OPINION:
The Washington Times’ bleak but accurate editorial on the sweeping defense cuts recently proposed by President Obama (“Obama’s strategic retreat,” Web, Thursday) doesn’t mention the $500 billion in additional across-the-board defense cuts triggered by Congress’ debt-ceiling deal - the Sword of Damocles still hanging over the Pentagon.
There’s a clear bipartisan consensus that defense has already been cut to the bone with program eliminations over the past three years, as well as the inevitable wear and tear on equipment from nearly a decade of fighting two wars. Congressional budget agreements already call for $450 billion in additional defense cuts over the next decade, with half reportedly coming from modernization programs. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is warning his fellow Democrats that additional cuts would be “potentially catastrophic.”
Slashing air-power programs, which allowed us to support the Libyan rebellion without boots on the ground, would cut the legs out from America’s greatest strength. We also need to preserve funds for missile defense, a once-derided program now supported not only by Republican hawks but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and others in the Obama administration who realize that North Korea’s Taepodong-2 missiles could likely deliver a 1-ton warhead to Fairbanks or Juneau, Alaska, in the near future.
Our national defense should respond to real threats, not budget numbers dreamed up by bureaucrats.
REAR ADM. GREG SLAVONIC
U.S. Navy, retired
Oklahoma City
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