<p>Today it will be a historical moment for the American people. I believe this is the next step to a more defined cultural diversity and acceptances of others opinions. However, for those who understand beyond the superficial messages in the left-winged media, the legislative branch - House and Senate, will have a Democratic Majority and the I heard that 4 Supreme Court Justices will resign pretty soon, which will be supplemented by Justices who is appointed by Obama. Therefore, our Country's politics perspective will be VERY liberal, and, i guess, my question or concern is: how will this effect USMA, other military academies, and the military? Would this mean less funding, less cadet will go into combat, less resources to use? What type of impact will this "historical" moment bring? </p>
<p>Please feel free to inform the public with your educated knowledge. Thank you for your comments and discussions.</p>
<p>Woah! vienna man that comment is not needed at all. That is a ridiculous statement. Please there are members this site that have lost loved ones in the United States conflicts and wars, please respect them. Your statements are an embarrassment to your character.</p>
<p>kpsong, the questions you are asking, you are assuming will be answered objectively. Considering the controversial nature of the subject matter, you will not get the answers you are looking for. You will get many different opinions on many future possibilities instead.</p>
<p>You will learn that military personnel must be careful in their political involvement for two main reasons: 1) they are representing the government, and the government itself may not take a stance on any issue other than to support policies and laws already in place; and 2) the President specifically is the highest chain-of-command member in the military, therefore every other military member’s superior. While military personnel are by no means restricted from voting, they must be cautious not to represent their own opinions as that of the government and cannot publicly oppose their superiors (for a good example of this, research General MacArthur and his public criticism of the President).</p>
<p>I agree with WAMom, the facts of the matter are that Obama will be commander in chief of the armed forces; we have no reason at this time to assume that he will not take that responsibility seriously. Weather or not we agree with the things that were said during the election, I, as an American citizen will respect the office of the president of the United States (which is more than I can say about a lot in the past few years) I believe that our young men and women who have chosen to serve our country understand that</p>
<p>American Soldier,
I fully understand your comment. I guess, if anything, I should have posted this a bit earlier maybe lol. Thank for helping widen my parochial perspective. Instead of narrowing it down it a specific candidate, what about the party? Meaning, the democratic party has the majority in both HOUSE AND SENATE, and the Supreme Justice will soon have a voting bloc of judicial activism. Therefore, in that situation, how will this effect USMA and the Army? </p>
<p>Thank you for your comments and discussions.
-kpsong87</p>
<p>again, realize that this is speculation. I think that the party philosophies and their general platform will most likely be enabled with little opposition in any branch; I base that merely on the fact that the Democratic party now has a majority in each branch. Examine for yourself their policies and beliefs, and how such majorities in the past have operated, and you will probably see a good indicator of the future of the nation in the next four years.</p>
<p>As for USMA, all it really means to us is that we have a new Commander-in-Chief. I seriously doubt that there will be any major repercussions felt at the Academy itself, unless I am overlooking something obvious…</p>
<p>As for the Army, i would say again to compare past majorities to how they affected the military, and extrapolate possibilities of the military’s future from that.</p>
<p>Based on history its either going to be “tax and spend” or “defecit and spend”, or “don’t spend”. In any event, fixing the economy and all the ramifications that entails is going to be a big job. Hopefully both party’s and the new President are up to the task.</p>
<p>I would like to address your question by starting with your underlying premise that Obama’s victory will cause the country to become more liberal and that can or may adversely affect the USMA or the Army. The country’s politics have shifted back in forth during my lifetime from what are preceived to be liberal times to conservative times. If the last twenty years are any indication of what the shift to the left will mean during the next four years as it relates to the military, the answer is probably not much. If you look at the Clinton years, I think you will find that the USMA and the Army did just fine. The real question in my mind is not how will the USMA and Army be affected under a Democrat or a Republican, but how will today’s economics affect the USMA and the Army. From what I have read, I would say that Congress will likely be forced to reduce funding to the development of advanced planes and ships, which will affect the Air Force and the Navy much more than the Army. </p>
<p>As a lawyer, I would also add that the three or four Supreme Court Justices that may retire in the next three years will be those Justices that were appointed by Democrats and might be considered to be liberal Justices. So if Obama appoints a left leaning Justice to replace the retiring left leaning Justice, there is no affect on the Supreme Court other than a younger left leaning Justice has replaced an older left leaning Justice. The current make-up the Supreme Court is moderately conservative, and will stay that way, unless a Republican appointed conservative Justice dies or retires. So, don’t think that any Obama appointments will immediately cause the a shift in Supreme Court philosophy. They won’t.</p>
<p>I should start this by saying that the answer is: who knows how the Army will be affected? Even more: if your heart is set on being a soldier and going to USMA, I can’t imagine you even worrying about this as the debate and decisions about funding and resourcing will be “way above your pay grade” for about the next 30 years and will change multiple times during that career. I have not heard the President-elect even suggest that he is going to shrink the Army- in fact he has been talking about increasing the commitment to Afghanistan while reducing the number and length of deployments so that certainly doesn’t add up to shrinking the Army. The bottom line- President Obama hasn’t campaigned on a shrink -the-Army platform and while several of his party in congressional leadership positions have talked a lot about cuts to the DoD budget- they have tended to be Big Ticket items rather than people. </p>
<p>However, FWDAD- I would certainly argue with your contention that the Army fared “just fine” under Clinton- in fact I can’t imagine a worse example to cite- because the Army was on life support by 1999 and was the major bill payer for the “peace dividend” (18 active Divisions to 12 with plans to go down as low as 8; and 800,00 active duty to 500,000 with further cuts planned to 435,000) and it was the Clinton years that left the Army high and dry with no new equipment (name anything new that was designed and fielded in the mid to late 90’s), and far too few troops both active, NG and USAR to cover its commitments as we quickly “discovered” (like there were 2 guys in the entire Army who didn’t already know this?) when we went to war. So a President can certainly change the outlook for a service but I haven’t seen anything that indicates that as President, Obama is planning on doing anything of the sort.</p>