(cross-posted at Kos and switzerblog)
One recurring theme when discussing Democrats’ inability to win the big races and seal the deal with the public is the continued perception of our weakness on military issues. No matter how many times or how many ways we approach it, we’re considered weaker than the Republicans when it comes to national defense. When this problem comes up, the answers are always the same:
Wes Clark will save us! – (full diary here)
We’ll win if we run a real veteran!
Look, another veteran on our side!
We support the troops, not the war!
Democrats just have to stand up and oppose the Iraq war forcefully!
We just need to offer our plan to get out of Iraq!
Jumpity jump
I don’t call out those diaries and those comments to shine the harsh light of criticism on them – they’re just examples, and in fact taken one by one I don’t disagree with most of what is said (with the exception of Wes Clark – I don’t believe he’s anyone’s savior). The point is to show that, unlike the GOP, we have no overarching military plan and strategy.
The GOP, like it or not, agree with it or not, has a plan and a strategy: Spend on defense, prevent anyone else from developing weapons, and scare the hell out of anyone who’s already got them. If someone gets uppity, pound on them fast and hard and apologize later.
Our strategy is, as with most issues, scattershot. If there is an overriding theme, it is “find warriors of yesterday to justify our current opinion of the current military action”. But no one, not on Kos, not in the media, not in the DNC, not in the DLC, can offer a singular, compelling and encompassing plan to ensure the national defense. Hell, with 64% of the country now admitting to doubts about Iraq, we can’t even offer a single plan on this. As long as we’re fighting among ourselves whether to: A: pull out now B: pull out strategically, or C: increase troop strength until we’ve “won”, Bush doesn’t HAVE to do anything. We’ve got nothing coherent for him to respond to, so he can just hold the course and his homeland security numbers stay above 50%.
We have to get our heads out of the sand, stop waiting for one-off saviors from 40 year old wars, and decide how we intend to protect this country today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year and in future decades. Will we build up the military strategically and invest in better technology, as Clinton started to do? Will we invest in combination of diplomatic efforts, foreign aid to poor communities in at-risk areas and a tough stance on radical outliers? Will we deploy more resources on the coastlines, at ports? Do we have the stomach to say we will hunt down people who threaten us – even if we have to do it here at home?
Some of you are planning to answer me in the comments by saying we’ll protect the country by pulling out of Iraq and staying out of the Middle East, blibbedy blah. You’re missing the point. It isn’t about Iraq. Iraq is nothing more than a historical blip; we’ve been in worse scrapes than this and the world recovers. Our plan in Iraq must depend on our long-term vision – we need vision FIRST, then we can decide what to do in Iraq according to that vision. We need coherence, and long-term planning for the future.
What do we have to face?
* Nuclear North Korea. They have missiles that can reach us, and they’re nuclear. What do we do?
* Nuclear Russia. They don’t even know what they have – or if they still have it.
* Nuclear Pakistan. They’re only our ally as long as we can protect Musharraff.
* Nuclear Iran. We’ve made them very nervous, and their theocracy is more than willing to pull the trigger on neighborhood nutjobs.
* An annoyed, militarily and economically strong China. As they gain strength and we weaken ourselves, they need us less and less – and that’s a problem.
* Terrorists abroad. Massive groups planning coordinated attacks on our military bases, on our allies, and trying to infiltrate our borders
* Terrorists at home. White supremacists, militias, and already-here radical Islamist cells – armed, trained and patient.
* Weak ports. Our security at home is unbelievably porous, and the amazing thing is that we HAVEN’T been attacked this way yet – probably just because they’re waiting to get their hands on a big enough bomb to do the trick from the water.
* Violent dictators, and our own inaction. Think people in Sudan don’t notice how hard it is to get our attention? Think maybe they’d like to thank us for taking so long to notice them? There are a lot of countries in this situation, and they notice who we help and who we don’t.
And that isn’t even all of it. That’s just what I can remember now.
We have to provide answers to these, and as yet unforeseen, threats. A Department of Peace isn’t the answer. A bloated, endlessly and unquestioningly funded Department of Defense isn’t the answer. But right now, we can’t say truthfully that we have a coherent plan for national defense moving to the future.
Howard Dean is one of the Democrats trying to get us there, but his stock message, that we won’t send our children to war without telling the American people the truth, is only part of the issue, and doesn’t identify what we’re willing to tell the truth about. What will trigger those decisions for us, and what will we do differently to ensure that we’re ready? We have to make those decisions, and we have to agree on them. We have to be willing to compromise among ourselves, hawks and doves alike. We can’t simply adopt a war posture and call us safe, nor can we ignore the real threats. We have to answer the question not just of what we will do to protect America, but how we will do it.
In the short term, we keep setting ourselves up for long-term failure by our myopic focus on biography over substance, story over planning. The latter must underscore and precede the former – not vice versa.
