{"id":6408,"date":"2008-12-22T05:44:18","date_gmt":"2008-12-22T10:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=6408"},"modified":"2008-12-22T05:44:18","modified_gmt":"2008-12-22T10:44:18","slug":"ny-times-armchair-generals-jonn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=6408","title":{"rendered":"NY Times armchair generals [Jonn]"},"content":{"rendered":"

The editorial staff of the New York Times<\/a> took a shot at being generals yesterday and tried to give advice to the Pentagon, Congress and the Obama Administration on how to cut military spending. First of all, remember that just the a week or so ago, the New York Times had to generate cash, not by improving their product to generate sales, but by leasing out their office space – like your brilliant brother-in-law whose money-making schemes are based on renting out a spare bedroom to strangers.<\/p>\n

But anyway, the editorial board proves they are no more war planners than they are financial wizards;<\/p>\n

End production of the Air Force’s F-22. The F-22 was designed to ensure victory in air-to-air dogfights with the kind of futuristic fighters that the Soviet Union did not last long enough to build. The Air Force should instead rely on its version of the new high-performance F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which comes into production in 2012 and like the F-22 uses stealth technology to elude enemy radar.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Cancel the DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyer. This is a stealthy blue water combat ship designed to fight the kind of midocean battles no other nation is preparing to wage.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Halt production of the Virginia class sub. Ten of these unneeded attack submarines – modeled on the cold-war-era Seawolf, whose mission was to counter Soviet attack and nuclear launch submarines – have already been built.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Pull the plug on the Marine Corps’s V-22 Osprey. After 25 years of trying, this futuristic and unnecessary vertical takeoff and landing aircraft has yet to prove reliable or safe.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Halt premature deployment of missile defense.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Negotiate deep cuts in nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

President-elect Barack Obama should also take all ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert and commit to reducing the nation’s absurdly large stock of backup warheads. These steps will make the world safer.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Trim the active-duty Navy and Air Force. The United States enjoys total dominance of the world’s seas and skies and will for many years to come.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notice that they justify all of these cuts on the basis of the shape of the world today. It’s as if they can’t see past the end of their collective nose. How quickly did the shape of our armed forces and their battle focus change on September 11, 2001? We went from worrying about patrolling the skies over Iraq, cruise missile strikes and meals-on-wheels missions in the Baltics to fighting low intensity counter-insurgency operations around the world overnight.<\/p>\n

An enemy exploits our weaknesses, not play to our strengths. The New York Times editorial staff doesn’t understand that simple concept. Their cuts open up weaknesses for an enemy to exploit. The reason we haven’t been attacked in the conventional way since 1941 is because we have no military weaknesses to exploit. We’ve stayed ahead in technology to any potential adversary and kept all of the cracks in our dike plugged.<\/p>\n

We were most vulnerable in the 70s when we were still outfitting our troops with Korean War equipment and weapons made to fight in Vietnam. Our tanks and fighting vehicles were two generations behind the Soviets. Our lift capability was still configured to lift light infantry replacements to Asia. That’s why the Soviets took their opportunity to invade Afghanistan and stationed a combat brigade in Cuba. It’s why communist guerillas permeated Central America and Africa.<\/p>\n

The New York Times has battled the Bush Administration at every turn in the war against terrorism.\u00a0 They’ve shown a willingness to undermine our national security at every opportunity. Apparently, that’s not going to change in the new administration either.<\/p>\n

Thanks to D.<\/a> for the tip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The editorial staff of the New York Times took a shot at being generals yesterday and … NY Times armchair generals [Jonn]<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}