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Obama Claims Personal Credit for Military’s Strategic Review

On January 5, 2011, President Obama conducted a Press Conference at the Pentagon, to announce the results of a Defense Strategic Review.  He claimed that the results would guide a budget reduction to be announced in the “coming weeks.”  Before he departed and turned the conference over to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Army General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), he seemed desperate to ensure he received a large share of the credit.

“So I’m going to let Leon [Panetta – Secretary of Defense] and Marty [General Dempsey] go into the details. But I just want to say that this effort reflects the guidance that I personally gave throughout this process.” ^[i]

That should certainly reassure every American – particularly those with family members serving in the military.  What level of arrogance allows a man who never served in the military, who railed against the Iraq war, who voted against the surge in Iraq and whose total life experience consists of campus life, drug use, community organizing, agitating and political campaigning, to sit in the company of America’s finest flag officers – all of whom are combat veterans – and suggest that their successful development of a Defense Strategic Review is a reflection of “the guidance that I personally gave throughout the process”?