Freedom Line Blog

As we emerge from Memorial Day, Gallup has released a new poll that offers both encouraging and unsettling takeaways.

On the positive side, Americans overall remain extremely favorable toward all five military branches.  The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard receive “Very Favorable” ratings of 53%, 55%, 57%, 59% and 54%, respectively.  For anyone who remembers the post-Vietnam and Carter era malaise, that has to come as welcome news.

Unfortunately, it appears that even military esteem is subject to our deepening partisan divides:

Differences emerge, however, by political party, race and age.  Republicans, non-Hispanic whites and those aged 55 and older who are aware of each branch are much more likely to have strongly favorable views of each of the five branches than are Democrats, nonwhites or those younger than 35.  The biggest gaps in favorable opinion are between Republicans and Democrats (including those who lean to either party).  The largest is a 35-point difference in views toward the Navy, with 74% of Republicans versus 39% of Democrats having strongly favorable views…

Whatever one’s political affiliation, it would be a tragedy for the military to become another outlet for expression of partisanship.  We live in far too dangerous a world, and hopefully this gap diminishes soon.

Today’s image of the day, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, how $100 of your federal taxes are now allocated by the government:

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Federal Spending Allocation

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For perspective (see image below), that means that military spending has declined an alarming 22.3% since just 2011.  In contrast, since 2011 Social Security spending is up 17%, Medicare is up 15.1%, Medicaid is up 25.4%, civilian federal retirement is up 11.3%, education is up 5.3% and interest payments are up 1.8%.  Something to consider as important budget and spending battles heat up…

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2011 Comparison

In an interview with CFIF, Justin T. Johnson, Senior Policy Analyst for Defense Budgeting Policy at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security and Foreign Policy, discusses the 2016 Index of U.S. Military Strength, the National Defense Authorization Act and the dangers that lie ahead if the U.S. military remains dangerously weak and unprepared.

Listen to the interview here.

Year after year, the public rates the U.S. military the most trusted and popular institution in American life.  Now, at a moment in which the military may play an increasingly vital role in protecting us against growing terrorist threats and and increasingly restive antagonists like Russia and China, a new poll reveals that Hillary Clinton’s standing among military personnel can only be described as atrocious:

Hillary Clinton is still in line to win the Democratic Party’s nomination to be the next commander in chief, but few Americans in the military have a good impression of her.  A new Rally Point/Rasmussen Reports national survey of active and retired military personnel finds that only 15% have a favorable impression of Clinton, with just three percent (3%) who view the former Secretary of State very favorably. Clinton is seen unfavorably by 81%, including 69% who share a very unfavorable impression of her.”

For someone applying for the job of Commander in Chief, that is an ominous sign, and one that may receive increasing attention as the 2016 election approaches.

There’s no requirement that the Defense Secretary have actual military experience, but the selection of Ashton “Ash” Carter as the nominee to replace Chuck Hagel says a lot about what President Barack Obama wants from his next Pentagon chief.

“In addition to a broad understanding of the Pentagon bureaucracy, Carter is seen as a master of managing large budgets, a premium in the present era of continued belt tightening on Capitol Hill, as well as an expert on weapons acquisitions,” reports CNN.

“He also has a firm grasp on understanding the trends and technology of warfare in the future.”

Previously, Carter served as Deputy Defense Secretary – the Pentagon’s number two position – under Hagel and Leon Panetta. He’s bounced between academia and government with great success. Carter is apparently respected by the top military brass and is expected not to generate much controversy from Republicans when formally announced.

Yet for all the operational strengths Carter brings to the table – which appear to be considerable and surely appreciated on a day-to-day basis – missing from CNN’s bio piece is any mention of whether Carter as SecDef will have strong principles to guide his recommendations to President Obama regarding military strategy or foreign policy.

And maybe that’s the point.

From the looks of it, Ash Carter is a hardworking, intelligent man who knows how to get things done within a hugely important bureaucracy. Missing from his portfolio, though, is any indicator that he will be much more than yes-man.

Then again, maybe that’s the point.

Robert McDonald, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, is President Barack Obama’s nominee to run the scandal-ridden Department of Veterans Affairs.

McDonald’s nomination is catching some in the veterans’ community off-guard. Unlike previous VA Secretaries, he’s not a general – though he did graduate from West Point and serve for five years as an Army paratrooper before jumping to P&G.

He’s also neither a medical doctor, nor does he have experience administering a hospital; traits that some think would be useful for a person stepping into the nation’s largest health system with 1,700 facilities.

Indeed, the case being made for McDonald is that his background in brand management and customer service signals that Obama thinks the main problem at the VA is bad leadership.

