The Pentagon: No Place to Play Games [Elaine Donnelly - Center for Military Readiness]

By now everyone should know that Sen. Barack Obama, if elected Commander in Chief, will raid the defense budget for redistribution elsewhere. Obama said so himself in a 1-minute 30-second video for a leftist group called Caucus for Priorities, in which he pledges to put an end to “misguided defense policies.”

On Tuesday Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal asked: Will Obama Gut Defense? Stephens cited Rep. Barney Frank’s call for a 25 percent cut in defense spending, which would make it possible to spend more on new domestic programs after American forces withdraw from Iraq.

Congressman Frank’s recommended cut in defense spending conflicts with Obama’s reported willingness to increase the size of ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines, and to provide them with “first rate” equipment. Is Obama likely to keep those promises? In an article titled Obama’s Pentagon, retired Army Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis expressed skepticism about the senator’s intentions—primarily because of the people who are advising Obama on military affairs.

Former Clinton Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, Maginnis wrote, has said that he expects an Obama administration to maintain Pentagon spending at current levels. Danzig has also questioned “affordability issues” associated with the Army’s Future Combat Systems plan, the Air Force’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and the Navy’s DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer. Cost overruns require close oversight, but Obama’s plans go beyond efficiency. In his statement to the Caucus for Priorities, Obama promised to eliminate “unproven missile defense systems,” and to achieve what he calls a “world without nuclear weapons.”

In 1999, Secretary of the Navy Danzig, an outspoken advocate of women serving on submarines, insulted men of the Silent Service by calling them “a white male bastion.” If an Obama administration mandates “career opportunities” for female sailors on cramped submarines, which operate with constantly recycled air that would elevate the risks of birth defects, submarine commanders may have to disrupt undersea missions by conducting hazardous mid-ocean evacuations of pregnant sailors.

Rudy deLeon is another military/social activist who may make a comeback at the Pentagon. As Bill Clinton’s Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, deLeon worked with gay activists to circumvent the 1993 law stating that homosexuals are not eligible to serve in the military. If he returns to an even more powerful perch at the Department of Defense, an army of feminist attorneys and gay activists are likely to gain a new power base.

With access to defense dollars and Pentagon prestige, civilian ideologues will push hard for their most extreme causes, including full acceptance of professed (not discreet) homosexuals in the military, women in direct ground combat (infantry) battalions, and an Office of Victim Advocate (OVA) that would operate as an “Office of Male Bashing” in the Pentagon.

But that is not all. Vice presidential nominee Sen. Joseph Biden strongly supports the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international treaty that would surrender sovereignty to international bureaucrats on all issues involving women — meaning, just about everything.

According to Paul Weyrich, Obama also supports legislation to establish a Department of Peace and Non-Violence (HR 808), sponsored by anti-war liberal Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and 70 co-sponsors. This is not a joke—it is a threat to America’s volunteer force and its ability to defend America.

Voters should be concerned not just about the resources that would be taken away from the armed forces, but the new burdens that would be loaded on. The situation could reprise the 1990s, when the Clinton administration slashed the defense budget, while Pentagon social engineers pushed hard for radical social experiments that weakened morale, discipline, and retention in the ranks.

An administration that takes away resources while adding heavy social burdens could change the sturdy, five-sided shape of the Pentagon into a shaky structure resembling a tower of wooden Jenga blocks. In the popular tabletop family game of the same name, rectangular-shaped Jenga blocks that resemble railroad ties are laid in cross-hatched layers to form a tall column. Each player carefully withdraws one of the smooth wooden planks and places it on top of the tower.

Every round weakens the structure of the column while adding increasingly heavy burdens that make it taller, but less stable. The player who pulls the last plank that causes the tower to tumble loses the game with laughter all around.

It would not be a laughing matter, however, if the next administration weakens the infrastructure of the military while simultaneously burdening it with cultural changes that greatly increase the difficulties and hazards of military life. This would be a dangerous game, and it could break the volunteer force.