DEFENSE BATTLES AHEAD – July 4th weekend is a good time to reflect on this quote by Ronald Reagan:  "Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the United States was too strong." 

Several days ago, in The Wall Street Journal, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld warned against irresponsible cuts in the defense budget.  The warning came at the right time.  On both left and right, there are those who can't wait to take an ax to our defenses, the better to free the funds to support their favorite causes.

We have just changed defense secretaries, with Leon Panetta having taken over the Pentagon yesterday.   Panetta is a serious man, and he's now defending his approach to his new job.  From The Hill:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta took over at the Pentagon on Friday and immediately promised the budget cuts he will oversee will not produce a “hollow force.”

Panetta acknowledged the Defense Department will be forced to make “tough budget choices,” but called it a “false choice” that fiscal discipline means weakening national security.

“Even as the United States addresses fiscal challenges at home, there will be no hollow force on my watch,” Panetta said in a statement released after he was sworn in at 8:48 a.m. in his new Pentagon office. “That will require us all to be disciplined in how we manage taxpayer resources.

“Throughout my career in public service ... I have focused on achieving that balance,” Panetta said. “I will continue that approach at the Pentagon.”

The statement touched on a number of issues, from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to the meaning of Independence Day, but the inclusion of his budget vow was his first shot back at critics — many pro-defense GOP House members — who have speculated that he was sent to the Pentagon to usher in deep budget cuts.

Those critics have pointed to Panetta’s background as House Budget Committee chairman and Office of Management and Budget director as evidence President Obama was sending him across the Potomac River to do a deep dive into the Defense budget. What’s more, they note he was White House chief of staff in the 1990s, when the Clinton administration slashed Defense spending.

“Mr. Panetta's tenure begins just as President Obama and bipartisan majorities in Congress are insisting on deep cuts to defense spending,” former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote Friday in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “It will be tempting to accede to the White House's proposal to carve out $400 billion, if not more, from the national security budget by 2023. It would also be a grievous mistake.”

COMMENT:  It's been pointed out that we have cut the defense budget, sometimes substantially, whenever it's announced that "peace" has broken out, and each time we have lived to regret it. 

I suspect that Panetta will try to enact responsible budget cuts, but he is under the thumb of a president who, if he wins a second term, may well revert to his true leftist beliefs and demand the gutting of the Pentagon.  Ordinarily, we could count on Congressional Republicans to stand in the way, and, as the story suggests, there are Republicans prepared to do just that.  Sadly, though, other members of the GOP have reverted to becoming a party of green eyeshades, and their commitment to national defense has gone wobbly.  Our children will pay.

July 2, 2011