Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Bill Clinton to Host Egypt President Morsi in NYC

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, the recently elected president of Egypt, will be a featured participant at the eighth annual meeting of Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative in New York next week.

Morsi is a prominent figure in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the most important of the world’s Islamist organizations and ideological progenitor of al Qaeda and nearly every jihadist terrorist group in the world. Its slogan reads, “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”

Clinton’s welcoming of Morsi to his high-profile event in New York City is surprising and may undermine the tough-on-terror image the Democratic Party is trying to cultivate ahead of the November elections.

Clinton recently praised the Obama administration’s foreign policy in his address to the Democratic National Convention: “I am grateful that they have worked together to make us safer and stronger, to build a world with more partners and fewer enemies.” However, it is clear–even, apparently, to Obama–that the Muslim Brotherhood is moving Egypt toward the enemy side.

Upon winning his election for the presidency, Morsi pledged to work for the release of terror mastermind Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheik), now serving a life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other attempted attacks in New York City.

This is also not the first high-profile Muslim Brotherhood figure embraced publicly by the Clintons. During the 1990s, Abdurahman Alamoudi—later convicted of laundering money for an al Qaeda assassination scheme—was the Clintons’ chief liaison to the Islamic community. Alamoudi’s brother has been a large donor to the Clinton Foundation.

This summer, Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other Members of Congress drew fire for writing letters to inspectors general in five executive branch departments calling for investigations of pro-Muslim Brotherhood influence within the US government. One letter described the Muslim Brotherhood connections of Huma Abedin, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff and a longtime associate of both Hillary and Bill Clinton.

For his part, Morsi is no stranger to the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and the constellation of organizations the 2008 Holy Land Foundation Trial found to be associated with it. Morsi and his wife joined the Muslim Brotherhood—probably through its many American front groups—while living in southern California in the late 1970s.

According to a Clinton Global Initiative press release, other participants will include Libyan president Mohamed Megarif, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and over fifty current and former heads of state.

“First Things” and the First Amendment

Joseph E. Schmitz, former Inspector General of the Pentagon and fellow Team B II co-author of Shariah: The Threat to America, elevates our way of thinking about the divide between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney regarding the essentially American principle of free speech codified in the First Amendment…

The full article can be read here: http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2236/-First-Things-and-the-First-Amendment.aspx

The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration

If anyone needed evidence that Hillary Clinton is in the pocket of the Muslim Brotherhood, the events of the last few days should be more than sufficient.  On the anniversary of 9/11, on what should be a day of shame for the Muslim world, the US Embassy in Cairo issued a statement condemning critics of Islamofascism in language appropriate to the office of propaganda for the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamofascists launched violent attacks on Americans, repeating the outrages in miniature of the World Trade Center attacks 11 years ago. In the face of these outrages the posture of the U.S. government is one that would make Neville Chamberlain blush. In four years Barack Obama has managed to turn the entire Middle East over to America’s enemies…

 

The full article can be read at FrontPageMag.com.

Spring Time for Sharia in Araby

The release of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, PJM columnist and former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy’s brilliant, evocatively written jeremiad, could not be more timely.

As Americans solemnly commemorated the 11th anniversary of the cataclysmic acts of jihad terrorism on September 11, 2001, jihadists in Egypt and Libya were besieging our government buildings in these Muslim countries, eventually murdering U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. officials….

 

The full article can be read at P.J. Media.

Behind Muslim “Hurt Feelings” Is Islamic Law

If you’ve been paying any attention to the media (not just this week, but for at least the last several years), you might get the idea that Muslims in the Middle East are pretty excitable people, given to quick offense and “hurt feelings” at any slight against their prophet, holy book or legal code. The very same “hurt feelings” emerge when the pretext is a cartoon, a book, or even US counter-terror policy, like outlawing material support for terrorist organizations. Over years, Islamist pressure groups in the US have taught the Obama administration how to apologize for every slight to Islam’s honor; the US government has learned it so well, they’ve internalized the process of continuous apology and have endeavored to preempt the “hurt feelings” of Islamists at home and abroad.

But Muslims are really no more sensitive and fragile than the rest of us. “Hurt feelings,” is what the western media needs to label something they don’t understand, and are afraid to learn.

Last week’s violence in the Middle East– and, indeed, so much of it for the last several years– is only because this movie (or whatever pretext, cartoons, etc.) runs afoul of mainstream Islamic shariah law of slander and blasphemy. “Hurt feelings” or “feeling offended” is the way the west processes this phenomenon, but it’s far from what we, in our world of conflict resolution, psychotherapy, and Montessori education have come to understand as such.

