GOP lawmakers say the Obama administration is ignoring history in planning a defense budget that bets there won't be another protracted ground war in the near future.
The White House is expected to unveil the 2015 defense budget on Tuesday that would cut the active duty Army by more than 20 percent over the next five years.
“After Iraq and Afghanistan, we are no longer sizing the military to conduct long and large stability operations,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last Monday as he previewed the president’s 2015 defense budget.
Republicans say this move is foolish, given the effects of previous post-war drawdowns.
"You look at what happened at the end of World War II. We took the largest, strongest Army, Navy and Air Force that had ever been on the earth, and we destroyed it, totally eliminated it for the next year,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) on Thursday.
“So when Korea started, they pushed us almost right into the ocean. They were basically fodder trying to hold things back,” he said.
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Author
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Nora Bensahel