Gutting the United State Military

[bsteadman]

Hagel calls for shrinking Army to pre-WWII size

FoxNews.com
2/24/2014

Excerpt:

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called Monday for shrinking the U.S. Army to its smallest size in decades, along with other cuts, drawing criticism that the drastic changes will hurt U.S. security.

Hagel announced his Pentagon budget priorities Monday afternoon. The Army had already been preparing to shrink to 490,000 active-duty members from a wartime peak of 570,000. Hagel is proposing to cut it further to between 440,000 and 450,000.

That would make it the smallest since just before the U.S. entered World War II.

"We are repositioning to focus on the strategic challenges and opportunities that will define our future: new technologies, new centers of power, and a world that is growing more volatile, more unpredictable, and in some instances more threatening to the United States," Hagel said at a press conference at the Pentagon.

He defended the proposed reductions in troop strength, as a trade-off for building up "technological superiority" and priorities like Special Operations Forces and "cyber resources."

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, warned that the cuts would hurt military readiness. And he said the country is only in this position because the Obama administration and Congress will not seriously take on cuts to entitlements.

"It's all being sacrificed ... on the altar of entitlements. This president cannot take on mandatory spending, so all we've done in the Congress -- and this president -- is basically cut discretionary spending," he told Fox News.

Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said Monday that Hagel consulted closely with the military service chiefs on how to balance defense and budget-saving requirements. "He has worked hard with the services to ensure that we continue to stand for the defense of our national interests -- that whatever budget priorities we establish, we do so in keeping with our defense strategy and with a strong commitment to the men and women in uniform and to their families, Kirby said.

"But he has also said that we have to face the realities of our time. We must be pragmatic. We can't escape tough choices. He and the chiefs are willing to make those choices," Kirby said.

The New York Times first reported on the proposed cuts. The changes reportedly would leave the military capable of waging war, but unable to carry out protracted occupations of foreign territory, as in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Officials told the Times that Hagel's plan has been endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It calls for the Navy to maintain all 11 of its aircraft carriers currently in operation. However, the budget proposal mandates the elimination of the entire fleet of Air Force A-10 attack aircraft, as well as the retiring of the U-2 spy plane, a stalwart of Cold War operations.

The budget plan does keep money for the F-35 warplane, a project which has been beset by delays and criticism over design flaws.

Other characteristics of the budget will likely draw further ire from veterans groups and members of Congress. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Hagel would recommend a limit on military pay raises, higher fees for health-care benefits, less generous housing allowances, and a one-year freeze on raises for top military brass.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...-wwii-numbers/

[bsteadman]

Gutting the Army

FrontPage Magazine
Arnold Ahlert
2/25/2014

Excerpt:

On Monday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recommended reducing size of the U.S. Army to its lowest level since before the nation’s entry into WWII. ”We must now adapt, innovate, and make difficult decisions to ensure that our military remains ready and capable — maintaining its technological edge over all potential adversaries,” Hagel said during a Pentagon news conference. Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, illuminated the administration’s dubious priorities. President Obama and Hagel are trying to “solve our financial problems on the backs of our military — and that can’t be done,” he explained.

The reductions are stark. The Army had already been tasked with reducing troop numbers from a wartime high of 570,000 to 490,000. Hagel proposes bringing that number down to the either 450,000 or 440,000. He defended those cuts, claiming they will allow more money to be spent on ”technological superiority,” “cyber resources,” and Special Operations forces.

Retired Gen. Jack Keane contended the reductions would “cut into the bone and the capabilities of the Army,” even as he ridiculed the thinking behind them. “The assumption that’s being made in the Pentagon, and it’s almost laughable if it wasn’t so serious, is they don’t believe the United States will involve itself in a ground war of any consequence again,” he explained. “The fact of the matter is those assumptions have been made after World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War, and every single time they have been proven wrong. Here we are making that same assumption again. The Army is taking a much more severe cut, and the numbers of the Army are going down to pre-World War II numbers, which, on the surface of it, is irresponsible. Anybody looking at that knows it is far too much.”

Actually, they don’t. The Pentagon, which has long believed that America should be capable of fighting two ground wars simultaneously, as we did in Asia and Europe during WWII, and Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, has seemingly abandoned that idea. According to the New York Times, more recent budget and strategy documents reveal that the military must be prepared to win one conflict decisively, and fight a holding operation with a second adversary until a sufficient number of forces could be redeployed to win conflict number two. “Our analysis showed that this [reduced] force would be capable of decisively defeating aggression in one major combat theater…while also defending the homeland and supporting air and naval forces engaged in another theater against an adversary,” Hagel contended.

Given America’s recent track record, one might be forgiven for wondering what constitutes winning period, much less winning decisively. President Obama and his fellow Democrats have made it clear that troop withdrawal – on a timetable and virtually irrespective of conditions on the ground — was their top priority in Iraq, and will be their top priority in Afghanistan. In Iraq, the president’s indifference towards negotiating a status of forces agreement, and his determination to leave behind an insufficient number of troops to protect the gains we made in that nation, turned victory into defeat. It is a process being repeated in Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai has rejected a security pact with America unless the Taliban are included in the process, and where Obama once again wants to leave behind a far smaller contingency of troops than his military advisors recommend to maintain our gains there.