Which brings us to an interesting question – Is McDonald’s job just to make the VA’s public face more attractive, or is it to get the sprawling department into tip-top, customer satisfaction shape?

The answer depends on how much latitude President Obama is giving McDonald to operate. For example, in places like Phoenix where staff and administrators falsified records to get performance bonuses, does McDonald have the authority to fire and hire political appointees as well as career civil servants? Does he have the flexibility to outsource patients to private medical providers in regions where the VA hospitals are overbooked?

Senate Republicans should ask McDonald these and other questions during his confirmation hearings. Veterans and their families deserve to know whether the VA’s new chief has the power to be a turnaround artist, or just a place warmer.

Those of us on the right tend to be more defensive about the Pentagon than most organs of the federal government, and with good reason: it’s unquestionably a legitimate function of the federal government to maintain a military and protect America’s security interests, both at home and abroad. Too often, however, we get caught in a false dichotomy about the Department of Defense, with hawks unwilling to entertain the notion of the military seeing its budget cut by even one red cent and a certain strain of libertarians wanting to cut the military to the bone.

In between those two poles is a more sensible position: the military should receive absolutely everything it needs to discharge its core mission of defending the country and our interests abroad … and should be brought to heel like any other government agency when it wastes that money. And believe me, there’s a lot of waste.

Reuters is currently in the midst of chronicling this dysfunction with a series of articles on the incredibly flawed accounting and procurement techniques used by the Pentagon. The most recent installment is jaw-droppingly detailed. It’s a very long read, but one worth your time. A sample:

In its investigation, Reuters has found that the Pentagon is largely incapable of keeping track of its vast stores of weapons, ammunition and other supplies; thus it continues to spend money on new supplies it doesn’t need and on storing others long out of date. It has amassed a backlog of more than half a trillion dollars in unaudited contracts with outside vendors; how much of that money paid for actual goods and services delivered isn’t known. And it repeatedly falls prey to fraud and theft that can go undiscovered for years, often eventually detected by external law enforcement agencies.

The consequences aren’t only financial; bad bookkeeping can affect the nation’s defense. In one example of many, the Army lost track of $5.8 billion of supplies between 2003 and 2011 as it shuffled equipment between reserve and regular units. Affected units “may experience equipment shortages that could hinder their ability to train soldiers and respond to emergencies,” the Pentagon inspector general said in a September 2012 report.

Because of its persistent inability to tally its accounts, the Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with a law that requires annual audits of all government departments. That means that the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for. That sum exceeds the value of China’s economic output last year.

You’ll be horrified by the waste and sheer administrative bloat. You’ll be even more disturbed, however, when you read how difficult efforts at reform have been. Read the whole thing here.

First the Obama administration barricaded veterans from visiting the open-air World War II monument.

Then it ordered the forced closure of a privately-funded colonial farm.

Now comes word that the Department of Defense is ordering the service academies to suspend all intercollegiate athletic events during the government shutdown because of “optics.”

On Tuesday, a soccer game between the Naval Academy and Howard University was postponed indefinitely due to an order from DOD.

Up next may be the nationally televised football game between Navy and the Air Force Academy scheduled for Saturday.

“The potential revenue loss to the Naval Academy Athletic Association would likely exceed $4 million,” a Naval Academy spokesman told the Capital Gazette. “That money comes from ticket sales, sponsorship, parking and concession revenue. The largest revenue stream is the payout NAA receives from CBS Sports Television.”

The worst part about this – The athletic program at Navy is completely funded by private donors. Air Force could make the trip without using any government money as well.

In other words, all expenses for Saturday’s game could be held without congressionally appropriated funding, yet the political officials running the military won’t allow it to happen.

When asked for DOD’s rationale, Navy’s Athletic Director said he was told it was about “optics.” “It’s a perception thing. Apparently it doesn’t resonate with all the other government agencies that have been shut down,” he said.

This isn’t politics. It is ugliness pure and simple.

H/T: National Review Online

McClatchy news ran a piece yesterday describing how President Barack Obama’s seeming indecision on striking Syria is being interpreted by Middle Easterners.

“Obama’s abrupt decision on Saturday to delay the strikes that seemed just hours away is being seen in the region as the latest confirmation of an incoherent U.S. approach of mixed messages and unfulfilled threats that have driven America’s standing to a new low,” the paper said, citing numerous interviews with Syrian rebels and others.

The confusion wasn’t helped during Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. There, the Vietnam veteran and anti-war hero did an about-face. Without a hint of irony he argued that in asking for congressional approval to fire missiles at Syria “President Obama is not asking America to go to war.”

