Posted by
Patrick Henry on Saturday, January 03, 2009 10:59:33 PM
A recent poll of the military showed that six in ten Americans in uniform are
skeptical about presdident elect Barack Obama's qualifications to serve as commeander-
in-chief, and concerned about his stated plans for the military and national defense.
Since Obama has never served in uniform, our personnel under arms worry that he
lacks the perspective necessary to maintain a strong, well-equipped armed force.
This isn't so much a knock on the new prez himself, as it is on the political party
and point of view he represents, and the pathetic records of the last two Democratic
presidents and current Democratic congressional leaders. They have but to look back
at Jimmy Carter, America's worst excuse for a president ever, who slashed nearly a
thousand bodies from our intelligence community and gutted the military budget
like a fish, while giving away nearly everyting to Communist aggressors in Russia,
China, Cuba, praising a Romanian dictator who was later killed by his
own people, signing off on the shady election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela,
praising Castro's Cuba, sitting powerless while the Ayatollah Knomeini, whom
Carter helped put in power, held and mistreated American hostages, made his
first official act as president withdrawing American missiles, etc., etc. The list
is long and ignominious, but you probably get the picture. Our men and women
in uniform certainly did.
Then there's Bill Clinton. He cut the federal payroll by 305,000 jobs. More than
286,000 of those were in the military and intelligence services. He slashed the Army
from 18 divisions to 12, the Navy from 546 ships to 380, the number of USAF
squadrons from 76 to 50. By the time he was finished, the moron had slashed the
services by 35%, and nine months later the 9/11 attacks occurred. Q.E.D.
But look at present Democratic leadership -- notably at John Kerry (D-Mass.)
who will be the new chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who was
his party's standard bearer in the 2004 presidential election and who was the first
major Democrat to tout Obama's candidacy. Disregarding, for the moment, the
Senator's exploitive attitude toward the military following his own dubious service,
and his broken promise to release his military records, consider his voting record.
He has voted against every military equipment development and deployment bill
since 1988. He voted to kill the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Abrams M-1 tank,
every proposed aircraft carrier during that period, the Aegis anti-aicraft system,
the F-15 Strike Eagle, the Block 60 F-16, the P-3 Orion upgrade, the B-1 and
B-2 bombers, the Patriot anti-missile system, the FA-18 Hornet, the F-117 and
body and vehicle armor for troops in the field. He voted to cut the FBI's budget
by 60%, the CIA's budget by 80% and the NSA's budget by 80%. These are
matters of public record and can be easily checked out if you doubt them. This
is the man the Democrats would have made president in 2004, and a principal
and vocal supporter of the current president elect. Is it any wonder that the troops
are edgy?
The upshot of all this is that our military is highly dubious about the concept
of honor held by our politicians and by Democrats in particular. The code of
leaving no one on the field, sacrificing for brothers and sisters in harm's way
and following through on promises, regardless of the cost, seem simply lost
on the Democrats. That's why left-wing blogger Chris Bowers was dead right
when lamenting about Obama's choice of Gates to continue as Defense Secretary
that "even Democrats don't think Democrats can run the military." He's right
because that takes more than a sharp pencil. It takes a strong sense of honor, and
that's something today's left knows absolutely nothing about.