One of the unfortunate side-effects of Bush’s style of politics is that his opponents need to defend themselves against accusations that they are soft on national defense. And one of the saddest elements of our current political environment is that there is no way to prove that you are tough on national defense unless you are willing to spend more than the other guy.
I could argue otherwise, but I wouldn’t believe myself. Not really. So, it with a bit of sorrow that I have to analyze the Democrat’s Plan for dealing with national security issues.
The Dems had to water down their plan in order to get unanimity from the caucus. So, for example, there is no explict call for a timetable to leave Iraq, but rather a call to:
Ensure 2006 is a year of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with the Iraqis assuming primary responsibility for securing and governing their country and with the responsible redeployment of U.S. forces.
That is no more connected to current reality than anything that comes out of the Pentagon or the White House. But, the rest of the document is substantially better.
The Dems seek to:
Rebuild a state-of-the-art military by making the needed investments in equipment and manpower so that we can project power to protect America wherever and whenever necessary.
Guarantee that our troops have the protective gear, equipment, and training they need and are never sent to war without accurate intelligence and a strategy for success.
Enact a GI Bill of Rights for the 21st Century that guarantees our troops — active, reserve, and retired — our veterans, and their families receive the pay, health care, mental health services, and other benefits they have earned and deserve.
Strengthen the National Guard, in partnership with the nation’s Governors, to ensure it is fully manned, equipped and available to meet missions at home and abroad.
Despite the bellicosity inherent in the talk about “project[ing] power”, the real emphasis is on doing right by our troops by giving them the training, equipment, post-service opportunities and benefits they deserve.
The Dems also promise to “Eliminate Osama Bin Laden, destroy terrorist networks like al Qaeda, finish the job in Afghanistan and end the threat posed by the Taliban.”
That sounds easy to do on paper. In reality, it is a difficult job. It has only become more difficult through the leadership of Bush, and the Dems will not make too much progress as long as Bush and/or Cheney are in charge.
This is especially true because the Dems endorse the permawar on terror:
Eliminate terrorist breeding grounds by combating the economic, social, and political conditions that allow extremism to thrive; lead international efforts to uphold and defend human rights; and renew longstanding alliances that have advanced our national security objectives.
Secure by 2010 loose nuclear materials that terrorists could use to build nuclear weapons or “dirty bombs.”
Redouble efforts to stop nuclear weapons development in Iran and North Korea.
I don’t think a political party can gain a majority in America right now without talking tough on Iran, North Korea, loose nukes, and terrorist training camps. The Dems do have the right idea on how to minimize the dangers that these things pose. We need to repair our alliances, which requires ending our torture and rendition programs, reengaging the international community on a host of issues, abiding by international treaties, and obviously, (and this the Dems are still having trouble with) throwing out the President, his staff, and his enablers. Only a united and cooperative (and unthreatened!!) international community can effectively combat the threat of WMD and minimize the threat of terrorism.
Lastly, the Dems make a very good political decision, by hitting Republicans where it hurts. Oil and ports:
Achieve energy independence for America by 2020 by eliminating reliance on oil from the Middle East and other unstable regions of the world.
Increase production of alternate fuels from America’s heartland including bio-fuels, geothermal, clean coal, fuel cells, solar and wind; promote hybrid and flex fuel vehicle technology and manufacturing; enhance energy efficiency and conservation incentives.
Immediately implement the recommendations of the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission including securing national borders, ports, airports and mass transit systems.
Screen 100% of containers and cargo bound for the U.S. in ships or airplanes at the point of origin and safeguard America’s nuclear and chemical plants, and food and water supplies.
Prevent outsourcing of critical components of our national security infrastructure — such as ports, airports and mass transit — to foreign interests that put America at risk.
Provide firefighters, emergency medical workers, police officers, and other workers on the front lines with the training, staffing, equipment and cutting-edge technology they need.
Protect America from biological terrorism and pandemics, including the Avian flu, by investing in the public health infrastructure and training public health workers.
