2012 US Presidential Elections

W.G.Ewald · 08-05-12, 03:14 PM

Here is a counterpoint to the sycophantic "Obama warrior" meme.

Huge Defense Cuts By President Obama Would Hollow Out Our Military, Erode Security - Investors.com

The Obama Record: The president's defense strategy creates a hollow force and worsens our readiness crisis. Big cuts mean weakening the military's ability to fulfill its constitutional duty to provide for the common defense.

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the president's victory lap in Afghanistan on the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of the Navy SEALs "an attempt to shore up his national security credentials, because he has spent the past three years gutting our military.

Indeed he has. "He cut the F-22, future combat system, C-17 and our ground-based interceptor in Poland, to name a few," Inhofe noted.

Those are many examples of how Barack Obama has exhibited a hostility to military preparedness even greater than that of Jimmy Carter, who left successor Ronald Reagan with a legacy of ships that couldn't sail and planes the couldn't fly for lack of parts and crew.

President Obama's defense policies fulfill a campaign pledge he made to the far-left group Caucus for Priorities a month before the January 2008 Iowa caucuses. Caucus for Priorities is an offshoot of a bigger group, Priorities Action Fund, created by Ben Cohen, the peace activist and co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

In a video made for the group, Obama called for a further deterioration in our military strength.

"I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems," he said.

So far, he has kept his word.

In the video, he also vowed, "I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons, I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals."

He has kept that promise as well.

As the Heritage Foundation notes, since Obama took office, over 50 major weapons programs of more than $300 billion have been cut or delayed.

Obama, who betrayed Poland and Czechoslovakia on missile defense and shut down key weapon systems like the F-22 Raptor, has vowed to veto any changes to the mandated cuts, including $650 billion from defense as called for by the Budget Control Act over the next decade."

W.G.Ewald · 08-05-12, 03:24 PM

Stephens: To the Class of 2012 - WSJ.com

Dear Class of 2012:

Allow me to be the first one not to congratulate you. Through exertions that—let's be honest—were probably less than heroic, most of you have spent the last few years getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased degree. Now you're entering a lousy economy, courtesy of the very president whom you, as freshmen, voted for with such enthusiasm. Please spare us the self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with your parents. They're the ones who spent a fortune on your education only to get you back— return-to-sender, forwarding address unknown.

No doubt some of you have overcome real hardships or taken real degrees. A couple of years ago I hired a summer intern from West Point. She came to the office directly from weeks of field exercises in which she kept a bulletproof vest on at all times, even while sleeping. She writes brilliantly and is as self-effacing as she is accomplished. Now she's in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.

If you're like that intern, please feel free to feel sorry for yourself. Just remember she doesn't.

Unfortunately, dear graduates, chances are you're nothing like her. And since you're no longer children, at least officially, it's time someone tells you the facts of life. The other facts.

Fact One is that, in our "knowledge-based" economy, knowledge counts. Yet here you are, probably the least knowledgeable graduating class in history.

A few months ago, I interviewed a young man with an astonishingly high GPA from an Ivy League university and aspirations to write about Middle East politics. We got on the subject of the Suez Crisis of 1956. He was vaguely familiar with it. But he didn't know who was president of the United States in 1956. And he didn't know who succeeded that president.

Pop quiz, Class of '12: Do you?

Many of you have been reared on the cliché that the purpose of education isn't to stuff your head with facts but to teach you how to think. Wrong. I routinely interview college students, mostly from top schools, and I notice that their brains are like old maps, with lots of blank spaces for the uncharted terrain. It's not that they lack for motivation or IQ. It's that they can't connect the dots when they don't know where the dots are in the first place.

Now to Fact Two: Your competition is global. Shape up. Don't end your days like a man I met a few weeks ago in Florida, complaining that Richard Nixon had caused his New York City business to fail by opening up China.

