JUST the Stolen Documents/Mar-A-Lago/"Judge" Cannon Trial

[foreverlax]

Trump may send 14,000 troops to Middle East

Just another stop off before they come home.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Trump may send 14,000 troops to Middle East

Just another stop off before they come home.

Wait for his spokesperson to clarify what is really happening. Press release will be issued here....

[jhu72]

Trump may send 14,000 troops to Middle East

Just another stop off before they come home.

That's 14K on top of the 14K he bumped up a month or so ago. Perhaps if he hadn't walked away from the nuclear deal, trying to squeeze Iran, this would not be necessary. Another broken campaign promise.

[old salt]

Calm down girls :

PENTAGON DENIAL: The Pentagon is throwing cold water on a report from the Wall Street Journal that President Trump could decide as soon as this month to dispatch thousands more troops and dozens more ships to the Persian Gulf region to counter Iran.

The report suggested that as many as 14,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent, which would be “significant expansion of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East.”

“This reporting by the @WSJ is wrong,” tweeted Pentagon Press Secretary Alyssa Farah, “The U.S. is not sending 14,000 troops to the Middle East to confront Iran.”

SO WHAT IS THE PLAN? It’s not clear if Farah is disputing the specific number of troops or the whole idea that the U.S. is considering the deployment of some other number of additional forces to deter Iran.

John Rood, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy and Air Force Lt. Gen. David Allvin, director for strategy, plans and policy for the joint staff are both scheduled to provide congressional testimony this morning on “strategic threats” facing the U.S.

Yesterday Rood told reporters “We also continue to see indications, and for obvious reasons I won’t go into the details, that potential Iranian aggression could occur,” according to Reuters.

IRAN THREAT RISING: Meanwhile the New York Times is reporting that U.S. intelligence officials say Iran is building up “a hidden arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles in Iraq,” which it says poses “a threat to American allies and partners in the region, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and could endanger American troops.”

“American intelligence officials first warned about new Iranian missiles in Iraq last year, and Israel launched an airstrike aimed at destroying the hidden Iranian weaponry,” the Times reports. “But since then, American officials have said the threat is growing, with new ballistic missiles being secretly moved in.”

UNDETERRED: In a series of interviews last month, the U.S. Central Command chief, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, said Iran could be planning a major attack on the scale of the recent missile and drone assault on Saudi Arabia’s oil fields.

“My judgment is that it is very possible they will attack again,” McKenzie told reporters traveling with him to the region. “It’s the trajectory and the direction that they’re on.”

HAPPY TO PAY: At the just-concluded NATO leaders meeting in London, President Trump made a point of saying that he has no problem sending U.S. troops to protect allies, such as Saudi Arabia, so long as those allies pick up the tab.

“You know, Saudi Arabia — we moved more troops there. And they're paying us billions of dollars. OK? You never heard of that before. You've never heard of that in your whole life. We moved troops and we paid nothing,” Trump said during his appearance with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “We just moved a contingent of troops, and they're paying us billions of dollars and they're happy to do so,” Trump said. “Billions of dollars. It's already in the bank.”

Good Thursday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, written and compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre

[Kismet]

https://stratcomcoe.org/how-social-medi ... our-online

A comprehensive review/study of social media platforms by NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence just released

It's a long piece but worth the time to read if, for nothing else, how little these platforms are doing to combat malicious/false narratives online to manipulate elections and other malevolent behaviors by both state and not-state actors to destabilize democracies around the world.

Pretty scary stuff.
Time for governments around the world to step up to the plate and regulate these platforms in some way within the parameters of free speech and democracy.

[jhu72]

https://stratcomcoe.org/how-social-medi ... our-online

A comprehensive review/study of social media platforms by NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence just released

It's a long piece but worth the time to read if, for nothing else, how little these platforms are doing to combat malicious/false narratives online to manipulate elections and other malevolent behaviors by both state and not-state actors to destabilize democracies around the world.

Pretty scary stuff.
Time for governments around the world to step up to the plate and regulate these platforms in some way within the parameters of free speech and democracy.

Hard to do with a populace of people with the common sense of a warm grapefruit.

[RedFromMI]

https://stratcomcoe.org/how-social-medi ... our-online

A comprehensive review/study of social media platforms by NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence just released

It's a long piece but worth the time to read if, for nothing else, how little these platforms are doing to combat malicious/false narratives online to manipulate elections and other malevolent behaviors by both state and not-state actors to destabilize democracies around the world.

Pretty scary stuff.
Time for governments around the world to step up to the plate and regulate these platforms in some way within the parameters of free speech and democracy.

Hard to do with a populace of people with the common sense of a warm grapefruit.

It's also hard to do when the top of the Administration and their cronies are using those said platforms to help the false narratives along:

Giuliani just confessed to the crime. He also revealed something bigger.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ng-bigger/

This scandal is all about disinformation
Making this narrative “true,” via the triumph of disinformation, is at the core of this entire scandal. It is why the White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid were conditioned on getting Ukraine to release statements validating that narrative with disinformation, along with another fictional narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in 2016, in collusion with Democrats.

Meanwhile, Giuliani is literally producing a fake “documentary” that will “prove” these theories. Trump’s attorney general, William P. Barr, is traveling the world to try to validate parts of the Ukraine-2016 lie, and he’s even preparing to dispute the Justice Department inspector general’s conclusion that it’s nonsense.

You cannot watch House Republicans, or Sean Hannity, rant about this bundle of theories without concluding we’re witnessing something very different from routine political lying here.

[Kismet]

This is exactly the point former World Chess champion, Garry Kasparov makes. He has seen Soviet-style disinformation up close for his entire life in the Soviet Union and recently wrote an Op-Ed at CNN. He is also a vehemently anti-Putin. He is no wingnut.

Here is a link to his appearance last night discussing the subject

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/201 ... 60-vpx.cnn

He left Russia in 2013, fearing if he returned he would not have been allowed to leave again.

More swell news from WSJ -

"WASHINGTON—Two top government officials with broad cybersecurity and election-integrity portfolios have announced they are stepping down this month, a loss of expertise in a critical area less than a year before the 2020 presidential election.

Amy Hess, the executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation will depart for a job as the chief of public services in Louisville, Ky.

Jeanette Manfra, the most senior official dedicated exclusively to cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, will leave her post at year’s end for a job in the private sector.

Both women have announced their departure in recent weeks.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials have warned the elections are is likely to be targeted online by Russia and other foreign adversaries following Moscow’s success in disrupting the 2016 race.

