Plans are afoot to further shrink our military at the direction of a president who seems oddly committed to exposing the United States to attack.  As Russia, China, and North Korea openly increase their stockpiles and capabilities, President Obama openly increases his devotion to socialism, spreading the diminishing wealth to those whose votes are needed to purchase our destruction.  He seems to have concluded that it is better to become communist than fight them.

This “patriot”, as Bill O’Reilly fondly calls him, not only knows that the United States is in danger, he relishes it.  How else to explain that, far from lamenting the aggression of our enemies and responding to the growing threat by countering or meeting it, he enhances the risk by reducing our already smaller defensive options.   This must be the greater flexibility that comes with a second term, about which the Russians seemed so pleased.  No wonder.

It has been well documented on American Thinker and elsewhere that our military is one of this president’s primary targets for pain and deprivation.   Consistent with never having wanted to be the commander of fine and courageous men and women, the president has committed himself fully to deconstructing the military they voluntarily joined, making it an increasingly uncomfortable place to be.   

Those who volunteer already accept the discomfort that comes with service, but the president has upped the ante, making sure they further suffer with a revocation of earned benefits, the inability to vote when deployed, terrorism as “workplace violence”, less equipment, and with watching the military become a social experiment in the self-indulgence of its individual members.  Under this president, the military has gone from being a fighting force to being increasingly a force within which and about which there is fighting.  Sound familiar?  That’s Obama’s legacy to the rest of America.  So, too, is the transformation of the role of the military from an extra-territorial force into the enforcement arm of a nascent police state, where the people are the new enemy. 

Those who may be considering enlisting can see this too, and many have undoubtedly reconsidered joining something that is not what it was.  The military is currently an organization whose CEO loathes his own personnel, never passing on an opportunity to rob them or deprive them of what they need.  He doesn’t even try to hide the left’s historic distrust and enmity toward them.  This is payback.  In that setting, it is a miracle that truly patriotic Americans, not those who dishonestly whine about victimhood from the Oval Office, still enlist at all. 

Our foes are ruthless and cold-blooded men of violence.  To such men, our preening president is a joke.  Worse, he is someone they can easily exploit, appealing to his pride and vanity, telling him how strong, smart and courageous he is, while they encircle us.  We only have thousands of years of human history to know how this works.  Unless you’re a progressive.  Then you bring up job-lock, the minimum wage, global warming, and race.  There, solved it.

Having correctly perceived Obama’s feminine mystique, they are falling over themselves to arm up to do what they couldn’t do back when we were the United States.  Russia is once again invading its neighbors, while one of its spy ships sits anchored in Cuba.  Iran will get its nukes and, because it can, sends ships to our territorial waters.  China threatens its neighbors and, therefore, us.  The North Korean leader is certifiably insane.  And missiles still hit Israel.

I have heard many on the left simper that we can’t be the world’s policeman, but we are seeing what happens when we walk away from the necessity of keeping these powers in check.  It used to be that with our choice to be a policeman, we purposefully lowered the risk that we’d be attacked, or forced into innumerable conflicts as order broke down.   Now, with order breaking down everywhere, our president virtually ensures we may not even be able preserve our own existence with what is available, never mind defending anyone else.

There was another time, only one lifetime ago, when small nations devoted significant resources to arming themselves, and projecting their aggression against their neighbors, and then as now, we were not prepared.    Thanks to this president, many of the same dynamics have been reproduced: our smaller global stature, reduced land forces, a reduced navy, reduced capabilities and reduced global engagement.  Obama’s own unique contribution to this mix appears to be reduced or missing American courage.  They probably didn’t teach that in Indonesia.

When the tidal wave comes, as it did to commence the last world war, we will be vulnerable, but by design.  If it happens during this president’s term, and he does not instantly offer our unconditional surrender from a golf course, it will be necessary to immediately raise a fighting force to survive.  Regardless of who is president, a sufficient and sustainable force like that can only come about quickly by a draft.  Many may volunteer, but not enough to offset the damage done by a determined agenda.  What took time to wreck will take much more time to restore.

What’s more, thanks to the left’s aggressive insistence on the myth that there are no physical differences between men and women, and that women should be in combat no matter their physiques, we can foresee that it won’t just be just our sons who are forced to pay for the criminal neglect of the left, but our daughters, too.  Indeed, when our decay has become so vast that the enemy is on the ground within our borders for the first time in our history, all may have to fight.  Fathers, mothers, children, it won’t matter.  This has all happened before, just not yet here.  Perhaps they will cross our undefended southern border, if they haven’t already.  Where invasion used to seem inconceivable, it is now a likelihood, if not a present reality.   

It is incomprehensible that progressives seem not to grasp, or grasping it seem not to care, that their children, too, must suffer for their destruction of this country.  Instead they relish the short-term victories over the few Americans who propose solutions that would protect and enrich their own children.  They celebrate each petty slight against those who invoke the Constitution, thanks to which they have enjoyed a prosperous and guarded life their children will not have.  They pollute debate and discourse with disinformation, as if their children will grow up elsewhere.   They promote and applaud decadence and deceit in their celebrities and politicians, elevating them to ever-higher stature as their sins become more extreme.  They lie to themselves and to us, while their influence grows, that all that is wrong with the country can be blamed on other people, whose morals have been scorned and ridiculed, and which thereby play no part.

And they congratulate each other when they defeat actions meant to forestall or prevent the disasters they have made inevitable, economic and military, as if the universe does not know symmetry.  There are always consequences.  When the attacks come, only a draft will enable us to mount a defense, hopefully in time.  There are three more years in which more cuts and insults to our military and our sovereignty will be coming.   The tipping point will come when our enemies decide that we have too few to fight for long in even one place.  What then?