Gaffney: Obama Defense Strategy "Eviscerate[s] The Armed Forces Of The United States," "Invites" Attack

Responding to the Obama administration's announcement of an overhauled defense strategy that will guide cuts in defense spending, Frank Gaffney wrote in a January 10 post on Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace wrote that "[t]his is the first time in memory that a president has voluntarily eviscerated the armed forces of the United States and redeployed what remains so as to create acute vacuums of power in time of war." 

Gaffney further wrote: "If even the defense reductions, downsizing and disengagement that it envisions come to pass -- let alone those in prospect if the cuts associated with the pending sequestration legislation are imposed, the United States will not simply expose its people, allies and vital interests to attack.  It will invite such attack." 

However, as Media Matters has noted, experts have said that the proposed plan is fiscally responsible while keeping America the "world's most dominant military." 

From Gaffney's piece: 

Listening to Barack Obama laying out what he calls his new defense strategy, my first reaction was, "Here we go again." Having basically written off the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Obama is falling prey to a temptation several of his predecessors found irresistible in peacetime: Cut defense expenditures. Shrink the military. And hope the rest of the world will neither notice nor take advantage of our weakness. 

Something is decidedly different, however. This is the first time in memory that a president has voluntarily eviscerated the armed forces of the United States and redeployed what remains so as to create acute vacuums of power in time of war. Unfortunately, I am referring not just to the war in Afghanistan that we continue to be engaged in, for the time being at least. 

[...] 

Under such circumstances Mr. Obama's "revised defense strategy" is a formula for disaster. If even the defense reductions, downsizing and disengagement that it envisions come to pass -- let alone those in prospect if the cuts associated with the pending sequestration legislation are imposed, the United States will not simply expose its people, allies and vital interests to attack. It will invite such attack.

Gaffney has previously fearmongered that repealing the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy could lead to reinstatement of the draft.