The FBI and DHS are two of the primary agencies responsible for combating foreign influence operations online, along with intelligence agencies including the National Security Agency. The FBI established a Foreign Influence Task Force in 2017 and has made investments to deepen its cybersecurity capabilities. DHS is the lead federal partner for state and local election officials with a focus on safeguarding voting systems from hackers."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-u-s-cy ... yURL_share

[old salt]

More from VDH on the Trump Doctrine, NATO & the EUros :
{interviewed in Swiss weekly magazine Die Weltwoche}

http://victorhanson.com/

Eighty years ago, the world entered into the biggest catastrophe in modern history. Your forefathers entered the Second World War and defeated the Axis Powers within four years. Today, your troops are fighting in Afghanistan for the 18th year, without any positive result. Has America forgotten how to win wars?

Well, we know how to win them. But we feel to win them would be worse than to lose them. By that, I mean we know the Taliban are mostly killers, and we know that we could use our air power and overwhelming artillery to destroy them and help our allies to pacify the country. But to do so would not be meek. It would probably involve the collateral damage that we inflicted on Hamburg, Tokyo, and Hiroshima in World War Two. We’ve decided that we just can’t do that after Vietnam.

We don’t have a plan about how to turn Afghanistan into a European or American city, which we did in Europe after World War Two. When we go out of the West and we enter the non-West, we are not allowed to use the power we have to achieve complete military victory and humiliation of the defeated. We don’t know how to forcibly recalibrate people who have non-Western traditions, and tell them that they’re going to have transparent private property, market Capitalism, and consensual government, because many of them have no experience with that.

We spend a lot of blood and treasure, and so we just stay there in stasis. The rationale is we’re not losing, so therefore we’re winning. Until somebody like Donald Trump comes along and says, “It’s not worth it in the cost-benefit analysis. I don’t want to lose another American in that hellhole. I don’t want to lose anybody in a fight between the Kurds and Turkey. It’s time to worry about the kids in Southern Ohio and not whether you’re going to make Kandahar look like Palo Alto.”

President Trump repeatedly said the United States cannot continue to be the sheriff or policeman of the world. What does that gradual US withdrawal mean for geopolitics?

Barack Obama said he was going to be a protector of the post-war order. Yet, he slashed the military to one of its lowest readiness levels since World War Two. Trump comes along and says, “These things (international conflicts) don’t pay off and the military has got to be updated. I’m going to put in billions of dollars and get the military back up.” And he’s been doing that. His agenda is a paradox: create a great military and keep it great by using it sparingly.

The United States is able now to field twelve or eleven carrier groups, or its F-35s and its F-15s, its F-16s, and its Raptors, and they’re all ready to fly, mostly. The Marine Corps is back up a division. Ironically, the US is more militarily ready than it ever has been. It doesn’t have 250,000 troops tied down in Iraq. It’s down to about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. So, it has a lot of flexibility. What Trump is saying is the United States is going to be no better friend and no worse enemy.

By that, I mean, if Japan needs our help to protect it against China, or Australia needs our help, America is there. If Europe, according to our NATO laws, needs our help, the US is there. Even if a neutral country, like Switzerland, was attacked, I’m sure the United States would help. But it’s also going to say that in other areas, where there are not clear objectives and interests, where the cost-benefit analysis is murky, we’re not going to get involved, especially in the Middle East.

Recently, French President Macron said that America is not ready, anymore, to help Europeans. He suggested that NATO suffers “brain death.” After having downsized their armed forces tremendously since the end of the Cold War, do you believe that Europeans are ready to invest in the defense of Europe again, as Macron calls them to do?

No, they’re not. They’re not spiritually, culturally, military, or materially ready. If I tell somebody having a cappuccino in Florence that he has to die to protect Lithuania from Putin, he’s simply not going to do it.

When we talk about the EU, or NATO, let’s be honest. The elephant in the room is Germany. It has 80 million people. It’s always been Europe’s most powerful economy. It has the largest population, the largest area, and it’s been at the center of Europe for 150 years. Germany is why you have an EU and NATO. NATO was to keep America in, Russia out, and Germany down. Germany was right in the middle of European conflict: in 1871, 1914, 1939.

When France and Macron talk about beefing up the EU, they immediately get into a paradox, because there is no EU without Germany. What Macron is basically saying is, “I’ve got to go to Merkel and the Germans and get them to spend 3% instead of 1.3% of their GDP on military readiness. Then, when they do that, I have to say that this time around you’re not going to have political or military authority commensurate with your real power. You’re going to invest it in a collective in which we’re going to be the Athenian philosophers, and you’ll be the Roman soldiers.”

So I see the EU insidiously breaking up. I think 70% of NATO’s budgets are paid for by the US. I can see a series of bilateral treaties replacing it. And I’m worried because I’m not writing off NATO and the EU as not having benefit. They’ve kept the peace, in some ways, by channeling German power into the European matrix. Although, I think the real peace was kept after World War Two by the possession of nuclear weapons, in general. And in Europe, the idea that a weak France and a weak Britain had nuclear weapons, and a very strong Germany does not — nobody wants to talk about that. It’s perhaps what keeps the peace.

When I look at young Europeans, I get the impression they define freedom primarily in terms of Gigabytes on their smart phone. What would you call this time and age? An age of indifference? An age of discontent?

No. I see it as a slow-motion collective suicide. I see it in a way that classical historians like Tacitus or Suetonius, or novelists like Petronius, has looked at it. This symptomology of Europe is that it is very affluent, and it’s very leisured and complacent. It’s wealthier than at any time in its history. It has a lifestyle that it has always dreamed about. The problem, now, are that the typical symptoms that accrue when people are affluent and amnesiac about their past. Leisure is starting to kill Europe. Look at demography. Fertility rates is at 1.6% in the EU. In some places, like in Italy, it’s down to 1.4%. Defense spending is at about 1.4% of the GDP.

They had a Pew poll, not too long ago, that reported only 16% of Europeans pray to a deity every day. When you have a secular country that’s shrinking and won’t defend itself as evidenced by its eroding military budget, you ask yourself, “Why is this?”

The answer is that the affluent youth of the continent feels that, as humanists, their life is so good that they don’t want to waste it by having diapers and children and infants screaming, when they could go out to a club, or go on vacation, or go to the beach. And they feel that they’re so wise and so sophisticated that everybody in the non-West agrees with them that war is obsolete.They’re so tolerant that they assume that their magnanimity will always be interpreted and reciprocated by other hostile powers rather than seen as weakness to be exploited.

Europe is safe because the United States is protecting it, both tactically and strategically, from people like Putin (if he is a danger), and China.

Why do you think hatred against Trump so widespread and deep in Europe?

