Obama wishes to cut our military spending even more than he already has. I meet many people every week in my line of work. The last few weeks I’ve spent much time in both Pensacola and Ft. Walton Beach. As you may know, both cities are heavy with Military personnel. Many subjects are brought up especially Military History and of course the cuts that our Military are subject to. The following were brought up with a young Marine Captain and myself. Since the beginning of time, it’s thought that when you show a timid character, it brings out the aggressiveness of those willing to take advantage of those thought timid. Shortly after sending the British and liberal’s running back home to England, the founding fathers decided to cut the Military budget. So what happened? We had to build up our Navy and Marines again, in order to take care of a little pirate problem in Tripoli. Four years later when that problem was solved, we cut back on our Military again, after all, who will mess with us again? Well shucks, the war of 1812 came about. When that war was over, we immediately cut funding for our military again. After all, we were now safe from the British; we beat them twice now. Next, World War I came about. Just a year before we sent one million of our men to fight in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson promised us that we would not be fighting Europe’s war, therefore there were no risks in cutting our Military budget. When that war to end all wars was over on the 11th. Hour of the 11th. Day of the 11th. Month, of 1918, we immediately slashed defense spending and this President told us we would be OK as we now had the League of Nations preventing another war. In 1939, Japan was running wild in Asia and Hitler was marching through Europe. The military of the United States at this time was the 17th. largest in the world. Both Republican and Democrat were in a turmoil over Roosevelt’s New Deal program and could barely agree on allowing the draft extension. That bill was passed by one vote in the congress. By the end of this war, over 16 million men and women served in the military. Even before Japan surrendered on August 15 1945, Truman was demobilizing military personnel, ships, and aircraft coming in from Europe. We then made draconian cuts to the military and we were given assurances that we need not worry as we now had the UN protecting us from wars ever starting up again. In the next five years we gutted out the military, just in the nick of time before North Korea nearly destroyed the Republic of South Korea. By the time that Police action was over, 5 million personnel had been drafted and 36,000 men and women had been lost. So, we cut defense spending again, for the next 10 years. Thus giving us Vietnam where we lost over 58,000 men and women. Re-building our military took us a couple of years, however the moment we boogied on out of Nam in 1975, we cut the military budget again. Four years of Jimmy Carter nearly bankrupted our country. This guy cut our military to the bone, destroyed our intelligence system and our global standing. We had more than a dozen anti-American revolutions and the end of 6 friendly countries to the US. We also had the Soviet expansions in Africa, and our neighbors in South America. Thankfully Jimmy was run out of office after his one and only term in office. Ronnie Reagan went for the (peace through strength) idea. He built ships, aircraft, and bunches of weapons including ICBM’s. This idea also put millions of Americans to work. When Sadam decided to invade Kuwait, it took our military less than 100 hours to send them packing back to Iraq. Why? We had the military ready and robust with equipment. The strength we showed sent the Soviet Union to it’s demise. Dozens of countries emerged friendly to the US. Well when that deal was over, guess what? we cut military spending again. 9-11 came about; again we had to re-build our military in order to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of listening the real Generals we had left, we removed our troops from Iraq. 5 years later The Obama team has decided to cut military personnel, equipment, ships, and aircraft. The entire world has seen this as being wussy. We now have most of Africa, all of the Middle East in turmoil. France, Britton well most of Europe is under threat from some radical Islamists. Russia is stretching its muscles again; most of South America and Central America are now under siege by cartels and criminal governments. Our borders are under siege but then the biggest problem this president has is climate change. Perhaps he should visit Madison Florida for a day or perhaps two. He could run his heater in the morning, his air conditioner in the afternoon and run his heater again that evening. Now that is real climate change. Hopefully 2016 will bring about a change where we can again hold our head high, secure our borders, and demand the respect we deserve in the world and stop this ISIS in it’s tracks with a greater military powers than we have ever had. My thoughts are, get the good people out of the Middle East, we know who they are. And drop a couple of A bombs in that area. That would take care of the ISIS problem, it would also turn all that sand to glass reflecting the sun back into space ending global change, heating, or whatever we call it today or perhaps even tomorrow. This should make all the pencil neck, thumb sucking, pond scum, bottom feeding, oxygen-thieving liberals happy should it not?
George Pouliotte