Regardless of the actual history and provenance of the film (and we should not discount the possibility of it being concocted by Salafists as a kind of blasphemous false flag), “Innocence of Muslims” appears to violate a principle absolutely clear to any practicing Muslim who knows the law.

How Islamic law on blasphemy gets to be what it is is interesting in itself. Briefly, the consensus of scholars in Islam (i.e., what is required to establish a final, unalterable ruling on a subject) have agreed that, one who blasphemes against Islam, in effect, engages in slander against the religion (“Slander [ghiba] means to mention anything concerning a person [a Muslim] that he would dislike,” according to a canonical Shaf’i jurist al Misri) and places a Muslim in the category of apostate, for which the punishment is death. An example (not from the misty past, but from 2007) illustrates this concisely:

If a Muslim commits blasphemy against the Prophet, this is an act of disbelief which takes him out of the fold of Islam. Allaah Says (what means): {Make no excuse; you have disbelieved [i.e. rejected faith] after your belief. If We pardon one faction of you—We will punish another faction because they were criminals.}[Quran 9:66] If joking is considered as an act of apostasy, then it is more confirmed for one who is saying it intentionally. If the blasphemer does not repent, he should be killed for his apostasy. However, if he sincerely repents to Allaah, Allaah will accept his repentance. Repentance expiates all sins, even Shirk (associating partners to Allaah). Allaah Knows best.” [Blasphemy against the Prophet is an act of apostasy. Islam Web Fatwa Center, Fatwa No. 17316, December 11, 2007]

Again, the legal rulings on this point are consistent. A very helpful digest on the Islamic legal rulings is here:http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Islam_and_Freedom_of_Speech#What_is_Blasphemy.3F

By this definition, “Innocence of Muslims” is cut-and-dry blasphemy. And that the real source of those “hurt feelings,” however articulated.

Of course, not everyone in Egypt is ready to commit violence to further shariah, but nearly everyone is aware of what the appropriate punishment under Islamic law is, and has very little legal basis on which to argue against it. Perhaps the most they can say is that the penalty must be carried out by the Islamic state rather than vigilantes. But, essentially, they are either in agreement with the legal principle (like a scholar at al Azhar, a Salafist or a Muslim Brother) or have a general but acute awareness of the law’s existence. For example, an illiterate Egyptian or Libyan, unschooled in the details of Islamic jurisprudence would understand this the way an American citizen would be familiar with the First Amendment but not necessarily with the historical and philosophical puzzle-pieces required to justify it. But it does not make that citizen’s devotion to its contents any less real.

This is why you see so much Islamic outrage over “offenses” like this. Don’t let the media or the Obama administration tell you it’s simply “hurt feelings.”

2012 Tipping Point?

History is replete with examples of strategic miscalculations in which an over-reach – usually born of contemptuous disdain for a foe – led to disaster for the aggressor.  Think Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812.  Or Hitler’s of the Soviet Union 131 years later. We may look back at September 11, 2012 as the kick-off date for such a tipping point in our time.

To be sure, the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow Islamists – notably, al Qaeda franchises throughout the Middle East and beyond, other so-called “Salafists,” Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and the mullahs of Iran – were becoming increasingly aggressive towards us even before last week’s mayhem in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, etc.  Team Obama (notably in the person of its hapless and overexposed UN Ambassador, Susan Rice) and its running dogs in the elite media would nonetheless have us believe that the upset is the by-product of an amateurish short video that disparages Mohamed.

In fact, as most sentient beings have realized by now, that film is but the latest pretext for Islamists to demand our adherence to what they call shariah blasphemy laws.  [Such laws are but a part of the larger, brutally repressive Islamic political, military and legal doctrine that prohibits any expression that offends, or otherwise is unhelpful to, their faith.]

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has repeatedly conveyed a willingness to accommodate – or at least tolerate – this threat to one of our most fundamental constitutional liberties: freedom of speech.  That willingness is part of a pattern of submissive behavior that has encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies to believe that America is in retreat and that shariah’s inevitable, divinely-directed and global triumph is at hand.  Their response, predictably, is to redouble efforts to make us, in the Quran’s words, “feel subdued.”