I think the problem that Europeans have with Trump is that he has a subtext, a message that they’re aware of and scared of seeing promulgated. His message to Americans is: The more you help Europe — the more you tried after World War Two to help rebuild it, the more you defend it — the more they will end up hating you. They’re like a petulant teenager who hates his parents. If you want to be friends with Europe, back off, let them be, and let them suffer the consequences of their own ideology. And maybe, then, they will reach out to us as equal adults rather than as petulant subordinates. Thucydides noted the same phenomenon after the Persian War with Athens and its subordinate imperial allies.

I think Macron sees that and has visions of exploiting it. He says to himself, “The Americans are going to back off. Now, it’s a chance for Napoleon X, or XII, to come back and unite everybody with German money and French elan.”

I hope they can pull it off. But I just don’t see it happening.

[a fan]

Barack Obama said he was going to be a protector of the post-war order. Yet, he slashed the military to one of its lowest readiness levels since World War Two.

All that scholarship. All that work. Wasted on partisan nonsense.

But it’s also going to say that in other areas, where there are not clear objectives and interests, where the cost-benefit analysis is murky, we’re not going to get involved, especially in the Middle East.

Certainly explains why he reneged on the Iran deal, sent troops to Syria, and sent more troops to Saudi Arabia.

Again with the description that's the exact opposite of what Trump is doing, in an effort to invent a "Trump policy" that doesn't exist.

All of those count as "involved". What "we're not going to get involved" means is: leave the Iran deal alone. Don't send troops to Syria. Don't beef up forces in Saudi Arabia. Instead? We're "involved" in all three nations, just like the last several Presidents have been.

. NATO was to keep America in, Russia out, and Germany down.

Finally, a nonpartisan statement. Yep. We intentionally kept Germany down. As in: we pay in to NATO, others don't, and America calls the shots. In other words, NATO as a paper tiger that's really just the US military was America's choice. We CHOSE the way NATO operated. Us. The Americans.

Europe is safe because the United States is protecting it, both tactically and strategically, from people like Putin (if he is a danger), and China.

So now Putin and China are going to invade France. Got it.

[cradleandshoot]

https://stratcomcoe.org/how-social-medi ... our-online

A comprehensive review/study of social media platforms by NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence just released

It's a long piece but worth the time to read if, for nothing else, how little these platforms are doing to combat malicious/false narratives online to manipulate elections and other malevolent behaviors by both state and not-state actors to destabilize democracies around the world.

Pretty scary stuff.
Time for governments around the world to step up to the plate and regulate these platforms in some way within the parameters of free speech and democracy.

Hard to do with a populace of people with the common sense of a warm grapefruit.

IMO common sense is warm grapefruit. I cut one fresh every morning and squeeze it myself. Better than orange juice could ever be.

[old salt]

Barack Obama said he was going to be a protector of the post-war order. Yet, he slashed the military to one of its lowest readiness levels since World War Two.

All that scholarship. All that work. Wasted on partisan nonsense.

But it’s also going to say that in other areas, where there are not clear objectives and interests, where the cost-benefit analysis is murky, we’re not going to get involved, especially in the Middle East.

Certainly explains why he reneged on the Iran deal, sent troops to Syria, and sent more troops to Saudi Arabia.

Again with the description that's the exact opposite of what Trump is doing, in an effort to invent a "Trump policy" that doesn't exist.

All of those count as "involved". What "we're not going to get involved" means is: leave the Iran deal alone. Don't send troops to Syria. Don't beef up forces in Saudi Arabia. Instead? We're "involved" in all three nations, just like the last several Presidents have been.

. NATO was to keep America in, Russia out, and Germany down.

Finally, a nonpartisan statement. Yep. We intentionally kept Germany down. As in: we pay in to NATO, others don't, and America calls the shots. In other words, NATO as a paper tiger that's really just the US military was America's choice. We CHOSE the way NATO operated. Us. The Americans.

Europe is safe because the United States is protecting it, both tactically and strategically, from people like Putin (if he is a danger), and China.

So now Putin and China are going to invade France. Got it.

Why is it so difficult for you to acknowledge the reality that our military readiness deteriorated during Obama's Presidency & it has improved under Trump ? ...for whatever partisan political reasons, it happened.

You refuse to acknowledge critical details that go beyond your superficial analysis. As in not acknowledging the difference in the numbers & types of forces deployed, the nature of those forces & their missions, & whether or not they are engaged in combat ops. You seem unable to grasp the reality that the vast majority of our forces currently in the ME are there for the same reasons as our forces in the NATO EU & W Pac -- to help defend our allies from a regional threat & to keep the sea lanes open.

In the ME, you seem to think that ramming through a militarily inconsequential JCPOA eliminated Iran as a threat to our allies & to the sea lanes in that region, allowing us to withdraw. Instead, it had the opposite effect -- it financed the increase in Iran's disruptive activity.
You left out this key point :

it’s also going to say that in other areas, where there are not clear objectives and interests, where the cost-benefit analysis is murky, we’re not going to get involved, especially in the Middle East.

The forces sent to SA are for clear objectives & interests. The cost-benefit analysis is not murky = SA is paying the marginal costs of their deployment.
Likewise in Syria -- Trump is withdrawing our forces rather than getting sucked into paying for refugee resettlemrnt, reconstruction & holding the IS prisoners. He's holding the Syrian oil fields to finance keepng the Kurds & SDF in the fight & holding the IS detainees. The National Guard troops peforming that mission were not sent in from the US for that mission -- they were already on a deployment to Kuwait.

Yes. We chose the way NATO operated. The Cold War ended 3 decades ago. Russia is no longer a threat to (conventionally) invade France, or even Germany. We kept Germany down for so long (while rebuilding & reunifying them), that they've become pacifist free riders, leaving it to their allies to defend Europe's borders, keep the sea lanes open & maintain global stability for their commercial interests.
Germany has become a wealthy, bloated Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

NATO now exists primarily to protect the commercial interests of the EU, primarily Germany & France. US tax payers pay for that protection, with none of the trade benefits of EU membership. The EUroburghers are still pushing for EU membership for Ukraine, while still declining to join the US in providing military aid necessary for their continued survival as an independent nation.

[a fan]

Why is it so difficult for you to acknowledge the reality that our military readiness deteriorated during Obama's Presidency & it has improved under Trump ? ...for whatever partisan political reasons, it happened

For one, our military doesn't start at 100%, and then magically fall apart in 8 years. If we're blaming Presidents for spending, Bush, in his brilliance, handed Obama a gas tank that was already 1/2 empty, and didn't bother to rebuild our military after personally ordering two full scale invasions. Instead? He cut the heck out of our taxes, and told Americans to go shopping.

For two---you and your fellow Republicans told Obama that our government spending was out of control. Remember that? Not the Dems. Not Rachel Maddow-----Republican freaking voters. You TOLD Obama not to spend more money, remember?

