A post-America utterly unequipped to deal with what's on its plate
We need a functioning House of Representatives, we need much more defense spending, and we need a functioning moral compass; none seem to be forthcoming
The whole world is seeing this:
Republicans are confronting a deepening leadership crisis that has left the House paralyzed with no clear path to elect a new speaker, after an effort to replace Kevin McCarthy following his historic ouster was derailed by entrenched opposition and deep divisions within the party.
By failing to coalesce behind a candidate, Republicans have plunged the House into uncharted territory and effectively frozen the chamber at a time when major international and domestic crises loom, from Israel’s war against Hamas to a potential government shutdown in mid-November.
As House Republicans struggle to govern, the party suffered another black eye Thursday evening when Majority Leader Steve Scalise abruptly withdrew from the speaker’s race amid hardened opposition from more than a dozen holdouts. The problem for the House GOP is that it’s not clear anyone can lock down the 217 votes needed to win the gavel, raising questions over how and when the standoff over the speakership will last and at what cost.
There’s buzz that Jim Jordan is getting another look, but if the Republicans acknowledged that they couldn’t get 217 votes in a general House-floor vote with Scalise, do they really think they have a better chance with a more blatantly Trumpist pick?
Now, consider this conversation between two American Enterprise defense scholars, Danielle Pletka and Mackenzie Eaglin, which took place two days before Hamas assaulted Israel:
The world has become a much more dangerous place — Iran, North Korea, Russia, China — but we’re not spending enough on defense to keep up with inflation…?
ME: Senate Republicans pushed through two years of defense spending increases significantly above the Biden White House request because of the worldwide threat environment. The wars we don't fight are the cheapest ones. And so, yes, it's significantly expensive to deter bad problems to prevent crises from spiraling into conflicts. But that's exactly why you had this large standing military to prevent worse things from happening.
The Senate took the lead and all of Congress voted accordingly, but now with House Republicans, that all ground to a halt. Now you have Biden budgets which are not keeping pace with inflation, and as we all know, in our own pocketbooks, the lost buying power. You have the same number in your bank account, but it buys half of what it used to, the shrinkflation effect as well. The same trends apply to the military.
So what are the consequences?
ME: But the most immediate consequence is you're not as forward, you're not as globally present, which when you're not there, people make different decisions and choices, good or bad. You can't influence their decision making because they know it's going to take you a while to get there. Readiness takes a hit almost immediately. We already have an armed forces recovering from, like I said, the reduced readiness of the Budget Control Act [which cut federal spending across the board in 2011]. The Air Force, for example, cannot break out of its pilot shortage.
No matter what they throw at this problem, it's 2,000 pilots, it's significant, it's been years in the same number, the needle hasn't moved, but then what you see are the second order effects, then they stop flying their pilots as much, so flying hours get reduced, and not just virtually, but the most important in the cockpit. China is not reducing their pilots flying hours. What it means is you have less proficient, less technical, less capable forces, and then everybody knows it.
When you start cutting flying hours, the ripple effect appears five years later. For example, the Commission on Military Aviation Safety's found that in the Budget Control Act era posts sequester, we lost 224 lives and almost 200 aircraft due to increased class A mishaps. That's what happens when you don't fly.
Then finally the Army. They start cutting readiness too. They're less engaged with partners and allies to keep these crises that are simmering from becoming problems. But then they start cutting the really necessary bills, like munitions, like ammunition. Again, here I look backward to give us a sense of what's going to come. The Army cut everything in munitions in the Budget Control Act era to pay the bills. These are liquid accounts. That's why they always get raided first. Then, of course, the United States runs out of munitions in almost every war we prosecute.
Why do successive secretaries of defense tolerate this?
ME: Okay, everybody who has to go solicit the president for more dollars should tell you that there are imbalances and systemic problems underneath the defense top line and where the dollars go. That they're doing this. Behind the scenes just also signals that they understand that there's something to fix, but they don't have the time. Because secretaries have to deal with Congress and allies in the White House. They're just busy.
