From The New York Slimes, Thom ‘Wanker’ Shanker and Helene ‘Commie’ Cooper reporting, we biasly learn [tip of the fedora to the Drudge Report]:
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001.
Well, this is rather fitting considering that we seem to be living in a 21st Century version of the 1930′s.
There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline Books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong —these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.
—Winston Churchill, Air Parity Lost, House Of Commons 02 May 1935
UPDATE at 1949…
Smitty is spot-on:
All right, we can quit giving Hagel any credit for original thought. He’s a little toady doing precisely what he is told.
— Keystone Keynesian (@smitty_one_each) February 25, 2014
Look-up the term ‘The Banality Of Evil’ in a book of idioms and you will find Commandant Hagel’s picture.