And you and your Republican fellow voters TOLD Obama he couldn't raise taxes, remember?

You did this. You and your party. So if you want yell at anyone about not spending enough on the military.....find the nearest mirror, and yell extra loud for me.

And I'm laughing at you and VDH because you are both pretending to be too stupid to understand grammar school American Civics: that Congress pays the bills, not Obama. Obama could no more spend on the military than I can. But since you can't blame Boehner and company for shirking their duty because you and VDH won't be invited to Republican parties in DC if you say bad stuff about little R's? Oh, it's all the D President's fault. Because duh.

You refuse to acknowledge critical details that go beyond your superficial analysis. As in not acknowledging the difference in the numbers & types of forces deployed, the nature of those forces & their missions, & whether or not they are engaged in combat ops. You seem unable to grasp the reality that the vast majority of our forces currently in the ME are there for the same reasons as our forces in the NATO EU & W Pac -- to help defend our allies from a regional threat & to keep the sea lanes open.

Strawman. VDH didn't say "we're redeploying forces".

Nope. What he wrote was, and I quote "where the cost-benefit analysis is murky, we’re not going to get involved, especially in the Middle East

Sorry mate, under no circumstance is "not getting involved" the same thing as "helping defend our allies from a regional threat & to keep the sea lanes open" by sending "defensive troops".

You keep doing this. Pretending like I'm insane because I know what the phrase "not going to get involved" means.

In the ME, you seem to think that ramming through an ineffective JCPOA eliminated Iran as a threat to our allies & to the sea lanes in that region, allowing us to withdraw.

Nope. I thought it kept them from getting a bomb. It did. Scoreboard.

You, on the other hand, are insisting the JCPOA was intended to give peace between Palestine and Israel, and also give us the cure for cancer. And because it didn't do that, you insist it failed. How can I argue with such logic? I can't. Yep, you're right, the JCPOA didn't do a whole laundry list of things that no one but old salt claims it was 'supposed' to do.

Instead, it had the opposite effect -- it financed the increase in Iran's disruptive activity.

They're disrupting right now. Odd, getting out of deal didn't stop that. Does this mean old salt thinks getting out of the deal is bad now?

Yes. We chose the way NATO operated. The Cold War ended 3 decades ago. Russia is no longer a threat to (conventionally) invade France, or even Germany. We kept Germany down for so long (while rebuilding & reunifying them), that they've become pacifist free riders, leaving it to their allies to defend Europe's borders, keep the sea lanes open & maintain global stability for their commercial interests.

Yep.

NATO now exists primarily to protect the commercial interests of the EU, primarily Germany & France. US tax payers pay for that protection, with none of the trade benefits of EU membership.

Yep. And like all the other Presidents, Trump isn't doing anything about it, but making speeches. Meanwhile, Trump signed a bill blowing trillions more on the military. All while Republican millionaires in Congress act like the American people (liberals) are completely insane for wanting the same health care all those Europeans we're protecting with our military enjoy.

Almost seems like this cop to the world game is bound to blow up in its advocates faces when America finally runs out of borrowed money....

Nothing would make me happier. "Sorry, mate. America can't keep the Strait of Hormuz clear because we can't spare the dosh. You're on your own".

[old salt]

afan -- read & learn. The numbers speak for themselves. Obama used BCA sequestration to shrink the military, while increasing deployments & taskings.
Budget interruptions, due to CRs rather than approved budgets, disrupted maint, overhauls & procurement scheds. DoD funding increased every year, in real dollars, until 2011 when it began to decline. In 2016, our Army was at it's smallest since before WW-II. We were down to 10 aircraft carriers when 12 had been the historic absolute minimum. Yet the fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq & Syria continued.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine ... istration/

Obama has done lasting damage to the military
...one effect of eight years of Obama won’t soon vanish: He’s done more damage to American military power than his successor can repair. It’s not simply that Obama tried to end U.S. involvement in the Middle East by unilaterally withdrawing from Iraq, conducting a phony surge in Afghanistan, and failing to respond to the civil war in Syria. It’s not just that Obama did little beyond telling Vladimir Putin to “cut it out” after Russia annexed Crimea and after Putin otherwise exploited whatever opportunity arose to unravel the post–Cold War peace of Europe, or that Obama neglected to back up the promise of a “Pacific pivot” as the Chinese dredged their way (island-making instead of island-hopping) across the South China Sea. Retreats can be reversed, even if the price of victory rises when it has to be won twice (or three or four times, in the case of Iraq).

The consistency of the Obama disarmament is reflected in defense-spending arithmetic — federal budgets are long-term strategy. There are several ways to reckon this. The simplest is to compare the current five-year defense plan with the five-year defense plan Obama inherited from the Bush administration. By that comparison, the Pentagon has lost more than $250 billion in purchasing power. While that’s a pretty big number, it doesn’t begin to tell the whole tale, because it looks at the problem only in five-year increments. Obama has always had a longer-term outlook.

In 2009, during his first year in office, Obama directed then–defense secretary Robert Gates to cut about $300 billion from Pentagon programs, which had the effect of eliminating several of the major weapons-acquisitions projects that had survived Donald Rumsfeld’s attempt to “transform” the force by “skipping a generation of weapons systems.” The poster child for this round of cuts was the F-22 fighter. It was the first substantial attempt to deploy stealth and other technologies meant to ensure American air superiority for decades to come. Gates terminated the F-22 at just 187 planes instead of the 750 originally planned by the Air Force.

A second, smaller set of reductions came the following year. Gates, seeing which way the wind was blowing, sought to get ahead of the White House by offering $80 billion worth of “reforms” and other changes on the condition that the administration shift the spending to other defense investments. Obama gratefully took the windfall — and more — to pay for the one-time cost of his Afghanistan surge and other, non-defense priorities. Gates got played.

But not as badly as he did in 2011. In April of that year, when a new tea-party coalition was flexing its muscles in the House of Representatives, Obama decided on another $400 billion in defense reductions. He did not inform Gates of the intended cuts before delivering the speech in which he announced them. Gates resigned. But the speech was a brilliant political gambit that gave the White House the initiative by framing the terms for the subsequent negotiations that led to the Budget Control Act (BCA). That law achieved two Democratic priorities: It jettisoned any attempt to limit federal spending in entitlement programs, and it capped defense spending for a decade. It’s hard to fully estimate the effect of these reductions; there have been two one-time exceptions to the defense-spending caps, but they were very small, approximately $30 billion over two budget years. A good guess, though, is that long-term spending on defense programs has been reduced by close to $1 trillion in fiscal years 2009 to 2023.

