We Have a Long Way to Go

Vlad The Impaler Putin, leader of a country where thousands of alcoholics still die each year from drinking antifreeze, had the gall to call America a parasite.

President Obama responded by apologizing, and then he answered an economic question: 

"We've still got a long way to go before we hit bottom. I ain't done changin' it yet. A powerful country like the United States, you can't flush it down the toilet overnight. It takes time... Be patient!"


Hold the Champagne

I know, I was kicking up my heels yesterday at our glorious small government victory (small though it was), but there’s a long road ahead. We have just begun to fight, and the specter of hubristic overreach stalks conservative plans.

GOP lawmakers need to proceed with caution.  The press is the maidservant of Obama, and they know how to churn out the propaganda.  WaPo writer Ruth Marcus would have thrived in Stalin's Soviet Union.  See how she artfully employs the republicans as carjacker trope:

One side wanted the car, had a gun and wasn’t afraid — certainly not afraid enough — to use it. The other had a child in the back seat. (WaPo - Ruth Marcus)

That's what we're up against, and it's powerful stuff.  There really are softheaded people in this country susceptible to such emotional fripperies

Cut too much too fast, and the backlash will be horrific, and rightly so. Even before this deep recession, we had millions of souls dependent on government assistance, more so now. Single mothers struggling to feed their kids, people on medicaid going through cancer treatment, older workers broke and on the cusp of mandatory retirement… Our government has made promises to all of them.  We cannot suddenly yank the rug out from under them, or even appear to.

Also, how can you morally justify slashing the federal workforce when the anemic economy holds no employment alternatives for those thrown out of work?

Whoever would destroy the progressive state and remake it for the 21st century must first present a clearly-defined plan and be able to explain it well.  It will need to be phased in over time.  People have invested money based upon the creaky statist model, and slashing too deep too quickly creates uncertainty that inevitably leads to a bad business climate, which means more unemployment.

It’s like a spider web, all sticky and interconnected. You can’t just rip out one piece without endangering the entire fabric.   George Will explains...

During various liberal ascendancies, the federal spider has woven a web of dependencies. The political purpose has been to produce growing constituencies of voters disposed to vote Democratic. This disposition, a.k.a. the entitlement mentality, is triggered by making the constituencies constantly apprehensive about the security of their status as wards of government. (George Will – WaPo)

The truth is, we are a long way from a libertarian nation

The nanny state has destroyed self-sufficiency and initiative. What would you cut and how would you do it without hurting the truly vulnerable? Progressive statists will be asking this question, and rightly so. We had better have viable answers.

Do What You Can, Stick to What You Know

Now that our SEALs have put down the diseased dog and dumped him in the ocean, talk of getting out of Afghanistan has increased.  Regardless of where you stand on that issue, this is a time for us to reassess our strategic posture and shape our military accordingly.

Americans are good at war and not very good at remaking other countries in our image. It's an invaluable revelation that has yet to be incorporated into our approach to foreign policy and national security. (Steve Chapman - Bin Laden's Big Mistake)

Remaking a society that does not want to be remade is a fool’s errand and we should officially take the pledge and swear off any future nation building.

We should retool our defense establishment with recent lessons in mind. We can continue defense cooperation with willing partners, dispatching special forces teams, intelligence gathering, and terrorist bug swatting as needed. Big footprints and occupations should be regarded as relics of the past, to be dusted off only in case of an immediate and existential threat to the United States of America.

Bogging ourselves down in stone age toilets diminishes us, wasting valuable national resources and killing good soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. Technology is a double-edged sword.  We exploit it well when we swoop down out of the shadows, lean, light and lethal.  It works against us when we deploy big static masses of troops, 70% of which are support tail, sitting vulnerable to the bad guys' employment of cheap, available technology.  A big fat presence no longer plays to our strengths.

Keep our superstitious enemies paranoid

A big foreign presence also removes the mystique of US power.  The 21st century US military needs to be about speed, stealth, mobility, and surprise.

I want the bad guys and the superstitious hordes who cheer and shelter them to think our soldiers are hiding underground right now spying on them, ready to come up through the soil and strangle them at any moment. I want these 7th century obscurantists to believe we can read their thoughts, see through the walls of their grimy cinderblock huts, and swoop down and grab them at any time with trained invisible eagles. I want them jumpy at the thought that every crawling bug and slithering reptile is a trained US spy.

It's not so far-fetched. The primitive Muslim throngs blamed the shark attacks off an Egyptian coastal resort on Mossad-trained predators. If the gullible dingbats actually believe Israel made a pact with King Poseidon to produce a trained flotilla of sharks just to wreck Egypt's tourist industry, they'll believe anything.

The Stage is Set for Smart Defense Cuts

Defense cannot be exempted from budget cuts. Vietnam veteran Col. Douglas MacGregor (US Army, ret.) lays out some smart ideas on how to do it. Reducing overseas presence, eliminating whole headquarters while downsizing others, as well as collapsing the creepily named Department of Homeland Security and returning some functions to where they came from while abolishing others. He also recommends consolidating intelligence functions and reducing redundancy.

I worked at a combatant headquarters in the Middle East. We were lean and mean with no bureaucratic overhead. Paperwork was minimal. We actually did real stuff like engineer combat communications solutions, and then we deployed into the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq to build and fix commo used by the warfighters.

I’ve also seen non-combatant headquarters, and they are the complete opposite. They are stilted, sclerotic bureaucratic sinks that are increasingly reliant on contractor support, even as they grow their military and DoD civilian rosters.

There is plenty of fat there to cut as we put our military on a leaner, deployment-focused footing. Especially if we swear off global community organizing.