Senator Inhofe’s video response to DoD budget cuts.

On-scene in Afghanistan.

Senator Jim Inhofe (R, OK) had some harsh words about proposed DoD cuts:

The text version of these comments may be found here.

As you will note from the transcript and the video, Sen Inhofe is laying blame for the cuts squarely at the feet of President Obama – something that the President’s partisans will consider unfair, but it comes with the desk in the Oval Office. Besides, judging from the things that got cut if the White House wasn’t involved in the process up to the neck then we have a very serious communications problem brewing between the civilian government and the military. One that would be more serious than gutting the defense budget.

Honestly, Obama’s going to take flack for this for the wrong reasons. If these cuts had been implemented in a general atmosphere of budget cuts and fiscal responsibility – like the Republicans in Congress have been yelling for since they saw the first ‘stimulus’ package – there would be a good deal less controversy. But Sen. Inhofe is right: even if you consider all of these programs pork, there’s a ludicrous amount of nonmilitary pork that has been enshrined into federal law. Asking the question of why it’s acceptable to trim fat/meat/bone here and not elsewhere inevitably leads to the suspicion that the administration has decided that the net vote loss ratio is most favorable to the Democratic party here. Which is another way of saying that the White House has just subordinated American military policy to its domestic political strategy.

And we’re not supposed to do that, right? I seem to recall hearing a lot of people sound off on the topic.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.