A subtler but more profound effect of the BCA was to make the Republican congressional leadership a party to the Obama military drawdown.
The BCA’s “sequestration” provision further limited Pentagon accounts. It stipulated that if Congress failed to adhere to the specified annual spending caps, or if it failed to pass appropriations bills before the fiscal year began, automatic cuts to military spending would kick in. Sequestration reinforced the far-left–far-right alliance and meant that extremists could simply withhold their support for any budget deal and follow their own priorities, regardless of their negative impact on the military. With entitlements protected, the Obama administration and out-of-power Democrats on Capitol Hill could sit back and watch Republicans stake out positions that were popular in their districts but that made compromise and governing impossible. Then, at election time, Democrats would simply aim to beat a “do-nothing Congress.”

A final budget whammy has completed the perfect financial storm for the armed forces: the continued reliance on extraordinary “supplemental” appropriations for “overseas contingency operations.” Reasonably enough, the Bush administration argued that these appropriations were necessary to pay for unanticipated war costs. But as the situation in Iraq degenerated, the Bush team found itself boxed in. When it at last reversed course and embraced a counterinsurgency strategy and the idea of a surge of troops to carry it out, it found itself forced to ask not only for extra money for gas, beans, and bullets but also for the funds to increase the size of the military and particularly the active-duty Army, which it had been in the process of shrinking.

The practice of supplemental appropriations has carried over through the Obama years, and though it has masked some of the worst consequences of the defense-budget cuts, it has also used limited resources inefficiently. More money is good, but planned-for money is much better. The military has been fighting the same war over and over. In a reasonable world, funding could be planned in advance and would not need to be justified on an “emergency” basis. Instead, for political reasons, we are financing the war one year — or less — at a time.

Thus, 15 years after 9/11 and after eight years of Obama, the military is something like a racehorse — once sleek, powerful, and fit — put too long to the plow and desperately in need of rest, recovery, and refitting. The size of the force (the Army in particular) has ballooned and shrunk like a fad dieter. On September 11, 2001, we had about 485,000 soldiers in uniform. Donald Rumsfeld approved an additional 30,000 — not to fight the war, but to undertake a “transformational” redesign of the military. In other words, the service grew bigger in preparation for getting smaller. Of course, this too was paid for with supplemental funding. This contraption limped along through 2006 and into 2007, when President Bush agreed to establish a crash program to get to 560,000 troops in a timely way. Obama has reduced the Army total to about 475,000 today, and it’s on a slope to 450,000 or fewer.

The Marines have suffered a similar personnel problem, while the Navy and the Air Force, by nature more-technological services, have shed ships and planes without receiving replacements. For example, the Defense Department built a facility to manufacture 300 F-35 fighters a year, intending to replace the current lightweight fighters in the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps. But in recent years, production of the F-35 has rarely exceeded one-tenth of that capacity.

The smaller force is also a much less ready force. During the Cold War, the units of the Army and Air Force were always about 90 percent ready in terms of personnel, equipment, and training. The sea services, reflecting the predictable maintenance cycle of ships, could anticipate deployment schedules years in advance. Since 9/11, the entire military has been subjected to a just-in-time, by-the-seat-of-the-pants approach necessitated by a surfeit of missions and a lack of resources of all kinds. The result is that units, when not deployed, are only about 60 percent ready or less. This also means that the military’s ability to do anything more challenging than routine operations, such as keeping sea lanes open, is severely limited. It is no coincidence that in his 2012 “defense guidance,” Obama lowered the standard by which we determine the optimal size of our forces. Since the years prior to World War II, and as befits a global power, we have maintained the capacity to conduct two large-scale campaigns at once. Obama lowered the bar to just one war at a time.

[Typical Lax Dad]

afan -- read & learn. The numbers speak for themselves. Obama used BCA sequestration to shrink the military, while increasing deployments & taskings.
Budget interruptions, due to CRs rather than approved budgets, disrupted maint, overhauls & procurement scheds. DoD funding increased every year, in real dollars, until 2011 when it began to decline. In 2016, our Army was at it's smallest since before WW-II. We were down to 10 aircraft carriers when 12 had been the historic absolute minimum. Yet the fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq & Syria continued.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine ... istration/

Obama has done lasting damage to the military
...one effect of eight years of Obama won’t soon vanish: He’s done more damage to American military power than his successor can repair. It’s not simply that Obama tried to end U.S. involvement in the Middle East by unilaterally withdrawing from Iraq, conducting a phony surge in Afghanistan, and failing to respond to the civil war in Syria. It’s not just that Obama did little beyond telling Vladimir Putin to “cut it out” after Russia annexed Crimea and after Putin otherwise exploited whatever opportunity arose to unravel the post–Cold War peace of Europe, or that Obama neglected to back up the promise of a “Pacific pivot” as the Chinese dredged their way (island-making instead of island-hopping) across the South China Sea. Retreats can be reversed, even if the price of victory rises when it has to be won twice (or three or four times, in the case of Iraq).

Obama not only restrained the American habit of involving ourselves in the world’s affairs but also, by reducing our military power, constrained a future president’s ability to do so. The propensity to “resort to force,” in his view, was a disease shared nearly equally by past presidents of both parties. Bill Clinton may have agonized and dithered over the use of American power, but to a progressive mind he was little different from George W. Bush.

The consistency of the Obama disarmament is reflected in defense-spending arithmetic — federal budgets are long-term strategy. There are several ways to reckon this. The simplest is to compare the current five-year defense plan with the five-year defense plan Obama inherited from the Bush administration. By that comparison, the Pentagon has lost more than $250 billion in purchasing power. While that’s a pretty big number, it doesn’t begin to tell the whole tale, because it looks at the problem only in five-year increments. Obama has always had a longer-term outlook.

In 2009, during his first year in office, Obama directed then–defense secretary Robert Gates to cut about $300 billion from Pentagon programs, which had the effect of eliminating several of the major weapons-acquisitions projects that had survived Donald Rumsfeld’s attempt to “transform” the force by “skipping a generation of weapons systems.” The poster child for this round of cuts was the F-22 fighter. It was the first substantial attempt to deploy stealth and other technologies meant to ensure American air superiority for decades to come. Gates terminated the F-22 at just 187 planes instead of the 750 originally planned by the Air Force.

A second, smaller set of reductions came the following year. Gates, seeing which way the wind was blowing, sought to get ahead of the White House by offering $80 billion worth of “reforms” and other changes on the condition that the administration shift the spending to other defense investments. Obama gratefully took the windfall — and more — to pay for the one-time cost of his Afghanistan surge and other, non-defense priorities. Gates got played.