Iraq is becoming our Vietnam, because our party is still fighting old battles – they’re fighting and thinking about today’s wars and tomorrow’s wars, and we bring up Vietnam every time something happens in Iraq, and crow at the top of our lungs every time a Vietnam vet runs for office. I’m already seeing a tendency to crow loudly whenever an Iraq veteran runs on our side or agrees with us. Learn this: Veterans are not sacrosanct, nor are they unassailable! There are good veterans and bad veterans, smart veterans and stupid veterans. And all of them carried a gun, ready to kill or be killed. Their courage is to be admired, not turned into a constant drumbeat of “see, we have guts, too!”
I’m hopeful that our Democracy Alliance will take this on and not try to just be a GOTV tool, or a “framing” factory, but will engage in real and true thinking. Real planning. Providing strategies for governance, leadership and security, then strategies for campaigning. Let’s start thinking about how we’ll lead, and design our frames around that vision, instead of the other way around.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the past couple of years getting up to speed on defense issues. Historically, indeed ironically, going to war tends to be a very partisan issue, while preparing for and fighting wars is often far less so.
* The Democrats are decidedly the party that favors not undertaking unnecessary wars, and that is a good thing. While our leadership was out of touch in the lead up to the Iraq War, our rank and file rightly opposed it. Democrats also opposed the last adventure in the Middle East, the Gulf War, and while that was turned out to have few casulties and to be a popular one, I think in hindsight, the Democrats were on the right side of that debate as well. In the Gulf War, we went to war to protect a slave owning monarchy from a neighboring dictatorship. We fought that war well, but achieved little from it. Kuwait is still no model for the Middle East, and the embargo and no fly zone we imposed afterwards made life miserable for ordinary Iraqis, did not protect our allies in the region from aggression, and eventually played a part in our participation in this war.
This doesn’t mean that we are against war in all circumstances. Democrats supported the Afghan War, it was prosecuted to a quick, favorable result with a modest commitment of troops, and while it is hard to say that the people of Iraq are better off now (Saddam did bad thing, but the country was not in a shambles and many of its problems were inflicted by us), it is hard not to call the near demise of the Taliban a good thing. Likewise, our err in Kosovo and Bosnia, was, if anything, intervening too late and with too little effect. And, most people in hindsight agree that a timely intervention in Rwanda could have mitigated are horrible genocide.
* We also need, perish the thought, some nuance. Rumsfield has done a miserable job of running the Iraq War and WOT, despite these being his principal responsibilities. But, many of his longer term reorganization ideas are good one. He should have been a deputy secretrary in charge of procurement or strategy, which we could have done well. Instead, we was promoted beyond his competence.
Our Navy is ill suited to our nation’s needs. It has immense resources devoted to defeating enemies that don’t exist in battles of kinds that will never happen. To a great extent it is equipped to refight the Naval battles of World War II, but with the demise of the Soviet Union, there is no one in the world who could engage the U.S. Navy in that kind of blue sea ship to ship battle if they wanted to. Yet, it remains not up to the task of taking on a large fleet of modern submarines in the shallows of the East China sea.
Our Air Force is unbalanced. Yes, there needs to be modernization in programs like the F-22 and F-35 programs. But, we already have a surplus of jet fighters and need to trim that force, at the same time that we are modernizing it. Meanwhile, the Air Force continues to slight roles like close air support of ground troops and its air lift responsibilities, and bafflingly refuses to even consider any replacement for the 1950s era B-52 despite Congressional pressure.
Our Army should be reorganized, and many of Rumsfield’s ideas are good ones. Ending the endless, pointless shuffling of troops from one unit to another is good. Increasing flexibility by breaking up the Army’s 10 monolithic divisions into 43 brigades that are more or less autonomous is a step in the right direction (even if the benefits are oversold). Cancelling Cold War relics like the Crusader mobile howitzer and the Comanche helicopter were good calls. Recognizing the importance of land and air drones for the future Army, and the importance of developing improved communications systems is good. Realizing that the Army needs some middle ground between a heavy armored division and paratroopers with nothing heavier than a Humvee is good. But, the Army is also working on a “Future Combat System” that has components that simply aren’t going to work and are going to cost a huge amount of money to develop.
The mix of forces between the services and within the services needs to change. The Army needs to be a bigger share and it needs to have more foreign language speakers and units specifically designed for peace keeping and counter-insurgency. The Navy needs to be smaller.
We need to look at whether the right services are doing the right things. Three airplanes that put fewer than a dozen people at risk can deliver as many cruise missiles to a target as two Navy destroyers that together put about 750 people at risk, and get get to a conflict more quickly, and are cheaper to purchase, and can be more swiftly shifted from one conflict to another, but the idea of comparing the two possibilities never even makes it to the table because the only formula for managing interservice conflicts is to maintain the status quo.