QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 10:24 A.M. ET:  Related to the post below, this also deals with the drastic defense cuts announced by Chuck Hagel yesterday.  From Rich Lowry in the New York Post:

As soon as World War II ended, we embarked on a carelessly precipitous demobilization that junked one of the most fearsome Western armies ever assembled. Just having liberated Europe, we still managed to find ourselves unprepared for the onset of the Korean War.

Defenders of the current defense cuts say that we still spend more on our military than anyone else in the world. True, but we aren’t a mere regional power. Unless we want to outsource patrolling the global sea lanes to China and the security of Europe to Russia, we will always have to spend substantially more than anyone else does.

Our allies aren’t in any position to pick up the slack. When the French army wants to go anywhere, we have to fly it. The entire British navy is smaller than the fleet sent to take back the Falklands in the 1980s.

President Obama is a devoted believer in the efficacy of government spending as government spending — on everything but defense. In 2009, it was $800 billion for stimulus but not a cent for defense. In his wisdom, he is perfectly content to slash a function of government that is indisputably constitutional, that is the basis of our freedom, and that is, relative to domestic entitlements, a drop in the budgetary bucket.

We may not regret it this year or the next. But regret it we will.

COMMENT:  The piece is called, "Wishing the World Away," which is exactly what we've done before.  (Remember George McGovern's pathetic battle cry in 1972, "Come home America"?) 

I don't normally quote Marxists, but occasionally one of them gets it right.  Leon Trotsky once said, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."  Right on, man.

But be sure to blame Bush.

February 25, 2014