But not as badly as he did in 2011. In April of that year, when a new tea-party coalition was flexing its muscles in the House of Representatives, Obama decided on another $400 billion in defense reductions. He did not inform Gates of the intended cuts before delivering the speech in which he announced them. Gates resigned. But the speech was a brilliant political gambit that gave the White House the initiative by framing the terms for the subsequent negotiations that led to the Budget Control Act (BCA). That law achieved two Democratic priorities: It jettisoned any attempt to limit federal spending in entitlement programs, and it capped defense spending for a decade. It’s hard to fully estimate the effect of these reductions; there have been two one-time exceptions to the defense-spending caps, but they were very small, approximately $30 billion over two budget years. A good guess, though, is that long-term spending on defense programs has been reduced by close to $1 trillion in fiscal years 2009 to 2023.

A subtler but more profound effect of the BCA was to make the Republican congressional leadership a party to the Obama military drawdown. This inspired the small-government, libertarian Freedom Caucus in the House to take former speaker John Boehner hostage repeatedly, such as when it led the charge to shut down the government in 2013, a move that probably contributed to Boehner’s eventual resignation. Boehner was no defense-spending enthusiast (Senator Mitch McConnell hasn’t been, either, since Republicans took back the Senate), but the BCA favored a more extreme course and had assumed a totem-like status for younger Republicans, who became the Obama White House’s unlikely bedfellows on the issue.

The BCA’s “sequestration” provision further limited Pentagon accounts. It stipulated that if Congress failed to adhere to the specified annual spending caps, or if it failed to pass appropriations bills before the fiscal year began, automatic cuts to military spending would kick in. Sequestration reinforced the far-left–far-right alliance and meant that extremists could simply withhold their support for any budget deal and follow their own priorities, regardless of their negative impact on the military. With entitlements protected, the Obama administration and out-of-power Democrats on Capitol Hill could sit back and watch Republicans stake out positions that were popular in their districts but that made compromise and governing impossible. Then, at election time, Democrats would simply aim to beat a “do-nothing Congress.”

A final budget whammy has completed the perfect financial storm for the armed forces: the continued reliance on extraordinary “supplemental” appropriations for “overseas contingency operations.” Reasonably enough, the Bush administration argued that these appropriations were necessary to pay for unanticipated war costs. But as the situation in Iraq degenerated, the Bush team found itself boxed in. When it at last reversed course and embraced a counterinsurgency strategy and the idea of a surge of troops to carry it out, it found itself forced to ask not only for extra money for gas, beans, and bullets but also for the funds to increase the size of the military and particularly the active-duty Army, which it had been in the process of shrinking.

The practice of supplemental appropriations has carried over through the Obama years, and though it has masked some of the worst consequences of the defense-budget cuts, it has also used limited resources inefficiently. More money is good, but planned-for money is much better. The military has been fighting the same war over and over. In a reasonable world, funding could be planned in advance and would not need to be justified on an “emergency” basis. Instead, for political reasons, we are financing the war one year — or less — at a time.

Thus, 15 years after 9/11 and after eight years of Obama, the military is something like a racehorse — once sleek, powerful, and fit — put too long to the plow and desperately in need of rest, recovery, and refitting. The size of the force (the Army in particular) has ballooned and shrunk like a fad dieter. On September 11, 2001, we had about 485,000 soldiers in uniform. Donald Rumsfeld approved an additional 30,000 — not to fight the war, but to undertake a “transformational” redesign of the military. In other words, the service grew bigger in preparation for getting smaller. Of course, this too was paid for with supplemental funding. This contraption limped along through 2006 and into 2007, when President Bush agreed to establish a crash program to get to 560,000 troops in a timely way. Obama has reduced the Army total to about 475,000 today, and it’s on a slope to 450,000 or fewer.

The Marines have suffered a similar personnel problem, while the Navy and the Air Force, by nature more-technological services, have shed ships and planes without receiving replacements. For example, the Defense Department built a facility to manufacture 300 F-35 fighters a year, intending to replace the current lightweight fighters in the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps. But in recent years, production of the F-35 has rarely exceeded one-tenth of that capacity.

The smaller force is also a much less ready force. During the Cold War, the units of the Army and Air Force were always about 90 percent ready in terms of personnel, equipment, and training. The sea services, reflecting the predictable maintenance cycle of ships, could anticipate deployment schedules years in advance. Since 9/11, the entire military has been subjected to a just-in-time, by-the-seat-of-the-pants approach necessitated by a surfeit of missions and a lack of resources of all kinds. The result is that units, when not deployed, are only about 60 percent ready or less. This also means that the military’s ability to do anything more challenging than routine operations, such as keeping sea lanes open, is severely limited. It is no coincidence that in his 2012 “defense guidance,” Obama lowered the standard by which we determine the optimal size of our forces. Since the years prior to World War II, and as befits a global power, we have maintained the capacity to conduct two large-scale campaigns at once. Obama lowered the bar to just one war at a time.

Finally, the Obama years have seen a degeneration in civil–military relations. It’s not simply that Obama and his White House team have squabbled with their field commanders, though there’s been plenty of that. Far worse is the social distance that’s arisen between soldiers and the rest of us. Recently, YouGov and the Hoover Institution sponsored the first large-scale survey of public attitudes on military affairs since 9/11. The most startling statistic was that nearly 80 percent of Americans, regardless of party, ideology, wealth, or any other demographic attribute, regard military service of any sort — not just combat — as dehumanizing and psychologically damaging. This is partly a reflection of our increasingly narcissistic and therapeutic culture, but Obama has always been in sync with the times: He has turned heroes into victims. His will not be a martial legacy.

Since things have changed and we won’t be the world’s cop anymore, we don’t need them. Cut the military budget and cut out taxes. It’s a peace or isolationist dividend.

[old salt]

Why is it so difficult for you to acknowledge the reality that our military readiness deteriorated during Obama's Presidency & it has improved under Trump ? ...for whatever partisan political reasons, it happened

For one, our military doesn't start at 100%, and then magically fall apart in 8 years. If we're blaming Presidents for spending, Bush, in his brilliance, handed Obama a gas tank that was already 1/2 empty, and didn't bother to rebuild our military after personally ordering two full scale invasions. Instead? He cut the heck out of our taxes, and told Americans to go shopping.

For two---you and your fellow Republicans told Obama that our government spending was out of control. Remember that? Not the Dems. Not Rachel Maddow-----Republican freaking voters. You TOLD Obama not to spend more money, remember?

And you and your Republican fellow voters TOLD Obama he couldn't raise taxes, remember?

You did this. You and your party. So if you want yell at anyone about not spending enough on the military.....find the nearest mirror, and yell extra loud for me.

