Talking National Security in '08

So the "inept" Iraqi government did what the U.S. Congress should have done years ago. They threw out private military contractor Blackwater and caused unprecedented interest in commercial war fighting. Despite this, I have a sneaking suspicion that if KBR or Halliburton had received a no-bid billion dollar contract to run the SCHIP (State Child Health Insurance Program), there would be no threatened veto from this White House. The privatization of our public sector has come full circle.

As P.W. Singer points out in this must-read briefing paper Blackwater and other private sector soldiers put our very philosophy of government at stake -- and every conversation about profiteering and uncontrolled violence in Iraq needs to round back to this common denominator: What is the essential purpose of our government? The monopoly on violence is the undergirding notion of the state. Yet this has been outsourced with barely a murmur by our elected leaders. The privatization of war is just the last domino to fall after decades of privatization of the public sector. The military was supposed to be the sacred cow, even for conservatives. But now, it too has been slaughtered in the free market of the fundamentalists. Privatization has greatly harmed what many consider our finest public service -- for this reason it must be a centerpiece issue in how we talk about national security throughout the election year.

I've been traveling over the last month, in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Georgia, giving talks in communities about national security. I've learned a few things along the way that might be non scientifically helpful to progressives interested in framing -- and winning -- this issue in 2008.

What is national security? Audiences seem to understand -- in the abstract -- what this means but they don't specifically know. For example, although we Americans look to the military to take care of threats for us, we also know that they can't do it all. We are in a world that is beyond the protection of the military. AND these audiences are extremely unsatisfied with what we have. The self-dealing of the Bush administration has come home, roosted and made a huge stinking mess on White House credibility and the Republican party by association. But the Dems are not escaping public daggers either. I heard a lot of unhappiness about Congress' seeming unwillingness to take dramatic action on the Iraq war -- and also controversy over Moveon's Petraeus ad.

(Re: General Petraeus: Why spend any firepower criticizing public servants when you could direct those resources at civilian elected leaders? Even more important, the downsizing of our government has put the USA on the road to being Pakistan, where the only functioning agency is the military. Right now, the U.S. military represents most of our institutional memory on national security and it has more respect for democratic practice than many civilian electeds. Love him or hate him, General Petraus will be a key figure in fundamentally changing how we view issues of war and peace. Progressives will need him and many of his cohort if we want to change our relationship with the world -- this includes the ability to do something about genocides in places like Darfur)

The conservatives' free ride on national security is over. My friend the psychologist once explained to me how populations will go along with extreme ideas from their leaders if the people perceive that these ideas are honestly come by. The downfall comes when the purity is exposed as a sham. Then corruption becomes the theme. That is what is happening now on national security. It presents a significant opportunity when it comes to taking the terrain both rhetorically and substantively on this issue.

One of the ways I help groups re-frame is by introducing the idea of National Security with a bit of context. If you make a sequential argument with progressive ideas, it's very hard to put the progressive perspective into the margin -- and it avoids dualistic thinking like guns versus butter or hawks versus doves.

National Security framing in 8 steps:

First: State that we have a leadership crisis on national security. Our policies are not making us safer and elected leaders are not acting to remedy it. Iraq is emblematic of this crisis.

Second, acknowledge that national security should be the top priority for every elected leader and of great concern to all Americans. This is a gateway statement -- it recognizes peoples' legitimate fears so they are willing to hear new ideas.

Third, point out that, today, national security is a much broader concept than it was even two decades ago. During the Cold War, it was easy to define it as a military responsibility and measure it by arms control treaties and borders and thereby contain it. Today's world is vastly different.

Fourth: In today's world, threats are widely distributed, from criminal networks with nukes to lack of public education for girls. Here at home, threats come as a possible result of climate change -- see New Orleans. Or on your evening commute in Minneapolis when an infirm bridge collapses. These threats should also shape our national security priorities.

Fifth. The problem is that our elected leaders haven't had a serious priorities discussion for years. They have not put everything on the table, matched ends to means, and made some hard decisions about where we spend money. Here is a good time to point out that our military has largely been handed the responsibility for much of today's national security -- without a corresponding discussion by Congress or anyone else. Should they be the default responders to everything from civil society support in Iraq to policing New Orleans?

Sixth: Give examples of how to broaden the national security discussion. Limit it to just two, so you're not throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the "security" category. I use public health -- or bioterrorism defense -- and roads and bridges -- or critical infrastructure. The health data are state by state here. Critical Infrastructure data by state is available here. If you want to be conservative, stick to priorities within the defense budget itself -- military education, peacekeeping training and counter-IED technology are good bets.

Seven: use this document, the unified security budget, to identify numbers and details on Cold War weapons programs that we continue to fund. There's $70 billion for you. Then you can get city-specific spending data here. This is where our elected leaders can start making tradeoffs to achieve real security.

Eight: Open it up for discussion

On Sept 16th in Iraq, a sobbing mom clutched her baby in the back of an errant car. Their driver was dead. The police approached and then they ran to save themselves, leaving the two to be torched in a metal coffin. Killed by private sector soldiers, paid for by the American taxpayer.

Although brought up in a Christian church, I haven't been for years. But lately I've been praying to God every day to forgive us. For we, the American people, let this happen. We created Blackwater. It is just the most egregious example of what we've done to ourselves and now to others.

Championing public service -- including the military -- must be a cornerstone of any discussion about the future of our nation and its security. This will require progressives and other public minded people to step into the town square to meet head-on the neo-cons, the Reagan groupies and their patrons on the now wide-open terrain of national security definition. And we must defeat them. In the process, we'll make 2008 the year that we re-invent our democracy.