In places like Ireland, France, India and Spain, your most talented and ambitious peers are graduating into economies even more depressed than America's. Unlike you, they probably speak several languages. They may also have a degree in a hard science or engineering—skills that transfer easily to the more remunerative jobs in investment banks or global consultancies.

I know a lot of people like this from my neighborhood in New York City, and it's a good thing they're so well-mannered because otherwise they'd be eating our lunch. But if things continue as they are, they might soon be eating yours.

Which reminds me of Fact Three: Your prospective employers can smell BS from miles away. And most of you don't even know how badly you stink.

When did puffery become the American way? Probably around the time Norman Mailer came out with "Advertisements for Myself." But at least that was in the service of provoking an establishment that liked to cultivate an ideal of emotional restraint and public reserve.

To read through your CVs, dear graduates, is to be assaulted by endless Advertisements for Myself. Here you are, 21 or 22 years old, claiming to have accomplished feats in past summer internships or at your school newspaper that would be hard to credit in a biography of Walter Lippmann or Ernie Pyle.

If you're not too bright, you may think this kind of nonsense goes undetected; if you're a little brighter, you probably figure everyone does it so you must as well.

But the best of you don't do this kind of thing at all. You have an innate sense of modesty. You're confident that your résumé needs no embellishment. You understand that less is more.

In other words, you're probably capable of thinking for yourself. And here's Fact Four: There will always be a market for people who can do that.

In every generation there's a strong tendency for everyone to think like everyone else. But your generation has an especially bad case, because your mass conformism is masked by the appearance of mass nonconformism. It's a point I learned from my West Point intern, when I asked her what it was like to lead such a uniformed existence.

Her answer stayed with me: Wearing a uniform, she said, helped her figure out what it was that really distinguished her as an individual.

Now she's a second lieutenant, leading a life of meaning and honor, figuring out how to Think Different for the sake of a cause that counts. Not many of you will be able to follow in her precise footsteps, nor do you need to do so. But if you can just manage to tone down your egos, shape up your minds, and think unfashionable thoughts, you just might be able to do something worthy with your lives. And even get a job. Good luck!

Damian · 08-05-12, 03:25 PM

Well if I agree that F-22 should be further manufactured (lines are still there, and will be kept ready for production if needed) I do not agree about FCS program, it was huge waste of money, especially on ultralight vehicles that were designed per demands from 1990's early 2000's. It's good that they were cut, but saved money should be invested more in to recap and modernization of currently existing fleet of AFV's, and in top R&D for their future replacements.

But other than that senator is preatty much right, Obama seems to be... naive and overidealistic, and world don't work that way.

asianobserve · 08-05-12, 03:53 PM

At least he had the good judgment to oppose the clumsily conceived Iraqi invasion, which is the single biggest drain in American finances (in reply to Mr. Ewald's quoted article). Had it not been for this unsound decision (Iraqi invasion) the current administration may not have to make severe cutbacks in defense spending... (This is not counting the huge diplomatic cost of this invasion.)

W.G.Ewald · 08-05-12, 04:01 PM

US secretly releasing Taliban fighters, report says | Fox News

More naivite from The Warrior.

asianobserve · 08-05-12, 04:04 PM

And what do you suggest your government do in Afghanistan? Spend more the money borrowed from China to dig your terminal decline?

W.G.Ewald · 08-05-12, 04:05 PM

I suggest a completely separate sub-forum be created within DFI for the worship of Obama.

asianobserve · 08-05-12, 04:06 PM

No need, this "Obama-Worship" thread will do.

W.G.Ewald · 08-05-12, 04:33 PM

I certainly would not suggest a "catch and release" policy for the enemy. Only an Obama Warrior would advocate for that.

As for our "terminal decline" you may gloat all you want, but what will happen to your flyspeck of a country when the US goes away?

Long-range thinking is not your strong suit, is it?

W.G.Ewald · 08-05-12, 04:39 PM

I understand why you worship our post-American and anti-Israel president.