And I'm laughing at you and VDH because you are both pretending to be too stupid to understand grammar school American Civics: that Congress pays the bills, not Obama. Obama could no more spend on the military than I can. But since you can't blame Boehner and company for shirking their duty because you and VDH won't be invited to Republican parties in DC if you say bad stuff about little R's? Oh, it's all the D President's fault. Because duh.
Blame Boeher for sequestration if it gets you through the night. That's what CinC Obama did to attain his political goal of gutting the military. Same disingenuous BS dodge that Iraq wouldn't let him leave a residual force. That's what Trump inherited -- no matter who you blame for it.

You refuse to acknowledge critical details that go beyond your superficial analysis. As in not acknowledging the difference in the numbers & types of forces deployed, the nature of those forces & their missions, & whether or not they are engaged in combat ops. You seem unable to grasp the reality that the vast majority of our forces currently in the ME are there for the same reasons as our forces in the NATO EU & W Pac -- to help defend our allies from a regional threat & to keep the sea lanes open.

Strawman. VDH didn't say "we're redeploying forces".

Nope. Yep. You can't read.What he wrote was, and I quote "where the cost-benefit analysis is murky, we’re not going to get involved, especially in the Middle East
...& I explained, in detail, why the cost-benefit analysis of our current, limited force level in the ME is NOT murky -- it's cost effective. Compare cost vs results to former ME operations.

Sorry mate, under no circumstance is "not getting involved" the same thing as "helping defend our allies from a regional threat & to keep the sea lanes open" by sending "defensive troops".
A smaller number of US forces, present in the ME, yet (contrary to previous ops) NOT themselves involved in combat ops. Enabling & supporting allies instead to do the fighting. THAT's cost effective.
The cost benefit of occupation, peace keeping & reconstruction in NE Syria is MURKY (to say the least), thus Trump declined to do so.
You keep doing this. Pretending like I'm insane because I know what the phrase "not going to get involved" means.
You continue being willfully obtuse. Refusing to acknowledge the facts I present.

In the ME, you seem to think that ramming through an ineffective JCPOA eliminated Iran as a threat to our allies & to the sea lanes in that region, allowing us to withdraw.

Nope. I thought it kept them from getting a bomb. It did. Scoreboard.

You, on the other hand, are insisting the JCPOA was intended to give peace between Palestine and Israel, and also give us the cure for cancer. And because it didn't do that, you insist it failed. How can I argue with such logic? I can't. Yep, you're right, the JCPOA didn't do a whole laundry list of things that no one but old salt claims it was 'supposed' to do.
It failed because if funded Iran's increase in disruptive & terrorist activities.

Instead, it had the opposite effect -- it financed the increase in Iran's disruptive activity.

They're disrupting right now. Odd, getting out of deal didn't stop that. Does this mean old salt thinks getting out of the deal is bad now?
The sanctions were limiting what they could do, just as they are now. JCPOA gave them a 5 year reprieve to disrupt the ME.

Yes. We chose the way NATO operated. The Cold War ended 3 decades ago. Russia is no longer a threat to (conventionally) invade France, or even Germany. We kept Germany down for so long (while rebuilding & reunifying them), that they've become pacifist free riders, leaving it to their allies to defend Europe's borders, keep the sea lanes open & maintain global stability for their commercial interests.

Yep.

NATO now exists primarily to protect the commercial interests of the EU, primarily Germany & France. US tax payers pay for that protection, with none of the trade benefits of EU membership.

Yep. And like all the other Presidents, Trump isn't doing anything about it, but making speeches. Shaming allies to contribute more while refocusing & strengthening NATO. Meanwhile, Trump signed a bill blowing trillions more on the military. All while Republican millionaires in Congress act like the American people (liberals) are completely insane for wanting the same health care all those Europeans we're protecting with our military enjoy.
Very little of our increase in military spending is going toward our NATO presence & missions. We're actually decreasing our share of the costs for NATO's HQ, staff & institutional costs. Esper & the Generals are following the plan started under Mattis to revitalize & refocus NATO. Trump did the fund raising. They're doing the planning & leading. Witness the funding increase, the 30-30-30 capability, exercises on Russia's N & S borders, US tanks in Poland & the Baltics, US-Brit-French cross deck aircraft carrier ops. Trump & his chain of command are strengthening NATO, while a petulant Macron declares it brain dead & Trudeau makes mean girl jokes, while Canada's proud forces atrophy toward irrelevance.

Almost seems like this cop to the world game is bound to blow up in its advocates faces when America finally runs out of borrowed money....
Nothing would make me happier. "Sorry, mate. America can't keep the Strait of Hormuz clear because we can't spare the dosh. You're on your own".
You'll be singing a different tune when your export product is stacked on the pier & the cargo aircraft are all overbooked.
Then you can emigrate to Germany & enjoy the free healthcare, ...if you can get EU approval to relocate your business.

[a fan]

Blame Boeher for sequestration if it gets you through the night. That's what CinC Obama did to attain his political goal of gutting the military

While you're at it, why not add in he was a Kenyan-born Muslim who hated America?

Let's check the scoreboard with your claim that Obama's "political goal was to gut the military", shall we?

In Billions:

2000: 429
2001: 432
2002: 486
2003: 553
2004: 603
2005: 631
2006: 641
2007: 658
2008: 707
2009: 763 Obama's 1st
2010: 784 Boy, that Obama sure is gutting the military. Have any other laugh out loud statements for me?
2011: 775
2012: 731
2013: 673
2014: 631
2015: 616

That's your idea of a hollowed out military. Obama outspent Bush, bigly, when Dems controlled Congress. Looks to me like you simply need to hire more people at the DoD who know how to operate a calculator, and who understand what a budget is.

Either than, or Bush handed Obama the car keys with no gas in the tank, and the military was already hollowed out. Pick one.

"where the cost-benefit analysis is murky, we’re not going to get involved, especially in the Middle East[/i]

That's a descriptor you can use to define Trump, Obama, and Bush. To quote All the President's Men, that's a non-denial, denial. In other words, the statement has no value.

Bush thought the cost benefit was clear in Iraq. So he got involved. Obama thought the cost benefit was murky in Syria. So he didn't get involved. VDH's assessment is pointless and has no meaning.

A smaller number of US forces, present in the ME, yet (contrary to previous ops) NOT themselves involved in combat ops. Enabling & supporting allies instead to do the fighting. THAT's cost effective..

You....you of all people......keep confusing strategy with tactics.

Our strategy is the same: we're all over the place in each country..but with a lighter footprint. If we're not nation building, explain to me why we have 10,000+ troops in Afghanistan, and not 500.

Whoops. Doesn't fit your narrative. Try again.

It failed because if funded Iran's increase in disruptive & terrorist activities.

