The Kernel wrote:
Hehe, yeah I'm sure he and Shep have a lot to say about it. But it WAS Clinton's military that performed admirably during Afghanistan and Iraqi Freedom to a certain extent
The military did well in spite of the destruction cause by Clinton, and because they where getting billions in emergency funds to buy key equipment and munitions, like RIFLE AMMUNITION. The US Army was critically short of this most basic munition when September 11th rolled around and had to go around to places like South Africa to make emergency buys. On a different note several US soldiers and a large number of afghan allies where killed by errant JDAM's. Why? Because to call in strike with the weapon Special Forces had to repeat the coordinates by voice radio to bomber crewmen who then typed them in, often this had to be done under fire. Sometimes mistakes got made. A data link system, which would have allowed the entire process from laser ranging on the target to the data reaching the bomb guidance unit to be done without the need to speak a single coordinate at any point was had been developed, but funding had been denied under Clinton.
The same camapign also nearly totally exhausted Air force stocks of PGM's, stockpiles which Clinton had badly depleted with Desert Fox and Allied force and other useless campaigns and not done a thing to replace.
Had there been another contingency, and the US military is suppose to be able to handle three at a time, we'd have been stuck dropping bathtubs as both Iron and PGM bomb stocks would have been gone. Hell action against Iraq was delayed in large part because the weapons simply didn't exist to do the job.
and it WAS the end of the Cold War.
At the end of the Cold War very detailed plans where drawn up about what the new US force structure should be, what bases should close and what units disband to cut costs and yet leave a military able to meet existing and projected missions. The whole process had already began under Bush senior. Then Clinton came along and promptly had a large number of additional units, entire divisions, air wings, one CVBG all added to the list without any consideration of the impact. Then he went on to use what was left at a high operations tempo for eight years and with a budget that didn't even meet unit's peacetime requirements. And then when the bill for all that started adding up, his solution was to have units pay for it out of existing funds. Well that didn't work so he started canceling programs, notably the XM-8 light tank which was about to enter production.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
