PATHETIC – AT 8:35 A.M. ET:  The American people wake up this morning knowing that their president wants to cut the personnel of their armed forces by almost a third over ten years.  This comes as international threats are mounting, not receding.  But Obama is beginning to vindicate the faith placed in him by the left wing of the Democratic Party and its amen corner in the media.

Of course, the new defense plan announced by the president yesterday is being sold as a "smarter" way to do national defense.  That's a big word in an administration that seems to judge people by their College Board scores:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama unveiled a defense strategy on Thursday that would expand the U.S. military presence in Asia but shrink the overall size of the force as the Pentagon seeks to reduce spending by nearly half a trillion dollars after a decade of war.

The strategy, if carried out, would significantly reshape the world's largest military from the one that executed President George W. Bush's "war on terrorism" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cyberwarfare and unmanned drones would continue to grow in priority, as would countering attempts by China and Iran to block U.S. power projection capabilities in areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.
But the size of the U.S. Army and Marines Corps would shrink. So too might the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the U.S. military footprint in Europe.

Troop- and time-intensive counter-insurgency operations, a staple of U.S. military strategy since the 2007 "surge" of extra troops to Iraq, would be far more limited, with the force no longer sized for large-scale, long-term missions.

No matter how you slice it, we will be weaker.   The emphasis on Asia is reasonable, but it comes at a time when Russia is expanding its strength and acting very much the bully in Europe.

Britain's defense minister is expressing worry that the U.S. might not be able to supply the new planes that Britain needs, but Britain's hard-line leftist paper, the Independent, gleefully states:

The mighty American military machine that has for so long secured the country's status as the world's only superpower will have to be drastically reduced, Barack Obama warned yesterday as he set out a radical but more modest new set of priorities for the Pentagon over the next decade.

After the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that defined the first decade of the 21st century, Mr Obama's blueprint for the military's future acknowledged that America will no longer have the resources to conduct two such major operations simultaneously.

What an opportunity for foreign opponents, especially those who might choose to work together.  Squeeze American interests in two places at the same time.

This is pathetic.  The savings over ten years will be about half a trillion dollars.  Now, that's real money, but we can afford it if we have the will to afford it.

We have done these drawdowns before, and we've always come to grief.  Part of the reason for a robust force in being is that it acts as a powerful deterrent.  That deterrent is now being weakened. 

We have, under Obama, dramatically reduced our influence in the Middle East, just as we're seeing a rise in Islamist power.  Mr. Obama doesn't seem terribly concerned.

Some Republicans have made token statements opposing these cutbacks, but the party as a whole seems to have no real defense policy.  And it's leaderless.

By the way, many Democrats in Congress want greater cuts. 

The sound you hear is champagne being poured in Tehran, Moscow, and points east.

January 6, 2012