Opinion

The prez misleads on the military’s needs

President Obama said a couple of dangerously misleading things in Monday’s debate, one of them a regular talking point. Let’s set the record straight.

Yes, technology’s advance means today’s military must be a different shape and size than past US forces — we do use bayonets less. But, no, the current number of ships, planes and people in the US Navy is not adequate.

Our naval forces are now badly overextended. Equipment and people have been worn down — and there are serious questions about the ability of the downsized US Navy to meet more than a limited number of major threats.

The president noted that the Navy is larger than a number of other navies combined. But the Navy’s size should be determined by only one question: Is it large enough to reasonably assure our national security?

That question requires something more that an oddly misguided comparison to horses and bayonets, including understanding that most potential threat scenarios will be “come as you are” events.

Numbers do count, Mr. President, and at present we’re getting the numbers wrong. One ship, one plane, one person can be in only one place at a time. And no level of technological capability can make up for it if the ships, planes and people aren’t where we need them, when we need them and in sufficient numbers.

For example, if a carrier battle group, an amphibious ready group or a submarine with an embarked Special Forces unit had been available, a timely military response to the Benghazi attack might have possibly saved the lives of four Americans.

But the number of ships in the Sixth Fleet (our main Mediterranean force) has been radically reduced in recent years. So the naval strength apparently wasn’t available when the terrorists moved on our consulate.

Then there was the president’s comment that higher funding for the military “was not asked for” by any service. The commander in chief has said this a number of times in this campaign — even though he surely knows that’s not how Washington works. Each service doesn’t simply ask for all of the funding it believes it needs to carry out its missions; the civilian leaders that he has named to run the Defense Department set the parameters at the start of each budget cycle, and the military heads of the services (if they want to remain in their jobs) make sure that the budget requests that go to Congress are within those limits. To write off any talk of higher spending as funds that the military has “not asked for” is thus egregiously misleading.

The rule of civilian control of our armed forces has a corollary: Our civilian leaders have a duty to be forthright with the public on military issues. The American people, particularly those who pledge their very lives in defense of our country, deserve no less.

Rear Adm. (ret.) Joseph Callo’s latest book is “The Sea Was Always There.”