Malaysia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Damian · 08-05-12, 04:42 PM

Well, smaller pacific and Asia region countries, might be in trouble if USA decides to withdraw and isolate from the world as in the past. This will definetly lead to China more agressive politics, and who will oppose then?

USA is not perfect but on the other hand what else we have? But there is a hope, USA allways had a times of increase and decrease in economy, some wear far worser than that "crisis" we have now. It might be just a cycle of such times, and USA allways ended stronger after each crisis, so not everything is that bad in a long term, the problematic question is how long the decrease in US economy will be functioning before increase cycle will replace it, and this might be problematic.

Godless-Kafir · 08-05-12, 09:57 PM

He is in a position to be idealistic and even utopian. Either way he is a liar, i mean just another politician.

Damian · 09-05-12, 12:18 AM

This is why he is not good politician. Good politician and leader is realist, cunning and smart, do not belive in cheap ideals like "everyone love everyone" and such BS.

But this only prooves very old truth, Democracy is not good overall (even if US democracy was and is still the best form of this system). Monarchy is better, King, Emperor etc. will treat his nation, country, state as his property and will take care of it, make hard decisions to ensure prosperity and future for it, and if not... well who is easier to be poisoned, a bad king or 500 senators, prime minister and president that are all unable to properly rule country? Answer is easy eh?

ice berg · 09-05-12, 01:11 AM

Yah, those silly asian people. Without the US, they will surely fall apart.

Yah, How will the world survive without them. without their divine guidance, they surely will tear each other apart.

And Obama is naive and not a good politician? hahhahahahah.

Someone are easily fooled, I guess.

Damian · 09-05-12, 01:39 AM

I think You completely not understand reality, what is typical for people living in a country with goverment like that in PRC.

Asians are not sillyt, nor they will fall arapt without US. It is a matter of choice, do they want to live under PRC's complete reign that will not be good for them ( know how it is to live in a country that was controlled by communists/socialists from a much bigger country with far more resources and military power, and it's not nice thing.

So they can choose relative indepencene under US that will respect their independence or PRC that will use every occasion to spread it's power over the region, that is typical for power hungry morons from communist/socialist party (parties).

Yes it is. He decrease military spending while increasing taxes and increasing hidden taxes by spending money on ineffective and expensive public healthcare for example, that leads to money waste, and high taxes make normal citizens less wealthy. It is typical for public social help programs that forces working citizens to sponsor mostly not productive citizens.

In simple words : more goverment, taxes, public programs spending money on mostly useless things and less private activity, less wealther for normal citizens because they need to pay for these "free" services, then we have more decrease in economy. There are of course other factors like unnececary support of state for big companys if they are uneffective. In normal situation they should fall making place for new, more effective companys. Just like in natural cycle of born and death, old and ineffective makes place for young and more effective. This is normal situation. Idealist with left wing ideology and political views do not see or understand this and lead to absurdal situations, and in effect in to decrease in economic growith of state and wealthare of citizens that need to pay for "great ideas of their leaders".

PRC have this luck that actually it's goverment may use still preatty low life level of most of it's citizens, pay them less money for their work, and export cheap products, so goverment can make money on that.

But it looks like a typical short seeing, the biggest market for these cheap products is USA, so what happens when USA withdraw from competition? Or even it's economy collapse? Chine losts it's market, lost it's profits, and there is no other such market on this planet that can replace USA. So decline of USA means decline of PRC in the reality because PRC's economy is based mostly on very weak basis.

This is simplified but preatty much correct.

Words of a man where goverment and stare are censorship happy and there is strong state propaganda of "how great we are and others sucks"... Please, I know too much how honest are people from communist/socialist states.

View Poll Results: Who would you vote for, if you were a US citizen ?

2012 US Presidential Elections

W.G.Ewald

W.G.Ewald

Damian

asianobserve

W.G.Ewald

asianobserve

W.G.Ewald

asianobserve

W.G.Ewald

W.G.Ewald

Damian

Godless-Kafir

Damian

ice berg

Damian

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