Debts, deficits and defense

The hot button item of reducing pay, pension, healthcare and other benefits for our soldiers, their wives, their families and their widows is stated as: “Resetting the calculation of military compensation and reforming the provision of military health care…” Whatever those mysterious words will ultimately come to mean, the task force report shows a planned reduction of pay and benefits for the troops and their families to the tune of $120 billion.

Many other proposed cuts are not addressed in coherent detail, including how the reduction of our deployed nuclear warheads to 500 would be accomplished (a much greater reduction than contemplated by the pending START treaty with Russia). Today’s deterrent force of 500 Minuteman III missiles, for example, would be reduced to just 160 missiles or less, which then leaves a balance of 340 warheads for ballistic submarines and tactical delivery systems everywhere in the world! Other key parts of American strategic defenses are slashed as well, including modernization, research, and maintaining safety and reliability of existing weapons.

These sweeping reductions in our defenses are bad enough, but the most disturbing part of the report from Rep. Frank’s task force of think-tank pundits is the lack of a rationale for such drastic cuts.

Instead of serious proposals for a national security strategy, the task force recommends something they call a “policy of restraint.” The soaring rhetoric of the report is not specific, but it seems to suggest the United States should withdraw from the world and hole up in a little “Fort America.”

President Obama is emulating President Jefferson. Strapped for money, Jefferson cut the navy by two-thirds and built small gunboats instead, saying they “are the only water defense which can be useful to us, and protect us from the ruinous folly of a navy.” What were the results of Jefferson’s version of a low cost ‘policy of restraint?’ Britain’s navy brushed the gunboats aside and burned the White House in 1814.

Fortunately, the British superpower of 1814 did not have an air force, a strategic missile force, or a large amphibious Marine Corps. If they had, they would have burned the Declaration of Independence, too.

(Now, to paraphrase Monty Python, “for something completely different.” I discussed President Obama’s plan to pay for more spending by cutting a trillion dollars from our defense budget on The Schilling Show, News Radio 1070WINA, Charlottesville, Virginia. You can listen to The Schilling Show live, or use your computer to link to their podcast archives at The Schilling Show . Scroll down the list to 6-17-10 Hour 2 – Chet Nagle – and hear our informative show!)

Chet Nagle is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and the author of IRAN COVENANT.