Obama's military drawdown

Obama would 'much rather spend the money on food stamps than he would on a strong military': Dick Cheney blasts president for unprecedented Pentagon

The Air Force has -- but soon won't -- a fleet of about 300 'warthog' A-10 Thunderbolt II jets, which are regarded as essential for supporting ground incursions

The upshot of Obama's policies is that other civilized nations will have to do what the US will no longer do:  In America’s Absence, Israel Acts in Syria

... "But as we have been reminded of in recent days, Israel does not simply defend itself, it also acts to restrain dangerous extremist and rogue forces in the wider region."   Tom Wilson

Obama Consciously Engineering America’s Decline   ... "Which means that his misguided views are downright pernicious. And for all the damage the president is doing on the domestic side–and I would not want to underestimate it for a moment–it may be the harm he’s inflicting on America in foreign policy and national security is deeper, broader, and more durable.

 

"More than any president in my lifetime, Barack Obama has damaged virtually everything he’s touched. When it comes to American interests, he’s a one-man wrecking ball."   Peter Wehner 

Max Boot has more here: The Defense Budget vs. History and here: Defense Budget Incoherence.
Video from The Daily Caller: Cheney: Obama would ‘much rather spend the money on food stamps’ than military

 

 

Obama Flirts with Losing the "Must Win" War

Critical Threats via The Wall Street Journal

"The Soviet-installed government of Najibullah fell three years after the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan—and mere months after the Soviets stopped supporting it financially. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved against his Sunni political opponents within 24 hours of the departure of the last American soldier, starting to set the conditions for the loss of all the gains purchased with much American and Iraqi blood. Yet Washington is full of leaks that the Obama administration is planning to end America's military presence in Afghanistan in 2016. And Congress has already slashed U.S. financial assistance to the fifth-poorest country in the world.

 

"It seems we are about to repeat the mistakes of the past vainly hoping for a different outcome. We will be disappointed.

 

"Candidate Barack Obama declared in 2008, "we will not repeat the mistake of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. As 9/11 showed us, the security of Afghanistan and America is shared." He was right about the urgency. He was a poor prophet of his own future policy."

More...

Obama's Historic Defense Cuts Spell Disaster

Big Government

 

This Bloomberg video is more optimistic

 

Excerpt from this article:

"The Vietnam Cuts. As the United States consolidated its victory in Vietnam, Democrats in Congress, angry at the re-election of President Richard Nixon, decided to defund the military. Where defense spending had represented an average of 19.6% of GDP during the period 1967 through 1972, the budget really began falling after 1968 and the election of Richard Nixon. The result: American helicopters lifting off from our embassy in Saigon as the country fell into Communist hands. The Soviets would invade Afghanistan just a few years later, encouraged by America’s obvious distaste for foreign war. Only the arrival of Ronald Reagan and his huge increases in military expenditures would change the shape of the Cold War.

....

"Overall, major defense cuts come with a serious price: the price of emboldened enemies. Unfortunately, the cuts contemplated by Chuck Hagel and company have already borne fruit in an emboldened China in the South China Sea, a resurgent Vladimir Putin-led Russia, an aggressively Islamist Middle East. The problem with military cuts is not merely that they decrease American capacity to make war, though they surely do. The problem is that purposeful and large-scale military decreases send a message to the rest of the world that America is in retreat.

"Sadly, under the Obama administration, that signal is both clear and correctly interpreted."