Examples of such behavior abound.  Consider just a few of the more telling cases-in-point (for more, visit www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com):

  • In May 2009, President Obama insisted that Muslim Brotherhood representatives be in the audience for his first speech directed at the Islamic world.  It was delivered at Cairo University and freighted with apologies for past U.S. policies and efforts to associate himself with the beliefs and priorities of his audience.
  • Interestingly, Mr. Obama had already operationalized that policy approach two months before, by having the U.S. delegation to the UN Human Rights Council co-sponsor with Egypt a resolution drafted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).  The object of the exercise was to further the OIC’s longstanding objective of forcing UN member nations to prohibit and criminalize expression that offends Islam.
  • In July 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a formal effort with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation dubbed the “Istanbul Process” to explore ways in which our First Amendment rights could accommodate shariah blasphemy laws.  (Some of those playing an influential role in this exercise are discussed in a booklet about “The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration” I just published with the David Horowitz Freedom Center:http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/the-muslim-brotherhood-in-the-obama-administration/.)
  • In December 2011, the Istanbul Process achieved an ominous milestone:  The odious UN Human Rights Council adopted, with strong U.S. support, Resolution 16/18 committing member nations to adopt “measures to criminalize incitement to imminent violence based on religion or belief.”  Lest anyone think this a clever finesse, more or less in alignment with current U.S. law, the OIC’s secretary general made clear that his organization did not view it as “the end of the road.”  And, indeed, developments of the past week – both here and abroad, official and non-governmental – suggest that Team Obama is prepared to go farther, too.

Given such encouragement, it is not surprising that the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies would respond by demanding further accommodations to them and their shariah agenda.  What is a surprise, though, is that they are acting out their ambitions at this juncture – not after November 6th, when President Obama will, in his words, “have more flexibility.”  It suggests that the Islamists have reached their tipping point, propelled to seek decisive domination by President Obama’s perceived weakness, irresolution and submissiveness.

In the face of our enemies’ overreaching aggressiveness, however, the American people now face a tipping point of their own.  If they arrive at the only sensible conclusion – namely, that four more years of the Obama administration’s malfeasance with respect to jihadism of both the violent and the stealthy, pre-violent kind – they may just respond by refusing to re-up a presidency that enables and emboldens our foes and undermines our liberties and friends.  And should such a tipping point be realized, it will be one of truly epic historic proportions and prized by freedom-loving peoples forever.

The world’s not better off

Eleven years after 9/11, President Obama would have us believe that, at least with respect to our national security, we are better off than we were when he came to office. Specifically, he now claims that al Qaeda – the terrorist organization that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on that terrible day – is “on the path to defeat.”

That contention is, of course, predicated in part on the laudable fact that al Qaeda’s founder, Osama bin Laden, is dead, as are a number of the organization’s other senior leaders. The President deserves credit for achieving such successes.

But they do not mean even that the group that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks are nearly defeated. In fact, its franchises are going – and growing – concerns in places like Libya, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali and Pakistan, to say nothing of the theaters We have abandoned (Iraq), or are in the process of abandoning (Afghanistan).

More importantly, even if it were true that al Qaeda is being defeated, a net assessment would clearly show that, on Mr. Obama’s watch, the world has become much more hospitable to its ideology and goals, and much less safe for America and our interests.

That is the case in no small measure because of the help Team Obama has given to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that fully shares al Qaeda’s ambitions to impose its totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine known as shariah on the rest of the world under the rule of a Caliph. As the Center for Security Policy has documented in a free online video-based curriculum entitled The Muslim Brotherhood in America: the Enemy Within, that help has taken myriad forms including: recognizing and engaging the Brotherhood in Egypt; helping it come to power there; and providing $1.5 billion in aid after the Brotherhood’s political party dominated Egyptian parliamentary elections and on the eve of the election of its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, to the presidency.

The Obama administration is preparing to do still more for the Brothers in Egypt now that they have established effectively complete control in one of the Middle East’s most strategic nations. It is engineering another $1 billion in debt relief at U.S. taxpayer expense and over $4 billion in assistance from international financial organizations (a substantial chunk of which will come out of our hides, too).

It is also warning Israel not to object to Egypt’s remilitarization of the Sinai, in blatant violation of the peace treaty between the two nations signed at Camp David in 1979. And it is preparing to roll out the red carpet for Brother Morsi in New York and the White House later this month.

Are such steps a problem – especially collectively? After all, the Muslim Brothers are, according to Mr. Obama’s administration, the sort of benign Islamists with whom we can safely deal since they have, in the words of the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, “eschewed violence.”