Instead, the President was “asking only for the power to make clear, to make certain, that the United States means what we say,” when the Commander-in-Chief threatens military force.

But the fact remains that firing missiles into another country is an act of war, a fact that didn’t escape Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) before heading into the hearing.

“This is the most serious policy decision any senator will make,” reports the Daily Caller. “Authorizing the use of military force is, let’s face it, is a declaration of war against another country, no matter how limited it is, that’s what it is.”

Kudos to Senator Corker for saying the truth out loud. He understands the real world consequences of this decision, as do the Syrian rebels, Syrian President Bashar Assad and every other sentient being paying attention.

So far, the Obama administration is doing itself no favors by pushing forward an ad hoc, incoherent rationale for bombing a government whose actions – while immoral and deplorable – don’t necessarily threaten America’s national security interests.

Jeffrey Goldberg says debate is white-hot inside the Obama administration over whether to use U.S.-led airstrikes against Syria’s airbases.

According to Goldberg’s sources, Secretary of State John Kerry is calling for immediate and sustained airstrikes to punish Bashar Assad’s regime for using chemical weapons against rebels. Earlier, President Barack Obama had said that such use would justify an increased American response to the rising number of deaths in the war.

But Kerry’s airstrikes idea was shot down in a tense Situation Room exchange by Army General Martin Dempsey, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Pentagon estimates that at least 700 sorties would be needed to effectively destroy the airfields. That increases the probability an American pilot would be shot down, killed or taken as a prisoner of war.

The dilemma on Syria is this: No one wants the conflict to turn into another occasion of genocide like Rwanda or Darfur, but no one is eager to get involved in a fight where the choice of ally is either the Hezbollah-aligned regime or the al-Qaeda-aligned rebels.

So far, the Defense Department is winning the argument. The absence of a clear definition of victory means the Obama administration likely won’t do much else than send small arms and ammo to the rebels – a symbolic gesture that won’t do much to change the course of the war.

Considering the information available, that’s probably the best move to make.

As a follow-on to Quin’s column this week, it’s interesting to learn which people agencies of the federal government think deserve to be profiled, monitored, etc.

On the one hand, as the Washington Examiner (echoing Quin) points out, FBI training manuals were systematically purged in 2011 of all references to Islam that were judged offensive by a specially created five-member panel.” “Nearly 900 pages were removed from the manuals as a result of that review.”

Without a training manual to fall back on for cover, it’s no wonder that FBI agents took a hands-off approach when investigating Tamerlan Tsarnev, one of the two Boston Marathon bombers who posted a pro-jihad video on his Facebook page. Without specific, bureau-approved criteria for monitoring Tsarnev even though he expressed radical views, frontline investigators let a future terrorist roam free.

But not to worry; the Obama administration knows whom to target.

David Limbaugh over at NewsBusters has a sobering round-up of many of the instances of government profiling of Christians, pro-lifers, and Second Amendment supporters.

Examples include military bases blocking access to the Southern Baptist Convention’s website for “hostile content,” a West Point study linking pro-life advocates to terrorism and a Department of Homeland Security briefing alleging that returning military veterans with Tea Party views could pose a security threat.

Branches of the federal government as diverse as the U.S. Army, DHS and the Houston National Cemetery, among others, are part of a seemingly coordinated effort to monitor and marginalize people that not so long ago would have been considered as the patriotic backbone of America. In today’s upside-down world, however, not so much.

Clearly, when it wants to, the Obama administration knows how to keep tabs on individuals and groups it deems dangerous to public safety. Unfortunately, they aren’t the people who are acting like terrorists.

Americans might expect the U.S. government to demonstrate greater concern about who supplies resources and equipment to our men and women in uniform.  This week, however, the Obama Administration announced its decision to award a much-disputed, high-stakes Air Force light air support (LAS) contract to a Brazilian company over one based in Kansas.

The LAS contract could be worth over $950 million, so we’re irrationally sending nearly a billion American taxpayer dollars to Brazil despite the weak state of our manufacturing sector and economy more broadly.  But this is about more than the initial 20 aircraft, or the money associated with building them.  Americans should also be troubled that Embraer receives tremendous subsidies from the Brazilian government, which has been very vocal in its opposition to the War on Terror and American interests while siding with Iran and Venezuela time and again.  As one of the few nations that continues to work with the Iranian regime, Brazil and Embraer have already supplied aircraft similar to their LAS offering to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Perhaps even more alarming, a provision woven into Embraer’s bylaws would enable the Brazilian government to halt the manufacturing or maintenance of the warplane at any given time, with no threat of repercussions from the U.S.  This could mean anything from withholding parts to complete cessation of production.  For a country so outspoken in its opposition to America’s global foreign policy objectives and our stance against governments that commit such grotesque crimes against their own citizens as well as other nations, how can we trust that they won’t disrupt the delivery of these aircraft in pursuit of their own political motives?

