Agreeing with Obama

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Even though I see no reason to support Obama, or even vote for him, there are things in his plan that I do agree with. I've been reading over his plans for restructuring the military and there are a lot of good things there. "We have inherited a national security structure that was developed and organized in the late 1940s to win the Cold War. It remains a rigid bureaucracy of government agencies, relying upon a restrictive and disconnected set of legal authorities." This is absolutely true. Our military seems to train for the last major war, instead of look ahead to the next one. In the pentagon there are teams of people who spend their days making contingency plans and strategies for possible future scenarios. They are usually (but not always) based on the political winds blowing in different parts of the world. The problem is, once "the balloon goes up" we don't seem to see the fruits of their labors. The plans and strategies that become the orders for the units pretty much turn out to be adaptations of what we've been doing all along. "As we rebuild our armed forces, we must not simply recreate the military of the Cold War era. Obama and Biden believe that we must build up our special operations forces, civil affairs, information operations, and other units and capabilities that remain in chronic short supply; invest in foreign language training, cultural awareness, and human intelligence and other needed counterinsurgency and stabilization skill sets; and create a more robust capacity to train, equip, and advise foreign security forces, so that local allies are better prepared to confront mutual threats." I agree that our special ops, civil affairs units are almost always shorthanded, but I have to admit that I'm surprised to read a Liberal saying so. Most liberals seem to resent the very existance of these type of units (even the ones who don't resent the military in general). But I also have to wonder if Obama isn't a little uniformed here too. "invest in foreign language training"? The Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey in California is already among the biggest and well funded language training facilities in the world. Thousands of servicemembers from all branches of the US military go through intense training. They are taught by instructors who with Masters and PhDs in linguistics and native speakers. 23 languages and several dialects are taught, plus contractual training in Washington DC in 84 languages and dialects. Like I said, I have to wonder if Obama knows about DLI... or is he just sayng that as good as it is here, it can be better. I also wonder if most Obama supporters realize that his plan calls for more training and equiping of foreign forces? "Barack Obama and Joe Biden support plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marines by 27,000 troops. Increasing our end strength will help units retrain and re-equip properly between deployments and decrease the strain on military families." Absolutely! One thing that has alway bugged me about the Bush administration. Rumsfeld said "you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you wish you had. While it's true you go to war with the Army you have, you work on establishing the Army you wish you had. I didn't see anything beyond the "wishing" we had in terms of miiltary size. Again though, I wonder if Obamas' more anti military supporters know about this one? "We must rebalance our capabilities to ensure that our forces have the agility and lethality to succeed in both conventional wars and in stabilization and counter-insurgency operations. Obama and Biden have committed to a review of each major defense program in light of current needs, gaps in the field, and likely future threat scenarios in the post-9/11 world." I agree with him here, but I can't help but wonder why a Prs. Obama would be all about increasing lethality and more agile weaponry when Sen. Obama never me a weapons system he could vote for. Does the label "Mr President" include a change of heart about the military, the weapon systems and the training? I don't mind agreeing with Obama when I think he's right. It doesn't make me want to vote for him, but it is nice to see that he does get things right once in awhile. http://www.barackobama.com/issues/defense/