Yesterday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis addressed the House Armed Services Committee and told them taht he was ‘shocked” at the state of readiness of his Department to face the threats arrayed against the US, according to AFP;
Pointing to Obama-era budget caps known as sequestration, Mattis said limits on military spending have left troops at greater risk and blocked important new programs — even though the defense budget is already greater than that of the next seven countries combined.
“I retired from military service three months after sequestration took effect,” Mattis, a former Marine general, told the House Armed Services Committee.
“Four years later, I returned to the Department (of Defense), and I have been shocked by what I’ve seen about our readiness to fight… No enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of our military than sequestration.”
I’m sure the Committee “tsk, tsked” their way through the hearing but the fault lies with Congress as much as it does with the Obama Administration since Congress couldn’t make the hard choices bout cuts to the budget’s domestic funding, afraid to anger voters who would lose their “piece of the pie” while defense spending risked national security. Essentially, the last eight years was spent kickig the can down the road. Now President Trump makes the tough choices for them, and still they worry about the effect at the polls.
Committee Chairman Congressman Mac Thornberry and other Republicans bemoaned the increase as insufficient.
“We have spent six years just getting by, asking more and more of those who serve, and putting off the choices that have to be made. We cannot keep piling missions on our service members without ensuring they have all they need to succeed,” Thornberry said.
Although many Democrats on the committee agree, they worry where the money will come from, given the Trump administration’s pressure to cut taxes.
Lord, please don’t let them cut the fat and glut out of the government spending.
Mattis pointed to the war in Afghanistan, which has dragged on since late 2001 with no end in sight, as exacting a heavy price.
Such campaigns have “exhausted our equipment faster than planned. Congress and the Department (of Defense) could not anticipate the accumulated wear and tear of years of continuous combat use,” he said.
Lawmakers repeatedly asked Mattis for an update on Afghanistan, and about whether Trump will deploy thousands more troops to help Afghan partners reverse a stalemate against the resurgent Taliban.
“We’ve got to do things differently,” Mattis acknowledged, noting only that any Afghanistan decision would come “soon.”
Yeah, if Congress would get out of the way and let the generals win in Afghanistan and Syria, that would save taxpayer money. But again, Congress is worried about the beating they’d take in the polling place if the military did what it would have to do to win and end those wars. We already know that unilaterally calling a victory, without the enemy’s agreement, doesn’t work. The examples are Vietnam and Iraq.
