OP-ED: U.S. is heading towards military disaster

By Frank Vernuccio, Jr., J.D.

The announced dismissal of 550 U.S. Army majors is the latest move in what can only be seen as a concerted effort on the part of the White House to diminish America’s armed forces as much and as rapidly as the public will tolerate and the press will willingly overlook.

During its tenure, the Obama Administration has taken steps, which seen in their totality, are breathtaking in their scope and in the extraordinary danger they pose. Among these actions are slashing the defense budget, preventing the development of an adequate anti-missile shield, proposing unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, withdrawing all US tanks from Europe, cutting benefits to active duty service members, alienating regional allies such as Israel, betraying key nuclear defense secrets of the United Kingdom to Moscow, prematurely withdrawing U.S. forces from key hotspots, not appropriately responding to Chinese aggression towards allies Japan and the Philippines, ignoring Russian, Chinese, and Iranian military growth in Latin America, softening sanctions against Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, and taking no viable steps in response to North Korea’s imminent deployment of nuclear ICBMs.

These actions occur in the face of an US military that was already sharply reduced from its strength in the recent past. The navy has shrunk from 600 ships to 284, the Army is down from 17 divisions to ten, the Air Force from 37 fighter commands to 20.

This diminished force must contend with a Russia that has returned to cold war strength, possesses a 10 to 1 advantage in tactical nuclear weapons, has invaded two neighboring nations in the past ten years, has returned to cold war bases around the world, assisted in the shooting down of a civilian airliner, and has allied itself with China.

China has engaged in unprecedented espionage against civilian, governmental and military targets in the U.S., and has increased its nuclear and conventional military strength at a pace faster than either the Soviet Union or the United States did at the height of the cold war. It is a full-fledged military superpower on land, sea, air, and space, with technology every bit as capable as Washington’s. It unabashedly asserts hegemony over a vast swath of seas that it has no legitimate right to, and has brazenly stolen resources from the Philippines. It makes no secret that it views the United States as an adversary, and its extraordinarily powerful armed forces are precisely structured to fight what is left of the American military.

In the past, this calamitous environment would be headline news. But a virtual cloak of silence has descended upon the entire topic of military affairs, and Americans are asked to believe, contrary to all evidence, that a major war is not a possibility. Mr. Obama places his faith in using drones to target a few terrorist leaders, in the stunningly nonsensical belief that eliminating a few of them was the answer to all national security woes.

Demonstrably, that hasn’t even worked with Islamic extremists, who have gained in strength and have conquered more territory than ever before under his administration. In what can only be seen as a direct insult to the intelligence of the American public, the White House continues to maintain that the Obama/Clinton “reset” with Russia was a success, and that the world is now “more tranquil” than ever.

There is a cynical political equation behind all this. Progressive politicians have calculated that their re-election depends on providing ever greater giveaways to their core constituency. Despite the fact that, as noted by the Center on Budget & Policy priorities, military spending accounts for only 19 percent of the federal budget it is seen as a convenient cash cow to milk for those programs.

The Obama Administration has, to paraphrase the Beatles’ John Lennon, “given peace a chance.” The result has been disastrous. The United States is on the threshold of a devastating military disaster, either through actual force of arms by our adversaries or by a threat that America will, if current trends continue, simply be unable to counter.