The Dems have put together a pretty tight, coherent, and politically sound package. It still is fighting this battle on the President’s terms and with his language. There is not a lot of self-reflection on the future direction of American Imperial designs throughout Central Asia.
But, the country is still not quite ready to question that. Maybe once the truth starts to come out about the extent of BushCo’s crimes, we will see a shift in the public’s mood. After all, Bush’s hubris is our hubris too. Iraq will eventually teach us all a lesson about the best way to secure peace at home and to safeguard our liberties. And Permawar ain’t it.
The Dems will come to that conclusion eventually. But it will take some doing, some new blood, and a hearty meal of humble pie before it becomes a political winner to question the Empire. For now, I’ll settle for ending the worst practices of our government, having aggressive investigations that lead to impeachments and resignations and indictments, and a return to multilateralism.
Work on those issues, because the bigger issues will eventually take care of themselves.
This is not a good start on a new future. The 9/11 Commission was essentially a whitewash and we need leaders who are willing to recognize where the REAL weaknesses and threats are.
Effective defense would demand honesty, integrity, oversight and accountability from the intelligence/DOJ/DOD agencies.
The first step is to honestly identify the credible threats.
How is it that this kind of crap happens?
I’m not dumping on the Democrats but if they want to be effective leaders, and I want them to be, then they have to grab reality and shake some sense out of it.
well, it never occurs to them that Denmark, for example, doesn’t need to spend gadbillions of $$$$$$ to secure their ports and airports because they only piss people off once a century.
A foreign policy based in not pissing people off would go a long way toward alleviating the dangers we face, and it would be immensely cheaper.
We’ll figure that out eventually. Hopefully.
. . timetable to leave Iraq. . .
It’s already there (I keep harping), the benchmarks are met. UN security council by unanimous vote set the date, the Iraqi government (remember them?) has control over the “multinational force”, including the ability to ask them to leave. Even though it doesn’t seem politically possible right now, Iraq has the right to simply end the “mandate” by fiat.
We serve at the pleasure (or displeasure) of the duly elected government of Iraq.
yeah, but that is in direct conflict with this.
And that is why things are not as they appear in Iraq.
Understood, but the focus is nearly always on U.S. policy, and the Iraqi perspective (other than Juan Cole) is absent from the media coverage. Reading through a few regional dailies presents a whole different outlook. We can argue and discuss specific actions taken by the administration and Congress, but the fact remains the Country now belongs to the Iraqis.
Granted it’s a political, social, religious, and military basket case, but that’s not the point. It’s their basket case.
countries they pledge to invade, countries Bush may have overlooked. You wouldn’t want to give unsuspecting nations, in case there are any, a heads up.
But they should have more language that makes it clear they do intend to invade more countries. To just ignore that cornerstone of US foreign policy makes it look like they don’t support the war on terror.
Also there is nothing about expanding the popular Gitmo pilot project. I know a lot of the other facilities have been outsourced, but that’s the problem.
Why should foreigners get all those jobs as interrogators, when there are so many Americans who would be able to do just as good a job? And that doesn’t even count the construction, a Gitmo type facility can mean a lot to a little town’s economy.
While I recognize the Dem strategy of incremental opposition to the current situation with respect to the Bush regime’s insane adventures in war and empire, I have to say that I don’t have the sense that they themselves realize how completely the Bush regime’s ideology and policy needs to be repudiated if the mess in the Middle East and elsewhere is going to have an even marginal chance of improving over the next decade or so.
Certainly if the Dems can be part of a successful assault on the BushCo extremist lunatics who’ve hijacked the government; if they can help depose these maniacs and stop the aggressive spread of US militarism, well that would be a marked improvement. But if they fail to take the change further than that; if they fail to reject the aggressive militarism as an instrumentof foreign policy in it’s entirety, then I fear the damage the neocons have already done will continue to metastasize long after the neocons themselve are back in their dark damp caves.
I’ll vote against the Repub machine, but I do wish I had a sense that the Dems really understood the magnitude of change required.
