Needlenose

North Korean soldier looking for Repair_Man_Jack's house

…no, just seriously stoopid.  I’ve noticed that of late, as the HuffPos and PajamaMedias of the blogosphere emerge, fewer and fewer people ‘cross over’ to visit blogs and media of the opposing camp.  With all this Tea Party noise about the deficit, I thought I’d take a peak at one of the bigger conservative blogs to see what they had to say about it, and perhaps, as a self-professed ‘balanced budget’ guy, I might find some common ground.

Quite randomly, I found this diatribe by Repair_Man_Jack on RedState with the premise that we can’t cut the U.S. Defense budget without increasing security risk.  The crux of his argument is that there are some potential flashpoints out there such as the Korean Penninsula and the recent Chinese military buildup, and that we need to keep the sea lanes open for trade.

I’m guessing Repair_Man_Jack hasn’t really his homework if he thinks all of the defense budget goes to the cordon sanitaire around N. Korea and into policing the sea lanes.  I can think of many potential cuts that we can take immediately to tip the scales back in the direction of balance.

First, what are we paying per year for Shrubya’s occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan and other misc overseas adventures?  Something like $171 Billion a year….that’s a lot of scratch!  Presumably Jack the Repair Man is still a Believer in these invasions, otherwise undoubtedly he would have seen the Elephant in the budget room.

Then there is Shrubya’s unproven ‘Missile Defense” program, a costly $18B/year!!  Beyond the fact that what few tests that have been conducted have had extremely dubious results, I’m hard-pressed to understand exactly what threat this is supposed to protect us  from – the North Korean missiles might have the range now, but their guidance is questionable.  If either China or Russia get pissed at us and decide to send missiles our way, most likely those would come out of subs off the coast, a ‘use case’ not covered by Shrubya’s Star Wars.

And what of the $8+ Billion a year we are paying to support our nuclear weapons program?  Weren’t we supposed to be decreasing the number of bombs in our stockpile? ConservObama is not just continuing Shrubya’s handouts to aerospace in this filthy industry, but actually increasing the size of the defense and energy budget to support nuclear weapons and nuclear power research.  We haven’t hit the point where the US can get rid of all our stockpile and do no further maintenance, but seriously, how many H-Bomb-equipped MIRVs do we need to wipe out N. Korea, China and Iran?  Let’s close down one of the weapons lab and pare the remaining one back to a core function of reducing our stockpile further, and maintaining a enough weapons to wipe out Jack the Repairman’s overblown threats abroad.

Anyway, I’ll spare you further commentary, just take a look at this list of astronomical military boondoggles if you want to find another trillion or so (over time) in defense spending cuts that we can safely make without provoking a N. Korean invasion of the Fatherland.

As for Repair_Man_Jack, I suggest you stick to repairing drywall.

The Administration would like to keep our forces sitting around in Iraq past the current deadline in case something flares up – think of it as Obama’s insurance to avoid getting egg on his face if things suddenly spiral out of control again amongst the competing factions there.  Mookie doesn’t think that’s such a good idea.  Swopa’s old pal Sistani hasn’t weighed in on the matter yet.

Well at least I’m glad they are finally talking about the ‘new strategies” for the Afghanistan war.  Not sure why they waited so damn long though.

Frankly I’m with Colin Powell on this one – Mr. Obama, please be clear on what you hope to accomplish with U.S. Troops, and what conditions will trigger the end of the operation – give us a frickin’ exit strategy!!

The unspoken exit strategy, of course, is the neutralization of the Taliban & the destruction of Al Qaeda’s safe haven in the region, which as I’ve suggested before, is impossible without expanding the conflict into Western Pakistan.

Since the Pakistani government is scared to death of inviting US troops into the country to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the ground, and since we can’t invade without their permission, this pretty much rules out the current exit strategy.

So I imagine the conversation is pretty much revolving back to the old Nixon standby “how do we translate ‘Peace with Honor’ into Pashtun.”