America is definitely in retreat on the world stage due to the fact that President Barrack Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism and lacks the willpower to defend red lines in the sand. Those on opposite sides of the aisle in Washington present contrary views about the present state of our military preparedness. It’s tough to tell who is telling the truth about who supports or is against military cuts; they point the finger at each other. Clearly, a diminished military and the inability of our current president to act when necessary isn’t in our best national interest.
Increased international turmoil is linked with America’s “failure of will.” Our enemies see our inaction as a sign of weakness, that America does not have the will to play a leadership role. After we pulled out of Iraq, we left a vacuum and ISIS is filling it with bloodshed. In March 2015, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, called for “Death to America.” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has threatened to “settle accounts” with America while posing near a chart which appeared to map out missile strikes against American cities.
The Chinese are building islands in the South China Sea as part of their land reclamation project and have moved military units there. The Soviets took over Crimea and the West looked on. They’re building up military forces in the territory it owns in the Arctic. Russian military flights outside of Russian airspace have reached levels not seen since the Cold War. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) which covers Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) – an area extending 200 miles beyond the state’s sovereign airspace in to international airspace and waters – has seen a slight increase of incursions by Russian aircraft. What bothers NORAD officials is not the slight increase in such flights but the modernization of the Soviet aircraft. Meanwhile Obama attends summits on climate control, indifferent to hostilities around the world, considering them non-existential threats.
One classic example of unpreparedness, one of miscalculation, dates back to the 1930s. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt increased government spending in virtually every other facet of American life, he slashed defense spending from the beginning of his administration from $752 million in 1932 to $531 million in 1934. When World War II began, America was completely unprepared to wage war. The army was smaller than Portugal’s, ranking 16th in the world. We had 185,000 men in the army. Meanwhile, the Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany were modernizing and expanding their armed forces. They would quickly evolve into military juggernauts even though Germany was expressly forbidden to expand its military forces as stipulated in the Versailles Treaty after World War I.
As a consequence, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 because the majority of leaders in Japan thought we were weak, didn’t have the stomach for war. And Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler didn’t even blink when he subsequently declared war on America. He too thought America was an easy target to be easily defeated. Luckily they were wrong. Awakening the “sleeping giant” was a grave mistake.
The military should not be viewed, like the Obama Administration does, as a social experiment in political correctness. We shouldn’t have women in combat positions because it’s unfair to them and because the argument of gender neutrality is pure bull crap. And every opportunity we have we need to tell our military that they are an integral part of this country, that they are appreciated, loved, and that we depend upon them for our very survival in this currently unstable world in which we find ourselves.
We need a strong military to keep us safe and defend us from those who want to destroy us. They are our warriors. We need our military to be prepared. We need them to be virtually unbeatable in battle. We need them to have the best equipment, technology, and weapons. We need them to be able to effectively fight in more than one theater like they did in World War II. We need them to serve notice to the world that we’re always ready to defend the Homeland as well as to defend our national interests abroad.
Defenders of current defense cuts say we still spend more on our military than anyone else in the world. But we are simply not just one nation, not a regional power, but the hope of mankind to keep democracy alive and the flames of freedom blowing in the wind.
Because if we don’t, nobody else will. Just watch the news. I think you’ll catch my drift.
