GET OUT

REF:"Sitting in the Shadows:A 21st Century Defense Policy for the U.S." by SSS,

www.TheBurning Platform.com 2/25/10

The following is extracted in part from the above referenced article:

"President Dwight Eisenhower once remarked, "I can destroy the entire city of Moscow with 3 nuclear weapons. Why do I need 30?" The wisdom of that observation is obvious, yet every president who succeeded Ike has totally ignored it, at a cost to our nation of tens of trillions of dollars of unnecessary defense spending. Ike believed in and practiced the SUFFICIENCY of a sound national defense posture, not superiority. We have not had a presidential practitioner of sufficiency for 50 years. And it's been ungodly expensive.

Here are some personal thoughts which reflect the sufficient defense of the U.S. in the 21st Century.

First, get out. The U.S. has too many troops in too many inexplicable places worldwide. Get out of where? In order of priority, with number of troops in parentheses: Germany (52,000), UK (9,000), Japan (36,000), and South Korea (somewhere between 25,000 and 37,000). Is there a rational reason why we have well over 100,000 troops in these four countries, which are economically prosperous, politically stable democracies, and possess sufficient defense forces of their own? All of our military facilities in these countries should be closed.

My exit stategy also includes Belgium (1,300, nearly all of whom are staff officers at NATO/SHAPE Headquarters; will 130 do?), Turkey (1,600), the Netherlands (500), Portugal (700), every country in eastern Europe, and the ever puzzling Serbian-Kosovo goat rope (9,000). Gone, kaput. Blunt message to Europeans, the Turks, Japanese, and Koreans: defend yourselves. We've left the bodies of several hundred thousand brave American soldiers on your soil in the past century and spent hundreds of billion dollars in helping to rebuild your now prosperous economies. We provided a massive defense shield for you for over 40 years of Cold War. That's enough. From now on, figure it out on your own.

. . .Nuclear defense strategy rests upon strategic nuclear weapons, the "big bang" bombs that deliver explosive forces of over 100,000 kilotons of TNT (100 kt), which is nearly 6 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Keep in mind that 100 kt is the lowest yield of a strategic nuclear weapon. Many are much more powerful. So how many of these strategic bombs do we and the Russians have? The true figure is highly classified, but George Bush and Vladimir Putin signed the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT) on May 24, 2002 which stated that each country would reduce their OPERATIONALLY DEPLOYED strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700. SORT expires on December 31, 2012 and is a totally unverifiable piece of garbage. The current DOD doublespeak, known as the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, states that the U.S. will need between 1,700 and 2,200 strategic nuclear weapons, with additional weapons kept in a "non-deployed status." In other words, we'll hide 'em someplace.

Let's do the math. If Ike could destroy Moscow with 3 nukes in the 1950s, today this means we are DOWNSIZING to a capacity to destroy somewhere between 600 and 700 cities the size of Moscow. And that doesn't include the nukes put into storage to avoid being labeled "operationally deployed" and the thousands of lower yield "tactical" nukes possessed by our armed forces. That said, a nuclear exchange with Russia, for example, would result, with 100% certainty, in the total disappearance of Moscow and Washington DC, just for starters. Without exception, a nation's leaders are on any target list, theirs or ours.) "

With Love and kindness,

THE HATMAN