[Peace-discuss] George Will slams GOP candidates for pushing wars & military spending Americans don't want

[Robert Naiman]

Look at that Urbana boy go.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-need-more-than-rhetoric-on-defense/2012/02/07/gIQA5SF1zQ_story.html

Republicans need more than rhetoric on defense

By George F. Will, Published: February 8

Through 11 presidential elections, beginning with the Democrats’
nomination of George McGovern in 1972, Republicans have enjoyed a
presumption of superiority regarding national security. This year,
however, events and their rhetoric are dissipating their advantage.

Hours — not months, not weeks, hours — after the last U.S. troops left
Iraq, vicious political factionalism and sectarian violence
intensified. Many Republicans say Barack Obama’s withdrawal —
accompanied by his administration’s foolish praise of Iraq’s
“stability” — has jeopardized what has been achieved there. But if it
cannot survive a sunrise without fraying, how much of an achievement
was it?

Few things so embitter a nation as squandered valor; hence Americans,
with much valor spent there, want Iraq to master its fissures. But
with America in the second decade of its longest war, the probable
Republican nominee is promising to extend it indefinitely.

Mitt Romney opposes negotiations with the Taliban while they “are
killing our soldiers.” Which means: No negotiations until the war
ends, when there will be nothing about which to negotiate. “We don’t,”
he says, “negotiate from a position of weakness as we are pulling our
troops out.” That would mean stopping the drawdown of U.S. forces —
except Romney would not negotiate even from a position of strength:
“We should not negotiate with the Taliban. We should defeat the
Taliban.” How could that be achieved in a second decade of war? What
metrics would establish “defeat”? Details to come, perhaps.

The U.S. defense budget is about 43 percent of the world’s total
military spending — more than the combined defense spending of the
next 17 nations, many of which are U.S. allies. Are Republicans really
going to warn voters that America will be imperiled if the defense
budget is cut 8 percent from projections over the next decade? In
2017, defense spending would still be more than that of the next 10
countries combined.

Do Republicans think it is premature to withdraw as many as 7,000
troops from Europe two decades after the Soviet Union’s death? About
73,000 will remain, most of them in prosperous, pacific, largely
unarmed and utterly unthreatened Germany. Why do so many remain?

Since 2001, the United States has waged war in three nations, and some
Republicans appear ready to bring the total to five, adding Iran and
Syria. (The Weekly Standard, of neoconservative bent, regrets that
Obama “is reluctant to intervene to oust Iran’s closest ally, Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad.”) GOP critics say that Obama’s proposed
defense cuts will limit America’s ability to engage in troop-intensive
nation-building. Most Americans probably say: Good.

Critics say that defense cuts will limit America’s ability to
intervene abroad as it has recently done. Well. Even leaving aside
Iraq and Afghanistan, do Americans want defense spending to enable a
rump of NATO — principally, Britain and France — to indulge moral
ambitions and imperial nostalgia in Libya, and perhaps elsewhere,
using U.S. materiel and competence?

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says that the Army should contract from
570,000 soldiers to 490,000 in a decade. Romney says that the military
should have 100,000 more troops than it does. (The Army is 88,000
larger than it was before Afghanistan and Iraq.) Romney may be right,
but he should connect that judgment to specific assessments of threats
and ambitions.

Romney says: “It is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,”
that if he is elected, Iran will not get such a weapon, and if Obama
is reelected, it will. He also says that Obama “has made it very clear
that he’s not willing to do those things necessary to get Iran to be
dissuaded from” its nuclear ambitions.” Romney may, however, be
premature in assuming the futility of new sanctions the Obama
administration is orchestrating, and Panetta says Iran acquiring
nuclear weapons is “unacceptable” and “a red line for us” and if “we
get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear
weapon, then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it.” What,
then, is the difference between Romney and Obama regarding Iran?

Osama bin Laden and many other “high-value targets” are dead, the
drone war is being waged more vigorously than ever, and Guantanamo is
still open, so Republicans can hardly say that Obama has implemented
dramatic and dangerous discontinuities regarding counterterrorism.
Obama says that, even with his proposed cuts, the defense budget would
increase at about the rate of inflation through the next decade.
Republicans who think America is being endangered by “appeasement” and
military parsimony have worked that pedal on their organ quite enough.

-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org