Obama to Russia: I’ll be able to gut America’s defense after the election

During the recently-concluded Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul (where he outlined plans to further cut America’s nuclear arsenal by 30% from an already-inadequate level), Barack Obama privately told Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he will have enough “space” to gut America’s defense after the upcoming Presidential election. AP reports that:

“SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — President Barack Obama told Russia’s leader Monday that he would have more flexibility after the November election to deal with the contentious issue of missile defense, a candid assessment of political reality that was picked up by a microphone without either leader apparently knowing.

“This is my last election,” Obama is heard telling outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. “After my election I have more flexibility.”

Medvedev replied, according to a tape by ABC News: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir,” an apparent reference to incoming President Vladmir Putin.

Obama and Medvedev did not intend for their comments, made during a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, to be made public. Once they were, the White House said Obama’s words reflected the reality that domestic political concerns in the both the U.S. and Russia this year would make it difficult to fully address their long-standing differences over the contentious issue of missile defense.

Obama, should he win re-election, would not have to face voters again.”

Of course, the pro-Obama media and the Obama regime were quick to spin this into something it was not. They claim Obama was merely referring to a compromise, a technical solution, “resolving differences”.

Don’t let them fool you. Obama was talking about gutting America’s defense – including, but not exclusively, missile defense – after the election, should he win it.

How do I know by what he meant? From what he said and the comments of his advisors quoted above, as well as from his record.

His deputy NS advisor, Ben Rhodes, said that a deal cannot be reached this year because of the upcoming US presidential election and because there are serious “domestic political concerns” in the US about what Obama would do.

So because of “domestic political concerns” in the US, Obama wants to wait until after the election – when, by AP’s own admission, “should he win re-election, would not have to face voters again” (and thus suffer any consequences of wrongdoing) – to… do what?

There can be only one answer: to gut the US military.

Think about it. If he intended to do something good for America, e.g. to strengthen America’s defense or its negotiating position, would he really need to wait until AFTER the election to do so? Of course not. On the contrary, he would do so before the election to boost his resume and therefore his chances of victory. He has no foreign policy accomplishments to date (killing OBL was Panetta’s achievement, not Obama’s), and his actual FP record (despite what his campaign and the pro-Obama media will tell you) is one of disaster.

You don’t wait with doing something good until after the election. You do so if you know it will be BAD for the country and you want to avoid the consequences.

Secondly, we have Obama’s foreign policy and defense record to date to tell us what he meant. To this day, he has closed over 50 crucial military modernization programs, cut the US nuclear arsenal under the New START treaty while permitting Russia to grow its, accepted sweeping restrictions on missile defense as a part of that treaty, cut the military’s force structure, given Russia classified information on US missile defense systems (thus helping it and its client regimes defeat these systems), dictated massive $487 bn budget cuts to defense (thus forcing it to retire scores of ships and aircraft and cut ship and aircraft orders and R&D programs dramatically), and signed a debt ceiling deal that includes  a sequestration mechanism that will cut another $600 bn from the core defense budget unless it’s detriggered (and he promises to veto any attempts to do so).

He has allowed Iran to retain a captured RQ-170 drone. He has closed crucial missile defense systems such as the MKV and the KEI. He has publicly questioned the feasibility of missile defense. In September 2009, at Moscow’s insistence, he cancelled plans for a viable, proven missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic and replaced it with a watered-down “plan” that he doesn’t intend to implement, which relies on an interceptor that doesn’t even exist yet and which may never be enacted, and even that hasn’t proven to be enough to appease Moscow.

And yet, he plans to weaken defense even further, with a further, up to 80% cut in America’s nuclear arsenal and a FY2013 defense budget proposal that would retire scores of ships and aicraft and dramatically cut procurement and R&D programs.

Given that this is his record, what do you think did he mean he needed to put off until after the election? Of course he meant gutting America’s defense.

And yet, Republicans are still responding to his defense cuts and his sell-outs to Russia weakly. Most of them, including House Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Turner, are still incapable of doing more than sending him useless letters BEGGING him to clarify his remarks and not to compromise America’s national security, letters that he never reads and throws into the dustbin immediately upon receipt.

But some other Republicans are willing to be more assertive. Mitt Romney has criticized and mocked Obama’s remarks in a recent campaign speech, while the Republican National Committee has even produced a 60-second ad (titled “After the Election”) using Obama’s remark to Medvedev and showing that America cannot afford to reelect him. This is a great vid.

Republicans should produce a few more ads like these, with a few more facts and short Republican comments (explaining why Obama’s policies are disastrous and why the GOP’s policies would be better), and air these ads everyday in every swing state until Election Day.

Obama falsely claims that

“What I said yesterday … is something that I think everyone in this room understands. Arms control is extraordinarily complex, very technical, and the only way it gets done is if you can consult and build a strong understanding, both between countries and within countries. I think everybody understands — if they don’t, they haven’t been listening to my speeches — that I want to reduce nuclear stockpiles.”

But that is exactly the problem: he wants to deeply reduce America’s nuclear stockpile and eventually disarm the US completely, and he’s willing to make any concession, even a huge, unilateral one, to obtain a useless disarmament treaty from Russia, even if no one else is subject to such a treaty. But nuclear arms reduction and disarmament will make America and the world dramatically LESS SAFE, not more, for the reasons outlined here.

And his claim that he has to wait until the election because “arms control is complex” is a blatant lie. This has nothing to do with the complex and technical nature of arms control nor with “building understanding” between the US and Russia (which the Bush and Obama Administrations have been trying to do for over a decade). This is solely about Obama planning to make significant, unilateral concessions to Russia which he knows he can’t make now because he knows they would imperil US national security and cost him reelection. So in order to deceive and fool the American people, he’s lying to them that he simply meant “technical, complex arms control agreements” and “building trust”, while hiding the plans for, and putting off, his planned unilateral concessions to Moscow until after the election, when he won’t have to face voters again and will be able to do any damage he wants to, if he’s reelected.

As Baker Spring rightly writes:

“What is now evident is the scope of the manipulation he is pursuing to fool the American people about something essential to their security. It is now undeniable that President Obama is breaking the most basic trust the American people put in any President.”

He knows that his defense cuts, transfers of classified information, and other unilateral concessions to Moscow would be badly received by the public and could cost him reelection. So he will deceive the American people until November, and is putting off making the biggest concessions until after the election.

The American people must not give him the opportunity to make such sellouts. He must be voted out of office.