December 21, 2007
...But That Won't Mitigate A Really Bad Decade In Iraq
In his year-end press conference, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the Pentagon would not be issuing furlough notices "at this time." The branches of the military have had to lay off employees and cut corners while Congress and the White House tussle over continued war funding. The result has been piecemeal funding for the military, as anti-war lawmakers continue to pressure President Bush to accept a withdrawal deadline.
A June Center for Strategic and International Studies report [PDF] advised the Pentagon to stop requesting funding through war supplementals, which aren't included in the defense budget in order to make actual spending appear smaller than it really is. Total U.S. defense spending is only about 4 percent of GDP -- a very low war-time figure. The constantly cash-strapped military need not be so, the authors conclude, and the Pentagon should be asking for much more money with which to fight the Iraq war, the most pressing security problem facing the country.
Gates seemed to dispute the criticism that his department was lowballing Congress in order to provide political cover for the president. "I actually think we had a very thoughtful conversation with the House Armed Services Committee earlier in the year over what percent of GDP devoted to defense and securing the nation should be. I got the impression from both sides of the aisle that it ought to be about 4 percent," Gates said.
"I will be putting out a letter later this afternoon that basically acknowledges that we have to do some planning because we didn't get all the money" requested from Congress, he added.
Because of the decrease in violence, Americans are becoming less pessimistic that the current "surge" strategy will improve Iraq, polls indicate (though overall assessments of the war -- that it was a mistake, that it cannot be won -- remain). The war has fallen off the front page almost entirely, and has already dropped out of the top spot of voter concerns going into the 2008 elections in some surveys.
Perversely, it may be Americans' dwindling investment in the war that prolongs it. In the cover story of this month's Foreign Policy magazine -- hidden behind a pay wall, unfortunately -- Alasdair Roberts of Syracuse University contends that the American economic tradition of neoliberalism -- not neoconservativism -- is to blame for the quagmire in Iraq.
"This neoliberal philosophy is built on a bedrock of skepticism about the role of central government and the effectiveness of grand governmental projects," Roberts writes. "As a consequence, politics got small. Political leaders learned to shy away from policies that threatened to disrupt the status quo and make great demands of the American polity."
If none of this sounds particularly new, that's because it isn't. President Bush was publicly ridiculed for encouraging Americans to resume their pre-9/11 lives and "go to the malls." But that is in essence what the public did. Iraq is the first full-on war conducted with an all-volunteer force; consequently, the percentage of the public serving overseas is minuscule. Those who aren't themselves in the military or close to someone who is could wander through an entire news cycle without being reminded that 154,000 U.S. soldiers are dodging IEDs and snipers in Iraq.
"This rejection of sacrifice on a national scale contributed to the bungled war the United States finds itself in today," Roberts contends.
The unintended and unfortunate result of Washington's embrace of neoliberal governance is that the American public expects to receive very much for very little. Hence, an aversion to taxes but affinity for entitlement programs, to give one example.
Politicians usually know better than to criticize their constituents in this manner, but lately some have been warming to the notion of discussing public sacrifice. While the topics of climate change and energy consumption seem more amenable to such talk, earlier proposals of a genuine doubling-down in Iraq, one that might involve reinstatement of the draft, were immediately shot down. The surge plan was at first criticized by some military experts for involving too few troops. Meanwhile, the public balked because they thought the troop number was too high.
Bush and his team of advisers are arguably to blame for the misguided handling of the war in the first three years. But the longer the war goes on, the more Americans must admit ownership of it. Which explains why world opinion of the U.S. -- as apart from just President Bush -- is declining.
Iraq "has become a bipartisan war -- that is, a conflict whose course is shaped by the actions of a Republican president and by Democratic majorities in Congress," Roberts observes.
Even supposing that reinstituting the draft is unnecessary, there is the question of whether Americans should be sacrificing in other ways. Bush was also criticized for enacting significant tax cuts after 9/11 -- virtually unprecedented in wartime.
"The extension of such pro-growth policies in a declared time of war has created jarring rhetorical inconsistencies," Roberts writes. "Historically, war has been regarded -- by definition -- as a grand project, requiring deep societal shifts and the subordination of other priorities."
Perhaps not coincidentally, the one 2008 presidential candidate who most publicly embraces this now apparently old-school way of thinking is John McCain. The former Vietnam POW broke with his party and voted against the Bush tax cuts four times in a row, citing the enormous price tag on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the only major candidate left who is still largely focused on the Iraq war. The other candidates have moved on to the economy, immigration, and attacking each other.
McCain is now viewed as a long-shot candidate for the Republican nomination, despite polls showing he'd be highly competitive in the general. His seriousness and devotion to the war in Iraq, national security and foreign policy won him endorsements from the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Des Moines Register and New Hampshire Union Leader. Voters may need reminding, however, that moving past the war as an issue hasn't made it any less real or critical to this nation's future.
Posted at 5:05 PM
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Bush Administration, Campaigns, Congress, Iraq, John McCain, Middle East, Military, President Bush, Republicans, Robert Gates, WH 2008
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