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Townhall...
Mauling
the
Military
by Ed
Feulner
Feb 05,
2012
“Freedom
isn’t free.” We usually hear this on occasions such as Memorial Day and
Veteran’s Day. It’s meant to remind us of the brave American troops who
put
their lives on the line daily to protect our liberty and preserve our
security.
But that
phrase also applies to matters of money. It takes dollars and cents to
field a
world-class military. Equipping and training the best soldiers, and
providing
them with the best vehicles and weapons, is expensive. So why are we
preparing
to slash the amount we spend to ensure that our defense remains as
capable as
possible?
For make no
mistake: That’s the upshot of what Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was
talking
about recently when he previewed the cuts to come under the Obama
administration’s latest budget request. They include:
·A smaller
Army and Marine corps. The Army would go from 562,000 now to 490,000.
The
Marines, meanwhile, would drop from 202,000 to 182,000. It would cut
the number
of U.S. combat brigades as well. Two would come out of Europe, where
our allies
would realize they can’t rely on us to assist in keeping the peace. So
much for
defending what our troops once shed blood to achieve.
·Fewer Navy
ships. Under President Obama’s budget, the Navy would give seven
cruisers and
two amphibious ships an early retirement. It also would delay or cut
back on
efforts to buy a variety of important vessels, including certain types
of
submarines and combat ships that help keep vital international
waterways safe.
·A
shrinking Air Force. Six tactical fighter squadrons would be broken up.
The
pace at which the Air Force is acquiring the F-35 (Joint Strike
Fighter) would
be slowed down. This will make the ones we do buy more expensive.
·Scaled-back
missile defense. Secretary Panetta didn’t get specific here. He merely
noted,
as Heritage Foundation missile defense expert Baker Spring put it, that
“not
all funding was protected in this area.” That sounds ominous, to say
the least.
The U.S. is already lagging in its efforts to mount the comprehensive,
layered
(land, sea and space) system we need to protect all Americans from the
threat
of rogue missiles aimed at our soil from nations such as Iran and North
Korea.
Worse, the
military is right in the crosshairs for cuts beyond those in the budget
that
Panetta was outlining. That budget doesn’t account for automatic
spending cuts
due to hit under last summer’s Budget Control Act. The act, Spring
writes,
“triggers automatic spending cuts that could amount to as much as $600
billion
from the defense budget in addition to those already contained in the
pending
budget.”
Have we
forgotten what happened in the wake of post-Vietnam budget cuts? We
wound up
with a military that simply wasn’t combat ready -- a hollow force.
Asking a
military that’s too small to do too much means it wears out sooner.
Troops and
equipment get stretched too thinly.
The result?
An embarrassing debacle such as the Iranian hostage crisis that began
in 1979,
for one thing. Small wonder that President Reagan campaigned
successfully on a
promise to rebuild our military. His vow resonated with the American
people
because they were tired of seeing America’s prestige take a beating on
the
world stage. And they were genuinely alarmed by the realization that we
had
become far too vulnerable.
We can’t
afford to take another holiday from our responsibilities. The wholesale
cuts
now on the horizon for our military are irresponsible and reckless. Or
do we
have to learn the hard way, yet again, that “freedom isn’t free”?
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