Tag Archives: defense policy

Defense Cut “Drivers”

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Here are a couple of types of spending increases that will appear in upcoming Federal budgets:

[A] CBO report finds that mandatory spending, which includes Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, is projected to rise $85 billion, or 4%….

And

Interest on the debt is worse.  It is projected to increase 14% per year, almost quadrupling in dollar terms between 2014 and 2024.

DoD Secretary Chuck Hagel’s proposed budget cuts Defense spending by $75 billion over the next two years.

The “mandatory” spending problem could be cured over those same two years, with a proper reform package.

From $416 billion in interest payments in 2013, that 14% increase for 2014 comes to $58 billion; for 2015, the first year of President Barack Obama’s budget proposal (which includes that “mandatory” spending and Hagel’s cuts in the Defense budget), that interest payment increase comes to $65 billion.

Our debt debacle, with its required interest payments, will take considerably longer than two years to redress, and that puts a premium on getting started now on the necessary spending cuts.  This is made even more difficult, though, by the enormous size of our debt coupled with the national survival need to preserve our military capacity.

But the Democrats won’t allow entitlement reform in any direction except expansion—and more spending.  And they refuse to take our debt seriously, demanding ever more (non-defense) spending, and not just for the “mandatory” stuff.  Go figure.

More Accommodation for our Enemies

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President Barack Obama decries keeping the pressure on Iran during “negotiations” over their nuclear weapons program while bragging that pressure is what got them to talk (more).

Now he’s accommodating the Taliban by cutting back on pressure on them during Pakistani “negotiations” over their future in Pakistan.

The Obama administration has sharply curtailed drone strikes in Pakistan after a request from the government there for restraint as it pursues peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, according to US officials.

“That’s what they asked for, and we didn’t tell them no,” one US official said.

YGTBSM.

This is national security, community organizer style.

The VA Needs to Go

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The Department of Veterans Affairs has linked the recent deaths of at least 19 vets diagnosed with cancer in 2010 and 2011 to appointment backlogs and delays at VA hospitals and clinics and resulting hindrances in care….

That this is something entirely correctible from within the VA is corroborated by the VA’s continued coverup of responsibility.  The VA so far has refused to identify those responsible for these veterans’ deaths or for the delay-caused or exacerbated injuries of many other vets, and the VA has refused to discipline or fire anyone—anyone at all—regarding this…problem, according to Congressman Jeff Miller (R, FL), House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman.  Miller also said

I don’t want to hear the excuse anymore that “It was multi-faceted. … There were many people involved.”  If there were many people involved then they all need to go.

We are not asking for one particular person, we want to know exactly why things happened and who was held responsible.  At this point publicly, we haven’t seen anybody held responsible.

“They all need to go” must include General Eric Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who seems disinterested, or unable, to correct these problems.

Enough.  This VA needs to be gotten rid of entirely, and the function absorbed into the Department of Defense, where fellow veterans, both active and now-civilian, will be more likely to take such matters seriously.  That a Cabinet-level functionality like the present VA should behave in this way is utterly reprehensible and wholly unacceptable.

US Missile Defense

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The New York Times reported a few days ago that Russia appears to have violated a 1987 treaty banning the test, production, even possession, of medium-range missiles by testing a new ground-launched cruise-missile.

It seems that Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance Rose Gottemoeller advised NATO of the tests and that the Russian testing program actually began flight tests in 2008 (keep that timing in mind), but for all that, the Obama administration has declined to protest officially or to take meaningful action in response to this threat to the security of our allies and so to our own security.

We shouldn’t be surprised at this latest demonstration of Obama’s timidity on the world stage.  This is the same President who surrendered to the Russians on the question of placing a missile defense capacity in Poland and the Czech Republic—a defense system designed specifically to intercept short- and medium-range missiles and wholly incapable of handling ICBMs.  With the Russian medium-range missile flight testing having begun just a few months earlier, their vociferous objections to a missile defense system capable of defending, oh, say, Europe becomes much more understandable.

This is also the same president that has gutted DoD’s missile defense system R&D and deployment anywhere.

Now this.  What did Obama really expect, though?  He’s neither stupid, ignorant, nor naïve.

Stop the Nonsense

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…and leave.  This government cannot be trusted (and, no, this time I’m not talking about the Obama administration).

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has demanded that the United States must cease military operations and airstrikes, as well as resume peace talks with the Taliban, before he signs a security deal to keep some US troops in Afghanistan beyond this year.

Never mind that this is another move on Karzai’s part to renege on an agreement to which he agreed last fall and which the Loya Jirga insisted he sign promptly.

Never mind that the Taliban are terrorists who harbored al Qaeda and who have not at all changed their terrorist ways.

Never mind that our only purpose for having a military presence in Afghanistan under the Bush Doctrine (mission creep since notwithstanding) is to burn the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Enough.  It’s time to have done with Hamid Karzai and his government.  Return only as needed under the Bush Doctrine, and with no mission creep.