The Obama administration has held up the deployment  of the nuclear carrier, U.S.S. Harry Truman to the Persian Gulf as a result of  the sequester. Rather than cut fat from elsewhere in the federal budget, Obama chooses to play brinksmanship on the backs of  our service men and women as this  article from a month ago explains. Further, by keeping the Truman berthed at  its homeport of Norfolk when it should be deployed, Obama is playing another  very dangerous game. There's a disturbing email circulating in the veteran  community discussing this dangerous breach of strategic security  that has occurred under this clueless commander-in-chief. The problem is a  concentration of five aircraft carriers at Norfolk Navy base for a period  that now extends to several months. These super-carriers are the heart of  America's ability to project immense naval air power forward to virtually  anywhere on the globe.

The presence of a carrier  strike group throws a wide, cautioning shadow over such disruptive regimes as Iran and North Korea. Their offshore presence  has long been America's big stick in geopolitics. The problem is such strike  groups are not in endless supply. We have but eleven  and of that number some are always in the naval shipyards for refitting and  nuclear refueling. So when five of the eleven are docked side-by-side in Norfolk  that gets the antennae quivering among those who know what a hugely foolish  strategic blunder this is. To have forty percent of your nuclear carrier  displacement concentrated in one docking area where escape to the sea in the  event of an impending threat is extremely limited, seems incredibly stupid to  those vets aware of the situation. The emails are replete with references to the  possibility of a second Pearl Harbor.

Truly, those emails are not far off the mark. A  single pleasure vessel, paid for by some Islamist millionaire, a sail boat or  motor yacht, with a bootlegged Pakistani nuclear weapon aboard, or even a large  enough, non-nuclear, high explosive dirty bomb, could easily maneuver within  range to take these powerful but defenseless sea-fortresses off the board. A  nuke could do that permanently-a dirty bomb for the many years decontamination  would require. Losing five of eleven of these behemoths would cut our Navy to  its knees and leave America scrambling to decide where, upon the globe, to  project our now very limited power, a position the Chinese, the Russians and  even the Islamists would relish.

It would seem that while we possess colossal power,  we also harbor colossal stupidity in our command structure. There are  unprovable, as yet, rumors flying that this situation only came to be over the  outraged protests of the upper Navy brass overruled by an always politics-first  White House. We're left to wonder if this is another one of those signals to the  Islamist tyrants of the Middle East, and oppressors worldwide, that the U.S.  will not be a looming threat to their ambitions.  Looked at realistically,  this is nothing more than a sheathing of our weapons, pulling them home to port,  holstering our most potent projection of force, a signal to the world that at  the first hint of budget constraint, Obama's Navy is standing down, and you  despots are free to pursue your  despotism. Measured against everything  else coming from this administration, it is difficult to believe that this is  anything more than a calculated move to portray Republicans as culprits and  America as a weakened force in the world, both typical Obama targets.

Benedict Arnold was but a treacherous general who  betrayed this country in a much more limited world and war; that the current  commander-in-chief might engage in the undermining of the nation's strategic  strength to petulantly belittle his domestic political enemies, or worse, to  level this great nation to parity with the lesser nations of this world, is a  travesty that makes Benedict look like a patriot compared to Barack Obama. If  the commander-in-chief overrode the wisdom of the admirals in this situation and  has put this country's strategic naval forces in peril, he has proved beyond  doubt that he is a political posturer for whom the fortunes of the Democrat  party come before those of the nation. He is, in truth doing precisely to our  Navy what he has done to our economy: Sinking it.