Super Committee Failure Will Gut The Military - Maybe That Was The Plan All Along

The Congressional "super committee" has failed to come up with a measly 1.2 trillion dollars in savings over the next ten years. This will trigger a military budget reduction of over five hundred billion dollars beginning in 2013. Even Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says this will lead to a hollow force.

My Democratic friends will argue the point, but I think this may have been the liberals' goal in the first place. They have always wanted to cut defense spending, so they managed to get enough foolish Republicans to vote in favor of the ridiculous twelve-person "super committee." All they had to do was ensure failure to trigger the automatic cuts in defense.

The Republicans even offered some revenue increases in an attempt to reach an agreement, but Democrats want mostly revenue (read that tax) increases. They also don't want to discuss reforming Social Security or Medicare in order to protect the long-term viability of those programs. Of course, the Democrats will blame the Republicans for the failure of the "super committee." The reality is that the Obama administration and the Democrats are willing to compromise - but only if you do it their way.

It's beginning to look like this "super committee" was set up to fail from the beginning. Now the left may have what they wanted all along, a reduction of America's military strength that will result in mothballed ships and planes, shuttered military bases, cancellation of modernization projects, and the "firing" of thousands of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen.

The Iranians are laughing.....

Charles M. Grist
Author of the award-winning book My Last War: A Vietnam Veteran's Tour in Iraq