Tom Engelhardt: A Military First Policy on a Destabilizing Planet! r

Here's the way it actually wend down in Washington last week: A triumphant performance by a commander-in chief, who wants you to know that he's at the top of his game. When it came to rolling out a new 10-year future of the US military, the leaks to the media began early and the message was clear. One man in charge of your future safety and security. His name is Barack Obama. Don't worry, he has things in hand. Unlike the typical president, so the reports went, he held sic meetings with top Pentagon officials, the Joint Chiefs, the service heads, and his military commanders to plan the next decade of American war making, and he was no civilian bystander at those meetings. On a planet where no other power has more than two aircraft carriers in service, he personally nixed a Pentagon suggestion that the country's aircraft battle groups be reduced from 11 to 10, lest China think our power-projection capabilities were weakening in Asia. His secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, spared no words when it came to the president's role, praising his "vision and guidance and leadership". Panetta described Obama's involvement thus: "This has been an unprecedented process, to have the president of the United States participate in discussions involving the development of a defense strategy.