WRONG TIME TO $LASH DEFENSE

Imagine you wake up and discover you’re president. The day begins with a national security briefing on global hot spots.

Ukraine is in turmoil, aides report, the slaughter continues in Syria, and al Qaeda is expanding in Africa. Overnight, Egypt’s government quit, the Taliban slaughtered 21 Afghan police officers, Iraq signed a weapons deal with Iran, and Tehran’s mullahs vowed to keep enriching uranium.

North Korea is threatening to turn South Korea into cinders, China is preparing its military for a war with Japan, and Russia wants to reassemble the Soviet Union. Oh, and Venezuela could be on the verge of a civil war.

Do you respond by saying, “Let’s cut our military?”

Of course not — unless you are Barack Obama.

The president’s push to slash the army back to preWorld War II levels seems too ridiculous to be true, but, sadly, that’s his plan.

It’s not just that size matters. So does timing.

The world already is spinning out of control as America abdicates its leadership role, yet Obama wants to retreat further. The result will be more mayhem and aggression.

As history teaches, pennies saved now will cost dollars and lives later. The world that supposedly wants America to go home suddenly demands it come back when trouble knocks.

We usually go because nobody else will and because that’s who we are.

A Gallup poll shows that 53 percent of Americans believe Obama is not respected by leaders around the world, while only 41 percent think he is. That is a far cry from 2009, when 67 percent thought he was widely respected and only 20 percent did not.

Those were the days when Hope & Change would remake the world. Now we’ll be lucky to survive three more years of Obamaism.