In point of fact, the Brothers have no more eschewed violence towards infidels and even Muslims who stand in the way of their geopolitical ambitions than they are, in another unforgettable example of Gen. Clapper’s cluelessness, “a largely secular organization.” These rabid and avowed Islamists are perfectly prepared to use violence – think Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise – when they believe it will conduce to success.

Until that time, shariah requires its adherents to pursue the same goals through means that are best described as pre-violent, rather than non-violent. And it is the steady progress that the prime practitioners of this approach – which the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” – have made unnoticed, or at least un-countered, by President Obama and his subordinates that has actually made the world vastly more dangerous than it was when they came to office.

Just how dangerous may be on display when President Obama hosts Mohamed Morsi. It will be interesting to see whether he emboldens that Islamist, as he has others, by bowing to him. But what will be far more important than such symbolic gestures is what further concessions Mr. Obama offer, concessions that – according to the doctrine of shariah – are interpreted as tangible signs of our submission?

One that will be at the top of Mr. Morsi’s agenda is his demand that the United States release one of the most world’s most dangerous jihadists, Omar Abdul Rahman. Better known as the “Blind Sheikh,” this terrorist was convicted of leading, among other conspiracies, the first, lethal attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Presumably, President Obama would not dare pardon or transfer Abdul Rahman to Egypt before his “last election,” but he may feel free to do so afterwards – when he has, in his words, “more flexibility.”

Either way, the Morsi visit will be a “teachable moment” for every American. All other things being equal, it will demonstrate tangibly that eleven years after 9/11 – notwithstanding the tactical successes achieved by our courageous servicemen and women, lethal drones and intelligence and homeland security professionals, we are losing, not winning, the war against those who are driven by shariah to wage jihad, of either the violent or stealthy kind, against us. We better pray it will prompt the American
people to insist on a fundamental course correction two months from now.

Face the Iranian Reality

by Bill Siegel

Perhaps President Barack Obama has cleverly back-timed his Iran policy so that he retains the option to act in some forcible manner immediately prior to, and to garner votes for, the 2012 election. He has allowed three years to pass between the time he received a clear rejection of his efforts at “engagement” and the time that sanctions were deployed. If an “October Surprise” is part of his strategy, it will certainly result in something short of addressing the real problems of a nuclear Iran…

This article can be read at Family Security Matters.

Israel Betrayed

In October 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon issued a prophetic warning:  “Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938, when enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a ‘convenient temporary solution’.” He declared: “Israel will not be Czechoslovakia.”

Tragically, President Obama today is increasingly treating Israel as Western leaders did in abandoning the Czechs seventy-four years ago.  He is signaling to a genocidal regime in Iran that the Jewish State is on its own – a signal like the one to which Hitler responded with the worst bloodletting in world history.

To be sure, Team Obama has engaged from the get-go in what Governor Mitt Romney has called “throwing allies like Israel under the bus.”  For example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been treated with utter contempt by President Obama. His demands that the Jewish State make serial and unreciprocated concessions to its Palestinian enemies – including adopting indefensible borders – have been dictated in public and high-handed ways.

Even more troubling has been the cumulative effect of Obama policies towards the Middle East that are helping transform large swaths of the region into a festering Islamist sore, prone to jihad – most immediately against Israel and, inevitably, against the United States.  In particular, Mr. Obama’s determination to legitimate, empower and enrich the government of Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi adds materially to the danger confronting the Jewish State and American interests.

The legitimation will reach new heights later this month when Morsi gets the red-carpet treatment in New York and Washington.  The empowering included not just demands conveyed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in July that the Egyptian military surrender power to Brotherhood-dominated presidency and legislature; it also apparently entails U.S. acquiescence to Morsi’s moves to remilitarize the Sinai in violation of the Camp David Accords.  And the enriching piece involved an unconditional, lump-sum payment earlier this year, over bipartisan congressional objections, and is reportedly to be followed by the incipient transfer of a further $1 billion.

Predictably, as with the sell-out of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, what such concessions will produce is an emboldening of freedom’s enemies.  And that will not be good for its friends – abroad or here.

Much the same can be said of the Obama administration’s appeasement of Iran.  Yes, it has reluctantly imposed – usually at the insistence of the Congress – sanctions on various aspects of the regime and its supporting industrial, commercial and security edifices.  But in virtually every other regard, Team Obama has bought time for the mullahs to complete their nuclear weapons program and efforts to render it essentially invulnerable to attack through relocation of enrichment operations to hardened underground factories.

