National Defense…or Lack Thereof

On Nov. 2 our nation will head to the polls to vote, among other things, for those we want to represent us for the next two years in the House of Representatives and the next six years in the Senate. When we elect our representatives, we require them to swear to uphold our Constitution.
As I stated in an earlier column, the powers granted to our general government in the U.S. Capitol are very specifically outlined in our Constitution, and by swearing to uphold it, they are swearing not to pass laws which usurp power not delegated to them.
Over a number of decades, those we elected have increasingly turned a blind eye to that document, and have gone much beyond it boundaries.
Their penchant for spending our resources on whatever comes into their heads and their inability to focus on their assigned tasks, threatens America’s security, which the framers of the Constitution envisioned as the federal government’s primary responsibility. There is simply not enough money to do all the things, which can be conceived of, while simultaneously maintaining our military strength.
Do you know that the U.S. Navy now fields fewer than 300 ships, which is half the number we deployed only three decades ago, and the Air Force is now flying decades-old bombers and fighter jets?
The immediate issue is the fact that the Chinese have been rapidly expanding their arsenal of ships, aircraft and missiles, and are little by little challenging us at sea. Their current step is to keep the U.S. from operating freely in Asian waters.
What is their thinking? Well, you tell me what Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi meant when he curtly brushed aside Singapore’s concerns over China’s expanding territorial claims, by simply saying, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”
I’ll tell you what I heard; We Chinese are bullies and there is not a darn thing anybody can do about it, not even the United States. The last time we heard anybody talk like that was in the 1930s when Adolf Hitler started rattling his sword.
Hitler was weak at the time, but he was testing the free world’s response. Because it made no response, he concluded that Germany’s enemies were “little worms,” and he could do as he pleased. When we finally woke up, we had an avoidable world war to fight.
History repeats itself, and there will never be peace. However, due to the enormous strength of the U.S. since World War II, we have avoided a subsequent world war.
China has over four times our population, and their economy has been growing at 10 percent a year for the last several decades. They earn tens of billions of dollars more per month than they spend, and then they lend it to us to help us meet our bills.
So why wouldn’t they think they can beat us? They are getting militarily stronger while we are growing weaker; they are getting richer while we are growing poorer.
Why the optimism? Because nobody beats America when we have our priorities straight. We stood up to the Bully of Europe in the 1930s… and beat him, and we will do the same when the time comes to the Bully of Asia. The earlier we awaken, the less painful and destructive this fight will be. This requires us to get back to basics, which means, to get back to the Constitution.
ART HALL, publisher