More Distinguished Military Blasting Administration

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Military: Retired brass just blasted the president for "purging" close to 200 officers. Now more retired heroes charge he is "emasculating" an armed forces whose "morale is at an unprecedented low."

 

On the first Saturday of the year 1968, near the seaport of Chu Lai in central Vietnam, Patrick Brady redefined acting "above and beyond the call of duty."

 

His Medal of Honor citation describes how the Army major volunteered to fly a helicopter to rescue the wounded from enemy territory covered by fog. Under "unchallenged, close-range enemy fire," he "evacuated two badly wounded South Vietnamese soldiers."

 

In "another area completely covered by dense fog where American casualties lay only 50 meters from the enemy" and where two aircraft had already been shot down, he made "four flights to rescue all the wounded."

 

In a third mission, with his chopper's "controls partially shot away," Brady rescued still more injured. And then: "Shortly thereafter, obtaining a replacement aircraft," he landed "in an enemy minefield where a platoon of American soldiers was trapped. A mine detonated near his helicopter, wounding two crewmembers and damaging his ship." Still, he got "six severely injured patients to medical aid."

[Valin]

@Geee

 

[nickydog]

This is what I've been saying.

[Valin]

A strong and focused national security strategy

Jon Kyl, Jim Talent | American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation

October 31, 2013

 

When President Obama took office, the armed services of the United States had already reached a fragile state. The Navy had shrunk to its smallest size since before World War I; the Air Force was smaller, and its aircraft older, than at any time since the inception of the service. The Army was stressed by years of war; according to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, it had been underfunded before the invasion of Iraq and was desperately in need of resources to replace its capital inventory.

 

(Snip)

 

This study begins by asking the essential question. Why? America is a wealthy nation. Its affluence and unique commitment to human dignity make it the prime target of aggressive forces throughout the world. It depends on global financial, communications, and transportation networks that are easy to attack and hard to defend. In an age of asymmetric weapons, its very homeland is vulnerable to attack as never before. Its Constitution requires its central government to defend the nation. Why would such a government, with so great a capacity for self-defense and so much to lose if its defenses fail, voluntarily take steps that its own leaders admit are subjecting its people to unacceptable risk?

 

(Snip)

 

Since that time, however, our presidentswhose backgrounds have been in domestic policy and who were chosen for their policies and leadership qualities in that areahave failed to adapt the risk management strategy to the exigencies of the postCold War world. In the absence of strategic clarity, the tools of national power were allowed to atrophy. The size of the armed forces was cut in the 1990s to questionable levels; far worse, the government failed to recapitalize, much less modernize, the inventories of the services. At the same time, deployments of the military rose dramatically in an unstable world where American leaders struggled to anticipate dangers and use the tools of soft power effectively.

 

Then in 2011 a president was in power who questioned the efficacy and even legitimacy of the use of American power, and a Congress panicked by the specter of rising deficits came to power. Without a clear understanding of why defense was important, they gave way to the assumption that it was only one in a set of competing priorities. The gradual decline in American power became an unprecedented rush to reduce the defense budget, with little long-term analysis of the impact on military strategy or national security.

 

(Snip)