Obama Reshapes Military
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Jim Talent and Mackenzie Eaglen of the Heritage Foundation make the case that President Barack Obama’s budget cuts will reshape the U.S. military as we know it.
“If Congress ultimately gives the Administration what it wants,” they write, “America’s armed forces will lose capabilities that its leaders and citizens have come to take for granted.”
Capabilities like strategic defense, control of the seas, and air superiority will be lost. With rogue countries determined to acquire nuclear weapons, the timing couldn’t be worse. The administration proposes to cut $1.4 billion from missile defense. The Airborne Laser boost-phase program and the Multiple Kill Vehicle and Kinetic Energy Interceptor, as well as the expansion of ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, would be cut. Last week, Alaska governor Sarah Palin said, “Reducing Alaska’s defense readiness in these perilous times is a show of weakness, it is not a sign of strength…And yet, Washington thinks it’ best now to actually cut defense spending in Alaska by hundreds of millions of dollars. Now that is an odd priority there.”
Odd, indeed. The president has already made it clear that he is not committed to building missile defense shields in Poland and the Czech Republic. Talent and Eaglen say liberals’ opposition to strong missile defense was understandable during the Cold War. It’s dangerously behind the times now.
“[T]he Cold War has been over for nearly 20 years, and missile defense today is a clear tool for peace. In fact, it may be the only stabilizing tool available to prevent a global nuclear arms race. As the ballistic missile programs of North Korea and Iran continue to mature, America must invest in a comprehensive, multi-layered missile defense system to stay ahead of the technology curve–instead of deemphasizing and restructuring the program for a more a constrained vision of what the future may hold.”
Read the rest at Heritage.org.
Tags: ABL, Alaska, Barack Obama, California, Cold War, Czech Republic, MKV, Poland, Sarah Palin