By Susan Stamper Brown
Tuesday, March 04, 2014
It is said if someone wants to understand a person's true
priorities, just look at their checkbook. The late "Fast and Furious"
star Paul Walker, who died in a car crash last November, is a good example.
Walker had it all; with fame, fortune and good looks on his side, but that was
not what defined him. Walker used his hard-earned money to make the world a
better place through his humanitarian aid organization, Reach Out Worldwide,
but his generosity did not stop there.
The story is told that some years back, he was in a Santa
Barbara, California jewelry store and overheard a young soldier, Kyle, who had
just returned from Iraq tell his fiancé, Kristen, he could not afford the ring
she liked. Later, Walker called the store manager and put the ring on his tab.
After his death, Kristen told CBS News Los Angeles the look on Walker's face
"transformed" when Walker heard Kyle was an Iraq War veteran.
Walker's heart was in the right place. As the scripture
goes, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." If
only the same could be said about the priorities of the Obama administration
which stores treasure in social programs at the expense of the active duty and
retired veterans in my family and yours.
Obama's ineffectual "yes man" Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel's recent announcement that defense spending will be scaled back to
pre-WWII levels shows the Obama administration has little interest in executing
the federal government's primary constitutionally mandated role to keep us
safe. But this is what Democrats do -- they look at the military and see a cash
cow to fund their next spending spree like a drunken sailor on a weekend pass.
If people were not so distracted by the Obamacare mess, they might notice the
transfusion tubes sucking the life out of the military and directly into the left's
overfed love child, the welfare state.
Sure, the military budget needs trimming, but to balance
the budget on the backs of our patriots speaks volumes about where the
administration's priorities really lie. What message, pray tell, are they
communicating, when they tell a former war veteran to cough up more money for
healthcare so some lazy basement dweller living off his parents can have his
healthcare subsidized? Or, cutting the salaries and benefits of active duty
service members who risk their life for this country while contemporaneously
proposing (in the fiscal 2015 budget) an arbitrary pay increase for federal
civilian workers? It is a slap in the face of those who serve and who have
served.
In proposing the defense cuts, Hagel borrowed a line from
one of his predecessors, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who said we must
"act in the world as it is, and not in the world as we wish it were."
Obviously, Obama believes the world is a fairly tame place, and that a weaker
America makes for a stronger planet, but as we see in the Middle East, and
beyond, nothing could be further from reality. Overthrowing Libya's Qaddafi
produced a failed state run by extremists who gave us Benghazi. Retreating in
Iraq resulted in al Qaeda's resurgence and the loss of an ally. Playing footsie
with Iran edges them closer to nuclear capability. Half-hearted threats of
redlines, black lines and colorless lines make us look weak, leaving despots
like Putin to fill the leadership void.
In the world that we live, fear is another name for
respect. Focusing on domestic non-issues while simultaneously weakening our
national defense gives the bad guys the advantage they crave as they lie in
wait to seize the moment. Both the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks happened after
Democrats recklessly slashed defense budgets.
With priorities out of balance, the Obama administration
is endangering our national security and weakening those charged with
protecting it, America's national treasure.
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