The Obama Administration’s decision to outsource the production of American military equipment to Brazil is not only illogical, it creates an unconscionable threat to our national security.  Embraer and Brazil have publically stated that their immense focus on this contract is motivated by their desire to secure a U.S. Air Force endorsement of their product, which in turn allows them to more effectively market it to other nations.  If history tells us anything, Embraer and the Brazilian government that controls it will have no qualms about selling our enemies the same aircraft they will be providing to our Air Force.

It is morally and economically untenable that United States government would prefer a Brazilian supplier that is publicly opposed to the very cause for which we need the equipment.  Awarding this contract to a historically unfriendly foreign sovereign suggests that the Obama Administration is not only careless in its foreign policy judgment, it’s reckless in the equipment it selects to carry out the mission.

There’s no question that the forthcoming federal spending cuts under the sequester aren’t ideal, particularly given the indiscriminate way in which they’ll be applied. Republicans in Congress, however, have rightly determined that indelicate cuts are a better option than a compromise that does little or nothing to arrest the trajectory of our debt crisis (even if they haven’t quite worked out the messaging yet).

Standing firm on that principle means accepting some pretty large cuts to defense, but as Byron York notes in a must-read column for the Washington Examiner, the Pentagon is going out of its way to make the situation seem much worse than it really is:

… Over many decades of defense budget battles, the Pentagon has often used a tactic known as a “gold watch.” It means to answer a budget cut proposal by selecting for elimination a program so important and valued — a gold watch — that Pentagon chiefs know political leaders will restore funding rather than go through with the cut.

So now, with sequestration approaching, the Pentagon has announced that the possibility of budget cuts has forced the Navy to delay deployment of the carrier USS Harry S. Truman to the Persian Gulf. With tensions with Iran as high as they’ve ever been, that would leave the U.S. with just one carrier, instead of the preferred two, in that deeply troubled region.

“Already, the threat of these cuts has forced the Navy to delay an aircraft carrier that was supposed to deploy to the Persian Gulf,” Obama said at a White House appearance on Tuesday, in case anyone missed the news.

Some military analysts were immediately suspicious. “A total gold watch,” said one retired general officer who asked not to be named. Military commentator and retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters called the Navy’s move “ostentatious,” comparing it to “Donald Trump claiming he can’t afford a cab.”

… Meanwhile, with a budget higher than it was even at the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Pentagon is resisting attempts to force it to audit its own finances. Congress passed a law back in 1990 requiring such an audit, to no avail. Last year, Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., introduced the Audit the Pentagon Act, which would try again to force a look inside the maze of Pentagon spending.

Now, with the Defense Department sounding the alarm about sequestration, some budget hawks on Capitol Hill are doubtful. “It’s difficult to take these doomsday scenarios seriously when the Pentagon can’t even audit its own books,” says a spokesman for Coburn. “We would argue that the Defense Department has the authority to reprioritize funding toward vital needs and away from less vital spending. As Sen. Coburn has detailed, the department spends nearly $70 billion each year on ‘nondefense’ defense spending that has nothing to do with our national security.”

Yes, the Pentagon does represent some of the most vital spending that takes place in Washington. But conservatives especially should remember that it remains, on many levels, a conventional bureaucracy, prone to defend well-established power centers and jealous of every dollar that comes its way.

The goals of cutting spending and preserving national security are not mutually exclusive.

It looks like Quin’s prediction that Senate Republicans would filibuster Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be the next Defense Secretary was right on.

Politico and Fox News are reporting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn’t have 60 votes necessary to shut down a threatened Republican filibuster, so it looks like Hagel will be in confirmation limbo until at least February 25^th.

The reasons given revolve mainly around trying to pressure the White House to turn over documents detailing the Obama Administration’s response during and after the terrorist attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  So far, there have been only cursory remarks by Republican Senators that a vote on Hagel is being delayed because of problems raised by his past policy statements and inconsistent testimony two weeks ago.

Right now, it looks like the GOP, as the minority party in the Senate, is trying to assert itself any way it can.  But there is a risk the move could backfire, if over the next week or two President Obama successfully frames the filibuster as over a dispute about an issue unrelated to Hagel’s fitness to run the Pentagon.  To avoid that, Republicans should be prepared to make a compelling case against Hagel on the merits, in every forum possible.