Even if we had an administration committed to winning wars, it appears they are willing to sacrifice greater numbers of Americans to do so. Officials who saw an early draft of Hagel’s announcement admit that carrying out two large-scale military operations at the same time would make success more elusive, and engender higher numbers of casualties. Just as importantly, they conceded a smaller military might give rise to increased adventurism by our adversaries. Hagel seemingly concurred. “As a consequence of large budget cuts, our future force will assume additional risk in certain areas,” he said.

Those budget cuts include far more than a reduction in troops. The U-2 spy place would be abandoned in favor of drones that operate more cheaply. The A-10 “warthogs,” an entire class of Air Force attack jets capable of effective attacks against tanks, is also facing the chopping block and will be replaced by F-35s.

The Navy would purchase two destroyers and two attack submarines per year, even as 11 cruisers would be decommissioned until they were modernized. Training helicopters would be retired, and the National Guard would give its more weaponized Apache helicopters to the Army in exchange for Black Hawks, better suited for disaster response and other peacetime activities. Drone growth would be diminished from an around-the-clock force of 65 Reaper and Predator aircraft to 55 in total. The Pentagon will also ask for another round Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) in 2017.

On the personnel side, a one percent raise in pay would be enacted, but it would be offset by changing healthcare benefits, making personnel pay for some of their housing costs and cutting a billion dollars from commissary subsidies that allow for discounted goods for military families. General and flag officers would be subjected to a one-year pay freeze.

Hagel warned that making these cuts is a better alternative than enduring even deeper ones imposed by sequestration. Sequestration cuts would necessitate retiring an aircraft carrier, decommissioning six more cruisers, eliminating the KC-10 tanker fleet, slowing down the buying of destroyers, cutting flying hours, and dropping troop levels still further to 420,000. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, contended that number of troops would undermine the military’s ability to deploy for combat. ”I’m telling you — 420 (sic) is too low,” he declared.

Sequestration itself is a farce. It reflects Congress’s seemingly permanent inability to forestall the nation’s headlong rush towards insolvency, even as it completely preserves the ever-increasing outlays required by the primary drivers of that insolvency. The nation’s spending is divided into three main categories: interest on the debt, discretionary spending and mandatory spending. As projected for 2014, America will spend approximately $3.8 trillion for the entire budget. Servicing our national debt will consume six percent of that total. Discretionary spending will eat up another 30 percent, with the military consuming 57 percent of that discretionary slice. Mandatory spending accounts for 64 percent of our annual budget, the lion’s share of which goes to entitlement programs, such as Social Security, Unemployment and Labor programs, as well as Medicare and other Health programs.

The amount of discretionary spending is determined by annual appropriations. Mandatory spending, on the other hand, is determined by eligibility. Thus it is far easier to make cuts to the military, such as Hagel is proposing, because Congress can merely trim the budget. Changing mandatory spending requires changing eligibility criteria, such as age for Social Security or income level for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

It is no accident that proposed cuts in mandatory spending are often referred to as dealing with “third rail” issues, in that they inevitably engender massive, and possibly career-ending resistance from a dependency-addicted nation. Such resistance is aided and abetted by a Democratic Party that derives much of its power from promoting and maintaining that dependency. In short, when cuts become inevitable, the military is vulnerable, while entitlement programs remain virtually sacrosanct.

Thus, when House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) contends that military preparedness is “being sacrificed … on the altar of entitlements,” he is spot on.
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http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arn...ting-the-army/

[bsteadman]

Cheney: Obama would ‘much rather spend the money on food stamps’ than military

The Daily Caller
Jamie Weinstein
2/24/2014

Excerpt:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney responded Monday night to the Obama administration’s proposal to cut the U.S. Army to its lowest point since before World War II.

Calling into Fox News’ “Hannity,” Cheney declared the proposed cuts to be “absolutely dangerous” and “just devastating.”

“I have not been a strong supporter of Barack Obama. But this really is over the top. It does enormous long-term damage to our military,” Cheney said. ”They act as though it is like highway spending and you can turn it on and off. The fact of the matter is he is having a huge impact on the ability of future presidents to deal with future crises that are bound to arise.”

Cheney also said America’s allies are losing confidence in the United States and that the president’s budget reflects his priorities.

“The other thing I now for a fact too, Sean, from keeping in touch with some of my old friends that I used to deal with in the Middle East — they no longer have any confidence at all in American security guarantees,” he said. “They’re absolutely convinced that they can no longer trust the United States to keep its commitments — that includes the Israelis, Saudis, a lot of others in that part of the world.”
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View the complete article at:

http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/24/ch...-the-military/

[AMERICAN ADVOCATE]

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