The Pentagon general staff and the President are mismanaging the most important military resource we have—the men and women who are actually fighting for our country while some general staff member sits on his butt in safety. Our young people are used as chess pawns by sending them on too many deployments to war zones.  When they come back all messed up with PTSD and commit suicide, I doubt that the President and Pentagon general staff care.  It appears that the Pentagon general staff want to protect their political promotions and retirement.  They forget that we have a voluntary military now and why should a patriotic young person join when they know they will be abused by people who may not care.  If the general staff thinks that this criticism is unfair, then let every one of them go on multiple deployments with those that do the fighting.  The generals will say they did their time in the field during Viet Nam, but then deployment was a year—not multiple war zone deployments.  My definition of multiple deployments is three or more.  In the process of abusing our young people, the military is asking the states to furnish personnel from their national guard when they should be using only active duty personnel.

Why must the air force mechanics scavenge parts from old out-of-service planes in order to keep the remaining planes in condition to continue flying? Why spend all that money for thousands of Pentagon contract and regular employees instead of making sure the planes that must be ready are really ready to fly?  If we had a smaller Pentagon we should have money for the parts to keep our military ready.

Without accountability, the military will continue to purchase routine hardware store items at exorbitant prices. Cut the military procurement budget and staffing in the Pentagon and then let five procurement officers from each branch of the government decide what needs to be purchased and at what price.  When a member of congress insists on buying equipment that the military does not need or want, then do not spend the money and after six months if a commitment to purchase is not made, those funds are transferred into a rainy day fund from which the military can draw to purchase things like spare aircraft parts.  Are the recent number of military aircraft crashes due to lack of spare parts or reduced training due to lack of funds?  If not spare parts or training, why are there more aircraft accidents?

Any President or member of Congress that uses military procurement as an incentive to get re-elected must be called out because they currently should not be using taxpayer monies to do so. Maybe the problem is too many politicians who have been in office too long.  If it is a good idea to limit the President to two four years terms, it makes sense to limit the terms for representative (6 years) and senator (2 terms).  When we have taxpayers pay for elections[1], we will have started to clean up our elections.

President Obama has drastically reduced the manpower in all branches of the military to levels not experienced since before World War II. He has taken advantage of the advances in military technology developed before his Presidency and will very likely leave with research and development in shambles.  He doesn’t appear to care.  The number of naval ships has been reduced and they are old.  The number of operational aircraft have been reduced and many are close to retirement age.  When does the reduction in forces and the use of almost obsolete equipment reach the point that an adequate defense is not possible?  How close is the country to that point and what should happen to a President if that point is reached?

[1] Ernest Kanak Jr., The Way I See It, Outskirts Press (2014), p.71-77