President Obama and his civilian and military subordinates have done just about everything short of a preemptive strike on the Jewish State to prevent the Israelis from trying to neutralize a looming existential threat to their nation.  They are said to have employed both carrots and sticks – for example, promises of help with doing the deed after the election (trust us!) and evidently compromises of Israeli operational plans for recovering strike aircraft in Azerbaijan, which had the desired effect of foreclosing that option.

In the face of mounting evidence that Israel feels compelled to act alone and within the next two months, the Obama administration has become even more aggressive.  In London last week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, went so far as to declare his opposition to such an attack, saying, “I don’t want to be complicit if they choose to do it.”

While the exact meaning of that statement is unclear, an indication of what the general – and his boss, the Commander-in-Chief – have in mind might have been the subject of a report in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.  It claims that U.S. diplomats have gone to third-parties to communicate to Iran that the United States will not support an Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear program provided the mullahs “steer clear of strategic American assets in the Persian Gulf.”  One can almost hear Neville Chamberlain pledging no objection to the Chechs losing the Sudetenland to the Nazis as long as Hitler agreed to leave the French and Brits alone.  While the White House spokesman says the report is “false,” it sure sounds right.

But what if Israel does attack Iran and Iran does retaliate – not only against U.S. “assets” in the Persian Gulf, but elsewhere including in this country? Can the possibility be ruled out that this President – simpatico as he clearly is with the Iranian regime and hostile as he clearly is towards Israel – responds by finding ways to punish the Jewish State that go beyond a refusal to sustain its military capabilities, as Nixon did in 1973?  Could he even use the pretext of attacks by Iran or its proxies here to invoke the sweeping emergency powers he has granted himself and his subordinates in a series of executive orders to disrupt an election that might otherwise unseat him?

We cannot know the answers to such questions at the moment.  We can only imagine, though, if this is how President Obama behaves on the eve of a national election in which Jewish votes may be critical to his bid for a second term, imagine how he will treat Israel if he has “more flexibility” post-November.

Upcoming U.S. Defense Strategy: Weakness, Trembling and Passing the Buck

By Kalen Taylor

Official Washington has begun to focus on the implications of the planned sequestration of funds in January that will result in record cuts in defense spending.  But while the financial impact is grave, attention should be paid as well to the administration’s philosophical approach to defending our national interests, laid out in a January DOD paper entitled “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense.”

Noting that America must put its “fiscal house” in order, President Obama introduces the paper as America’s solution to a scarcity of resources and growing complexity of challenges.  Written with the budget cuts of FY 2013 in mind (though not sequestration), the guide lays out a framework for a leaner and more nimble military.  The goal, according to the president, is to keep America’s “… Armed Forces the best-trained, best-led, and best-equipped fighting force in history.”  Does the guide produce a better military for less money?  To answer the question, examine the underlying premises of the administration’s strategy.

The basic, pre-sequestration premises are:

  • The U.S. will not be engaged in large-scale ground operations;
  • Smaller, more flexible forces can cover counter-terrorism operations;
  • The U.S. nuclear arsenal can safely be reduced, and nuclear modernization is not an immediate issue;
  • European allies have adequate defense resources to complement those of the U.S.;
  • The U.S. has the resources to “pivot to Asia” without abandoning its responsibilities in the Middle East; and
  • Regardless of the size of the defense budget, the U.S. retains the intellectual and productive capacity to “gin up” whatever is required for unforeseen contingencies.

As the military withdraws from its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the guide postulates a smaller footprint in counter-terrorism, but with a wider reach.  Hostile entities such as al-Qaeda have migrated from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen, Mali, and elsewhere, escalating what was once a regional conflict to a global level.  Maintaining long-term operations in the areas in which non-state actors such as the Taliban operate will remain troublesome as they shift.  The administration proposes a “recalibration” of American capabilities in pursuit of a more adaptable strategy with a smaller budget.  The U.S. military will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations.  This “adaptable” military will in essence, according to the guide, expand the United States’ stabilizing presence by moving smaller and lighter forces from place to place, enabling its allies to better combat these hostile entities.  It’s a sort of macabre game of whack-a-mole.

Anthony Cordesman, a pioneer in defense spending analysis, calls this wishful thinking and “fortune cookie prose.”  What the Pentagon has available to spend to further these goals and the costs associated with operations “providing a stabilizing presence” do not line up.  For instance, the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan may save American resources, but how can anyone maintain that the United States places a “premium” on an American presence in the region while it abandons its allies?  “Abandon” may seem like a strong term, but the U.S. has already canceled the police training program in Iraq that was to have been the centerpiece of continued security.  There are complaints even now in Afghanistan that the Americans are pulling out too quickly for Afghan forces to fill the gaps.  Furthermore, governments in the region rely on American money and equipment as well as training missions as the centerpiece of long-term security.  When budget cuts enter the picture, failures in the very forces that allow America to maintain an indirect “stabilizing” presence could result in doubts about America’s commitment to the region.  The document’s pledge to cut spending and provide stability simultaneously rings hollow in this respect.

