War? It would probably make for a very interesting read.

@another vet, #10:

Have you ever researched your relatives history with regards to the Civil War?

My brother has done so. There were Veterans Administration records on the great-great grandfather on my mother’s side–a Union enlisted man. Strangely, his death years after the war ended was officially attributed to wounds received in the conflict, and his wife was awarded a small widow’s pension. I’ve been to his grave site. It’s far out in the countryside in an old rural cemetery, all grown up in tall grass and wildflowers. We had to hunt for the marker. The relative on my father’s side has been difficult. He fought for the Confederacy, so there aren’t the same record sources. All we’ve got is the old family story.

@Greg: If you know what battles they participated in, you can go to “The Official Records of the War of Rebellion”, which is on Cornell University’s web site. The actual after action reports are contained in there. It takes a little getting used to navigating around in there, but once you do, it’s easy to figure out. There is a wealth of information.

Thanks! I’ll pass that info on to my brother.

@Greg: No problem. I’d be curious if he is actually able to find something. If you’re a Civil War buff, you can get lost in there reading stuff because there is so much to read.

I don’t know but evidence tell us that the THOUSANDS OF MILITARY who died, are being already replaced by non AMERICA MILITARY DRIVEN citizens immigrated from enemies COUNTRIES,
WHAT’S IN HIS MIND? GOD KNOW, BUT WON’T TELL US.
it’s incredible to believe THAT, a leader, who is COMMANDER IN CHIEF, COULD HAVE THE NERVE TO CUT MILITARY NEEDS,
IN TIME OF WAR, IT IS AN UN-AMERICAN ACTION,
ESPECIAL AT THE NEAR END OF HIS TERM
WHAT IS HIS INTENT?

Good read, Fritz, but I wonder about the implication that Obama has been ”penny wise.”
We just saw a breaking story a day or so ago where the Obama’s had a 2009 Halloween Party that cost well over $1 million.
They brought in set dressers, costumers, make-up artists, properties from major motion pictures, stars and directors from major motion pictures.
They were so embarrassed by how it would look to America that they kept it under wraps, only publicizing their party with military people’s children earlier in the day.
WHEN this story broke they showed a photo from that party MIS-LABELED Halloween 2010!
Things were somewhat better by 2010.
Big problem with the false claim of 2010, other photos from 2009 show the Obama’s in the exact same costumes, with some of the same costumed Star War human props for their later party.

THESE are the actual photos of how the Obama’s dressed in 2010.

So, are the Obama’s ”penny-wise?” or do they just pretend to be for public consumption?

Sure hope all these cuts are happening before the largest joint military defense exercise between the US and Israel, happening in the Persian Gulf near the strait coming up this spring.

Under Obama, it might be the last such possible exercise. Under a Ron Paul, it’s impossible to happen with a Navy of a “few good submarines” that are needed to protect the nation.

@MataHarley: Our soon to be 18 year old is thinking of joining the military and my wife and I are hoping that he holds out until Obama is out of office due to how he is hollowing out our military.

If he waits too long, there may not be any enlistment slots left, anticsrocks.

@MataHarley: Well, he doesn’t turn 18 till later this year, so by then, hopefully we will see Obama on his way out.