Or cure cancer. Or stop the opioid epidemic in America. Boy, what a dumb deal. Obama should have just let them get a nuke, I'm totally on board with your plan here.

That way, iran could get a nuke, and you'd be on here pretending to be mad that "Obama didn't do anything" to stop Iran from getting the bomb.

Shaming allies to contribute more while refocusing & strengthening NATO.

Making speeches. Neat. Let me know when something happens. So far, it's all talk. I like the talk. I'll give Trump that much. But with no follow through.....Who cares?

Trudeau makes mean girl jokes

It's super neat when Trump does it, but it's horrible when any other leader does it.

You'll be singing a different tune when your export product is stacked on the pier & the cargo aircraft are all overbooked.

You think I'm sending my spirits to 2nd world nations that are principally Muslim? Close the Strait of H. Pretty please.

You don't get it. If you can't use the Strait, one of three things will happen:

1. Countries will build up their Navies, or
2. They'll simply move goods through other ways. Yep, that includes planes. And if they need more planes, guess what happens?, or
3. They'll stop trading with countries like Iran until they're ready to sit at the big boy table. Plenty of other nations you can trade with, believe me.

Welcome to the free market. You're acting like this doesn't happen anywhere else.

[Brooklyn]

FBI says shoot em up Muslim hated America:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/08/us/pensa ... index.html

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united- ... ncident-us


Back in the Obama days, whenever a Muslim committed a crime the right wing immediately shouted BLAME OBAMA for allowing him into the USA. Well, this character today came into the USA under tRUMP. So let's hear the delusional right wing scream BLAME tRUMP!!.

[Brooklyn]

In the ME, you seem to think that ramming through a militarily inconsequential JCPOA eliminated Iran as a threat to our allies & to the sea lanes in that region, allowing us to withdraw. Instead, it had the opposite effect -- it financed the increase in Iran's disruptive activity.

Actually it is the USA that is disrupting activity in that region and has continually made threats against Iran. We've gone over this enough times on this and the previous forum.

[old salt]

Blame Boeher for sequestration if it gets you through the night. That's what CinC Obama did to attain his political goal of gutting the military

While you're at it, why not add in he was a Kenyan-born Muslim who hated America?
When all else fails, play that card. Pathetic.

Let's check the scoreboard with your claim that Obama's "political goal was to gut the military", shall we?

In Billions:

2000: 429
2001: 432
2002: 486
2003: 553
2004: 603
2005: 631
2006: 641
2007: 658
2008: 707
2009: 763 Obama's 1st
2010: 784 Boy, that Obama sure is gutting the military. Have any other laugh out loud statements for me?
2011: 775
2012: 731
2013: 673
2014: 631
2015: 616

That's your idea of a hollowed out military. Obama outspent Bush, bigly, Not when you add in OCO.when Dems controlled Congress. Looks to me like you simply need to hire more people at the DoD who know how to operate a calculator, and who understand what a budget is.
Look at the chart. Notice the Obama dip -- 2010 - 2017 -->https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44519.pdf

Either than, or Bush handed Obama the car keys with no gas in the tank, and the military was already hollowed out. Pick one.
Read the numbers you posted. I already told you that funding increased every year through 2011, then decreased.
The 2015 number was the lowest since 2004.
Plus, you leave out OCO funding. I also posted a lengthy article that documented the downsizing & deceases in readiness.

"where the cost-benefit analysis is murky, we’re not going to get involved, especially in the Middle East[/i]

That's a descriptor you can use to define Trump, Obama, and Bush. To quote All the President's Men, that's a non-denial, denial. In other words, the statement has no value.

Bush thought the cost benefit was clear in Iraq. So he got involved. Obama thought the cost benefit was murky in Syria. So he didn't get involved.
You don't know what your talking about. When did the siege of Kobane take place. VDH's assessment is pointless and has no meaning.No. It's just too detailed for your limited knowledge.

I already pointed out how the cost benefit analysis is limiting our involvement in Syria. You should be pleased that Trump isn't getting sucked into nation building in Syria. Likewise in SA -- the Saudis are picking up the tab for our deployment of defensive forces there which protect our own forces already in the region, in addition to our Arab allies, from your pals in Iran.

A smaller number of US forces, present in the ME, yet (contrary to previous ops) NOT themselves involved in combat ops. Enabling & supporting allies instead to do the fighting. THAT's cost effective..

You....you of all people......keep confusing strategy with tactics.
Just because you keep using the "strategy vs tactics" trope you heard on tv, doesn't mean you have any idea how it applies to the use of military force.

Our strategy is the same: we're all over the place in each country..but with a lighter footprint. If we're not nation building, explain to me why we have 10,000+ troops in Afghanistan, and not 500.
The task is much bigger in Afghanistan than in NE Syria. Much larger territory & more allied forces to support in Afghanistan. We're still stuck in the nation building mode in Afghanistan, but trying to extract ourselves. We're done nation building in Iraq. We're refusing to get sucked into nation building in Syria.

Whoops. Doesn't fit your narrative. Try again.
Good grief. Nation building in Syria with 500 troops vs > 100k in Iraq or Afghanistan. You are ignorant of what we are actually doing there.

It failed because if funded Iran's increase in disruptive & terrorist activities.

Or cure cancer. Or stop the opioid epidemic in America. Boy, what a dumb deal. Obama should have just let them get a nuke, I'm totally on board with your plan here.

That way, iran could get a nuke, and you'd be on here pretending to be mad that "Obama didn't do anything" to stop Iran from getting the bomb.

Shaming allies to contribute more while refocusing & strengthening NATO.

Making speeches. Neat. Let me know when something happens. So far, it's all talk. I like the talk. I'll give Trump that much. But with no follow through.....Who cares?

Trudeau makes mean girl jokes

It's super neat when Trump does it, but it's horrible when any other leader does it.

You'll be singing a different tune when your export product is stacked on the pier & the cargo aircraft are all overbooked.

You think I'm sending my spirits to 2nd world nations that are principally Muslim? Close the Strait of H. Pretty please.

You don't get it. If you can't use the Strait, one of three things will happen:

1. Countries will build up their Navies, or
2. They'll simply move goods through other ways. Yep, that includes planes. And if they need more planes, guess what happens?, or
3. They'll stop trading with countries like Iran until they're ready to sit at the big boy table. Plenty of other nations you can trade with, believe me.

Welcome to the free market. You're acting like this doesn't happen anywhere else.
Now you're limiting the discussion to the Strait of Hormuz, while the USN globocop patrols the global commons & keeps open the sea lanes & choke points around the world. ...& we foot the bill for it. The Chinese are building naval bases along their one belt & dredging up island toll booths in the S China Sea. Be careful what you wish for. You won't be able to afford the air freight rates.