With regard to nuclear strategy, the administration postulates, “It is possible that our deterrence goals can be achieved with a smaller nuclear force.”  The guide does not elaborate on what constitutes a credible nuclear deterrent.  Where the guide fails to provide details, however, the administration’s actions regarding America’s nuclear arsenal emphasize reductions rather than maintaining a strong deterrent.  Currently, it is estimated that the administration will reduce the arsenal to 1,000 to 1,100 warheads.  (The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START] limits America’s arsenal to 1,550 by 2018.)  Furthermore, the arsenal is outdated, with the newest additions being over twenty years old.  Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation noted that the United States is the only nuclear power without a substantial modernization program.  The Russians and the Chinese take modernization seriously, while the administration has focused its attention on reduction.  If, as the guide posits, one U.S. goal is to lessen the pressure on America’s conventional armed forces and deter aggression, modernization and minimal cuts to the arsenal would make more sense.

Recognizing the difficulties inherent in the budget shortfall, the strategy relies on America’s allies in Europe to aid in the defense of common interests.  The report sees Europe as a “producer” of security rather than a consumer, meaning it can help the U.S. rather than relying on the U.S. for security assistance.  Europe can be, if not equal to America’s military might, a valuable partner in America’s quest to maintain stability in the world, according to the paper.  In light of Europe’s continuing and growing economic difficulties, such assessment would seem an overstatement, to put it mildly.  Defense spending in Europe has been reduced to where contractors located on the continent are desperate to find consumers abroad to unload backlogs.  England’s military, one of America’s staunchest allies in Afghanistan and Iraq, is facing dramatic cutbacks.  Many of America’s allies are unwilling to spend the necessary resources on their own defense, much less help the U.S.  Despite the economic reality, the paper maintains that Europe is filled with some of America’s most “stalwart” and capable allies.  Politically, perhaps, although after coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are wary of new commitments.  As a fighting force, European countries will prove a brittle cane on which to lean in operations abroad.

Renewed focus on Asia also figures prominently in the paper, as it has in the president’s speeches.  Pentagon plans to increase America’s presence in the Pacific would indicate that America is taking potential adversaries such as China seriously.  However, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said defense cuts increase the risk of fielding a smaller force.  This leaves the impression that America will be relying on a strong qualitative edge over its enemies, requiring a significant investment in R&D.  But cuts in the military threaten toundermine R&D programs. Meanwhile, nations such as China increased their defense spending in the past year; in China’s case, it was over 11%.  This year, Asia is expected tosurpass Europe in military spending.  Furthermore, despite the “pivot to Asia,” the United States boosted its naval presence in the Persian Gulf due to the Iranian threat to the Straits of Hormuz.  The reinforcements include two aircraft carriers and their strike groups.  Simultaneously, Iran’s navy grows stronger by the day as it acquires more fast attack boats and anti-ship missiles.  How does the Pentagon plan to boost its presence in Asia while reinforcing its fleet in the Persian Gulf with a smaller budget?

Wishful thinking is not in short supply when it comes to this document, but what stands out in particular is the idea of America’s “regenerative capabilities.”  Found on page six, “DoD will manage the force in ways that protect its ability to regenerate capabilities that might be needed to meet future, unforeseen demands, maintaining intellectual capital and rank structure that could be called upon to expand key elements of the force.”  This amounts to an admission that American capabilities will suffer from budget cuts, but the risk is acceptable because America can regenerate or recreate them.  The defense industrial base — including factory lines, skilled workers, and strategic metals and minerals; a ready supply of soldiers in an all-volunteer force; a cadre of seasoned officers; and basing rights, prepositioning, and alliances will be difficult to “regenerate” in an emergency.

The impression left by the defense guidance is that the administration believes that it can provide a credible defense at home and abroad while spending less, failing to modernize the nuclear arsenal, and reducing our international footprint.  It outsources a variety of foreign responsibilities to overburdened, less capable, or disinterested allies.  It makes no effort to resolve vague and contradictory goals, and it expects that the American people will pull a rabbit out of its hat when the next big crisis comes.

The next big crisis is sequestration.
Originally published at the American Thinker