Posted by
Steve on Thursday, December 22, 2011 8:45:04 AM
Barack Obama pulled all of our troops out of Iraq and declared victory. He then turned over security in the country to the Iraqi Security Forces and the State Department. The peace lasted all of two days.
Yesterday there were bombs set off in Bagdad that killed at least 33 people, probably more, and caused a lot of damage. The response from our state department: nothing.
I also heard this morning that Obama is considering declaring victory in Afghanistan and pulling the troops out of there. We are still actively fighting the Taliban in the region near the Pakistan border. To pull a stunt like that would undermine all of our efforts since 2001. Afghanistan is not ready to take on security for their country, particularly against the Taliban. The Taliban is alive and well in the mountains that occur along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan is having trouble controlling the Taliban in Pakistan. How can we expect a much weaker Afghanistan force to control the Taliban? We are having our hands full in keeping the Taliban out of the major population areas of Afghanistan.
The Democrats and Libertarians do have a point when they say we should pull out of some of our bases overseas. We have approximately 700 bases for our troops overseas. We probably only need about half that number to really do the job we need to do. Which ones are essential and which ones should be closed would have to be decided by the military. I am not close enough to military intelligence to know which bases are essential and which bases are just window dressing. Each one would have to be evaluated individually.
We need to reduce our spending on every item in our budget. The defense budget is no exception. If we can save a $billion or more in the defense area while maintaining our readiness, why not? Much bigger cuts will come in other areas of the budget, most likely cutting out entire agencies or groups of agencies. Reform of entitlements will get us our biggest savings in the long run. But, no part of the federal budget should be sacred and not receive at least a look to see if we can garner some savings.
The problem in Washington is not that we collect too few tax dollars. The problem is that we spend way too much money. Most of the money is spent for things that would never have passed Congress during the first hundred years we have been a country. Most of our savings should come from the extra-Constitutional spending that Congress has authorized over the past hundred years of the Progressive era. It took us a long time to get into this mess. It will take us a long time to wean us off the overspending that has occurred.
The current issue paralyzing congress is the decision to continue to withhold less Social Security money or not. Social Security is already underfunded. Why would we want to reduce the amount of money taken out of paychecks to cover Social Security? Democrats do not care about funding Social Security. They know that it will be funded anyway by the general fund. Republicans want Social Security to be funded entirely by the contributions made by employees and employers. The ploy by Democrats was to put Republicans on the spot and make them vote against a tax cut. Republicans fooled them by voting for the tax cut. So, Democrats changed the rules of the game and shortened the time for the cut. Republicans held out for the original demand of one year. That is where it stands right now. Republicans staying in Washington to negotiate for a Social Security “tax cut”. Democrats left town and refuse to return to negotiate. They just continue to paint the Republicans as being against the tax cut. Somebody has to give in or the tax will be reinstituted.