But what it really speaks to, like I said, are all of these challenges underneath it, Dany, which is that lack of strategic flexibility. There are really only so many dollars that can get moved around. If you come in and you say, I want to be more China focused, or I want to be more middle tier power focused or on a North Korea, or I want to be more ready or more modern. Pick your strategic choice as a secretary. Your commander's intent, your choice.
Within the defense budget, you're talking about 10% that you have that's flexible funds that can be moved around. Everything else is on autopilot, and you have to make dramatic changes if you want to spend dollars differently. We don't clean sheet the budget and start from a whiteboard every year. You take last year's budget and you try to move things around.
But so many things are, like I said, basically fenced and fixed funds, partly for Congress, partly for parochial reasons, but for a variety of bureaucratic purposes. The money is largely untouchable, absent major, significant changes about our role in the world.
Do people know this in official Washington?
ME: When Washington figures out we're behind, I can assure you we're much further than we think. I'm trying to highlight here in terms of hard power and national security capabilities. We're not falling. We have fallen behind. Because the joint chiefs love to say like, "Oh, well, in a couple years it'll be really bad."
Nope, it's really bad right now. And of course the first area in which we're falling behind is total military investment. It is time to retire the tired trope that we spend more than the next insert X number of countries combined on defense. Beijing self-reports their numbers. That's a joke. It's laughable that we would even take that number seriously.
Now that the above-mentioned assault has been added to the mix, how are the oldest and (heretofore) most distinguished higher-education institution in the country and a “political” figure who could well return to the Oval Office in January 2025 comporting themselves?
Former Harvard president is completely disgusted with that university:
Former Harvard president Larry Summers said Monday he has never been as "disillusioned and alienated" toward the institution as he is now after student organizations purported that Israel is "entirely responsible" for the country's war against Hamas terrorists.
Summers, who was a Harvard professor before serving as university president from 2001 to 2006, posted a thread on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday saying he is "sickened" by the student groups' statement and "cannot fathom" the Harvard administration's "failure to disassociate the University and condemn this statement."
How egregious was the source of his nausea?
Following the attack, Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups released a statement signed by 27 organizations that said, "We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence." The groups that signed onto the statement included the Harvard Islamic Society, the Harvard Jews for Liberation, the Society of Arab Students and the Harvard Divinity School Muslim Association.
"Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum," the statement continued. "For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to ‘open the gates of hell,’ and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. Palestinians in Gaza have no shelters for refuge and nowhere to escape. In the coming days, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel’s violence."
Summers has had it with the administration's lack of a moral compass:
"In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today," Summers wrote. "The silence from Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups' statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards(sic) acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel."
On the other side of the post-American spectrum, the supreme leader of the cult of drool-besotted leg-humpers let loose with this:
Former US president Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to mock Israel for failing to anticipate the weekend Hamas onslaught and for not going on the offensive against Hezbollah amid several deadly clashes along its northern border. He also launched personal attacks against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he accused of “letting him down,” and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, whom he called a “jerk.”
. . . Turning to Gallant in Israel, Trump said, “They have a national defense minister or somebody saying, ‘I hope Hezbollah doesn’t attack us from the north.’ So the following morning, they attacked… If you listen to this jerk, you would attack from the north because he said, ‘That’s our weak spot.’”
. . . Trump made the comments while recalling his administration’s 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force.
Trump reiterated his claim that Netanyahu backed out at the last minute from actively taking part in the killing.
“I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing. We were very disappointed, but we did the job ourselves, and it was absolute precision, magnificent, beautiful job,” he said. “Then Bibi tried to take credit for it. That didn’t make me feel too good. But that’s all right.”
One of the persistent themes here at Precipice - the consequences of abandoning seriousness as a trait worth cultivating - is being brought into sharp relief this week.
We continue to distract ourselves in ways large and small - some fluffy or trivial, some understandable, such as seeking comfort in the blessings of our personal lives and immediate surroundings, and some ever-more decadent - but it looks for all the world like what must be dealt with is becoming unavoidable.
This is what happens when we lose sight of why our forebears embarked on this experiment. No one, statistically speaking, cares anymore.
Well, okay. Lessons not learned under manageable circumstances will get learned in less comfortable ways.