What pisses me off is that the Democrats are more intelligent for alternative thinking and that’s what would work. They seem to have been whipped into giving up that up.
getting whipped in two straight elections over not being tough enough on terrorism tends to have that effect.
IMO, the dems are just buying into the fear-mongering that the repubs have been so damn good at!
Having this guy scream at you about spitballs kind of has that effect.
He looks like he’s ready to barf!
Jeeze…have you ever seen the guy on SNL do the impersonation of Miller? He looks close to a blowout.
You know, the Twat(Terminal War Against Terror) was in control under Clinton’s administration. The breakdowns were due to other causes but the Democrats were fighting a smarter battle. They allowed the Reps to redefine the threat vased on flawed information and have been trying to live up (or down) to that standard ever since.
Zell Miller! Living proof that the “Reptile Brain” canh still beat the sense out of the “Neocortex”!
…we just need a lot more of them. But we have our collection of Demhawks to deal with, including Senators Clinton, Feinstein, Biden and Bayh, all of them with clout. Several of them have now had good things to say about the monstrous Strategic Redeployment: A Progressive Plan for Iraq and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists put out last September by Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis. And these same Senators have nothing good to say regarding Iran. For that matter, neither does Howard Dean.
If there’s anything that more clearly reveals how little the Dems have learned in recent years it’s how they’re going along with BushCo’s Iran propaganda.
In one way it would be better if they opposed BushCo insanity completely even if doing so did lead to them losing another round of elections. At least they’d have less negative baggage on the world stage after they did finally manage to regain control of the government, and the Repubs could be held to account for the entire debacle they initiated.
(I realize of course that the longer it takes to depose the current murderous loonies the more innocent people wil be slaughtered, and for that reason alone my sentiments above about Dems losing for principle are made somewhat irresponsible.) Basic humanity demands getting these killers out of power as soon as possible, even if it means electing equivocating shitbirds, (as long as they don’t aggressively expand the killing fields).
Real strategy my ass. Two questions:
1- who wrote this?
2- why did they write it?
Simple and to the point!
Answers please! billjpa
…good things in the Democratic proposal, most particularly the idea as shown in several items that military muscle isn’t the end-all, be-all of national security.
Therefore, I disagree with you about one of the items in the “permawar” category:
That doesn’t have to be read as a corollary to some PNAC document. Economic, social and political conditions – poverty, rotten education and dictatorship, for instance – ARE breeding grounds for extremism. We ought to strive to uphold and defend human rights. We ought to work for multilateralism. If we’re going to have a say in Democratic security policy, we should aggressively interpret the paragraph in that light rather than letting the militarists interpret themselves.
The Iraq section, however, sucks.
And the very first item on the list is perhaps the very worst:
America will spend close to $575 billion on its military this year (for DoD, for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for DoE’s handling of nukes). That’s more than all the other countries on the planet combined. We all want to be protected, and that requires, obviously, a strong military. But this doesn’t require more money; we can, in fact, rebuild our military for far less than we’re now spending. Start by knocking down my pet peeve, the idiotic anti-ICBM program.
As for “projecting” America power, I’d like a definition, please. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure what that definition will be. Since the black fleet showed up in Edo 150 years ago, the word has been code for imperialism.
Although it gets laughed at, Dennis Kucinich’s Department of Peace ought to be invested in as part of protecting America. Then maybe we can “project” peace as a form of power.
I really want to fully agree with you, but in my heart I know that ‘eliminating terrorist breeding grounds” is just code for “establish and maintain outposts from Eritrea to Mindanao and beyond.”
It’s a tragic irony that the more America “projects it’s power” around the globe, the weaker and more ineffectual American power becomes.
Even a cursory reading of history indicates a similar diminishment of power amongst all those former empire builders of yore. Whenever the imperial reach exceeds it’s grasp, the empire enters into the state of decline.
BushCo has done more to weaken the US than any other regime in the nation’s history. I wish some prominent Dems would pick up on that theme.