In an interview with CFIF, Bryan Goettel, Director of Communications for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring Our Heroes program, discusses the nationwide grassroots initiative to help veterans and military spouses find employment in the private sector.

Listen to the interview here.

Today, Barack Obama courts veterans with a speech in Reno, Nevada to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.  According to one report, Obama seems to think that he can improve on the 44% support he received in 2008 against celebrated veteran John McCain:

The new initiative is the latest effort by Mr. Obama to focus on veterans, a group he addresses frequently in both official White House events and on the campaign trail. In 2008, exit polls showed that 15% of all voters had served in the military, and Mr. Obama won 44% of their votes, an improvement from Democrat John Kerry’s performance in 2004. This year, the Obama campaign believes he may have a better chance with this group, in part because he is running against former Gov. Mitt Romney, who like Mr. Obama never served in the military, unlike his 2008 opponent, Sen. John McCain, a war hero.”

According to a new survey, however, this appears to be yet another electoral dud for Obama.  Rasmussen reports that among military veterans, Obama trails Romney 59% to 35%.  Perhaps at some point Obama will recognize the inverse relationship between his support among veterans and the fact that they’re “a group he addresses frequently.”

Regardless, if it’s this bad for Obama now, imagine what might happen when Romney actually starts matching Obama’s campaign spending burn rate.

With Quin’s column this week reminding us of the lessons to learn from the War of 1812 (though the battle he writes about occurred in 1815), it’s nice to a plug for the Revolutionary War heroes flow from Eliot Cohen’s pen in today’s Wall Street Journal.  After recounting some of the highlights from America’s 200 years of military intrigue along the “Great Warpath” from Albany to Quebec, Cohen ends his masterful treatment with this poignant command from one of our nation’s first veterans:

One of the relics carefully preserved at the Fort Ticonderoga museum is the knapsack of Benjamin Warner, a some time soldier during the Revolution who, like many of his fellow citizens, fought, went home and returned to fight again, and not once but half a dozen times. Fifty years later, he left the battered canvas bag to his oldest son, with instructions to transmit it “to the latest posterity. And whilst one shred of it shall remain, never surrender your liberties to a foreign invader or an aspiring demagogue.” In this age of uncertainty and self-doubt, that spirit is yet another legacy of the Great Warpath worth pondering.

Listening to President Barack Obama’s post-budget deal remarks it was jarring to hear the Commander-in-Chief say that the group most benefited from a budget deal was…a group of Colorado 8th graders visiting the nation’s capitol next week.

Apparently, visiting a national monument trumps military personnel getting their paychecks on time.  No doubt a child’s field trip is important, but it pales in comparison to making sure soldiers and their families can make mortgage payments and buy food.  If Obama can’t correctly identify which of the two is more important, it shows just how clueless (or careless) he is about governing priorities.

Shouldn’t America ensure that its military personnel and their families continue to receive paychecks, regardless of whether budget negotiations result in a deal or a federal shutdown? Barack Obama apparently doesn’t think so.

As bargaining continued yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner (R – Ohio) introduced legislation that would keep the government open one additional week and maintain military funding through the end of 2011 so that members of the armed forces would continue to be paid.  The House quickly passed that bill, including 15 Democratic votes.  Obama, however, grotesquely promised a veto, bizarrely labeling it a “distraction.”

Frankly, this entire debate wouldn’t be necessary if the preceding Congress overwhelmingly controlled by Obama’s own party had simply passed a 2011 budget.  But for the first time since the inception of the Budget Act, they simply abdicated that basic responsibility.  Regardless, our military is stretched thin across the globe, and many families live paycheck-to-paycheck.  This obviously isn’t of paramount concern to a president who clearly seems to welcome a government shutdown.

This is one of the most shameful and pathetic episodes in an already shoddy presidency.

Britain’s Telegraph says General David Petraeus may be nominated to replace CIA Director Leon Panetta, after the latter is tapped to become Secretary of Defense when Robert Gates retires.

If that happens, President Barack Obama will have kept not only former President George W. Bush’s people, but also his rationale for staffing key national security posts.  Gates’ last government job before Defense Secretary was as CIA Director.  Air Force General Michael Hayden led the CIA under Bush before Panetta took over.

Despite his campaign rhetoric, President Obama has continued the war in Afghanistan, and reversed himself on civilian trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.  Now, it looks like the current president is adopting the staffing rationale of his predecessor too.

Somewhere in Texas, I’m sure former President Bush is flattered.