Comments

[rlehman]

"Boots on the ground." Have no idea the origination of that cliche but I wonder how many boot manufacturers are left in the US? How much of our foodstuffs are grown and processed here in the US? An army marches on its stomach after all. How many children will be healthy enough for military service now that we have allowed preventative care to be unimaginably expensive? How many of them will have the education necessary to serve in our military? How many of those children will live in areas with such poor infrastructure they can't get to school or if they can, are in an unsafe building more suitable for the storage of stuff that is going to be discarded anyway.

Building a strong America means a strong military and a strong military means healthy, well educated and confident Americans. We aren't getting there from here.

[brantl]

"Building a strong America means a strong military and a strong military means healthy, well educated and confident Americans. " Since when do "strong" countries need a strong military? I'm sorry, we've been sold that crap for years and it's bull. You want to measure the "strongest" countries in the world? I will submit to you that those are the countries that have excellent health care (we don't), excellent civil liberties (we don't, not any longer), excellent life expectancy (ours is mediocre, not great), excellent quality of life (we don't), low natal death rates (ours suck), and a decent average wage (ours is sucking more and more, year by year)! Which countries are these? The Scandinavian countries and some others, most of which DON'T have "strong" militaries, by our measure.
I'm so sick of that b*llsh*t concept that I can feel a vein pulsing in my head, right now, trying for an aneurysm. Jesus!

[mrcontinental]

Here's a nice piece you may want to check out for those who though the cold war was over. Warning: Some may find this quite disturbing:

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Putin/putin.html

[Synoia]

"national security is a much broader concept"

Your definition to too narrow.

It includes the economy, government debt, balance of trade, health care and energy.

[outnow]

Democracy and "free market" do not go hand-in-hand. Freedom and free market are not the same thing. Take the profit out of empire and you will have fewer wars. Spreading democracy at the point of a M-16 is like converting by the sword.

Following the money made on war will reveal the truth of my assertions.

[fact finder]

National security would be a lot simpler and easier if there were no program of empire building and Manifest Destiny.

[JimReed]

"counter-IED technology are good bets"

IEDs are being used against us in places where we are the invading army, and the population doesn't want us there, and our overwhelming strength gives them few options to fight us. Defeating them would be a mistake because We don't want to set up a world where America rules and American power can't be challenged, do we?

I think any discussion of military priority must start with the fact that we have a military that is far stronger than anyone else, we spend more than the rest of them combined, we have all of the newest and most powerful weapons systems, and it is all backed up by most of the worlds stockpiles of WMDs. No other nation would even think of attacking us, and all this power is probably making the world a more dangerous place because other countries are concerned about us (and rightly so) and they feel they need to strengthen their military because they can't predict who we will attack next.

[mrcontinental]

America has turned into a beast that eats it's young. Sad.

[radmul]

Have you asked the question why does the American way of life require us to spend more than the entire rest of the world to defend it? If we want real security we have to change our policy and begin dealing with other nations rather than exploiting them. The idea that we can kill our way to safety has been proven wrong and reorganizing the killing strategy wont get us anywhere.

[Sundialsvc4]

General Of The Army, and President, "Ike" Eisenhower WARNED US... in January of 1961. He saw it coming. He had dealt with it throughout his professional career. He warned us that it was without precedent in the American experience. He warned that it could destroy our Republic.

"Ike was right."

We can't replay the past, but we do not have to accept it in our present or our future.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I think NashSkirty is no more, for there is no more Nashl. Our Constitution has basically
found it's way into the Fellowes QuadroTurboShredamatic, all bets are off, and
all sales are final, under BushCo. Please
come to a local CitizenCenter to pick up your
HalliCheneyCorp consumer ID...

[Ben Dixon]

Logical. But you need to add one more talking point. 9. Have every American become invested and experianced in national security matters by requiring every person to serve in either the military, Coast Guard, FBI, DEA, local police, or some other law enforcement agency.

[SamThornton]

Certainly some interesting ideas, Lorelei, however, I think you're begging one very important question, the relative importance of national security versus other legitimate functions of government.

Placing national security at the head of the list of government obligations is precisely the mistake the Bush administration has made and, to a lesser extent, the cause of a number of fairly poisonous trends in the national conversation since the end of World War II. The current ascendancy of the military-industrial complex is one of the unpleasant results, the war in Iraq and, indeed, the whole doctrine of preemptive war, are others.

Should national security trump all other national interests? And if so, what other government functions should be reduced or ignored to feed that interest? What's more important, creating a global empire or living a decent life?

[Beaux510]

This is the thinking that the author is trying to address: "..it avoids dualistic thinking like guns versus butter or hawks versus doves."

There is a very large area that lies between the ideas you expressed in "creating a global empire or living a decent life".

We are in a place where the need for an active and extensive National Security policy cannot be relegated to the dustbin as a Neo-Con talking point and scare tactic. A serious problem does exist and must be dealt with actively. At the same time, it's very core philosophy must be re-defined so that war profiteering, preemptive war doctrine, the influence of the military-industrial complex and so on, are as practices, jettisoned as being actually harmful to the sum of the national security effort. Which they have been proven to be.

[RogerHWerner]

I believe Lorelei is taking the concept of National Security and expending it to include what have become purely domestic issues. Let's examine infrastructure.. Presently, ours is falling apart and in a crisis would it permit us to move rapidly in and out of cities or from one region to another? With respect to Education, our system is broke. With the increasing sophistication of defense system, a highly educated populace is required to maintain and use these. Eisenhower was able to push through funding on the interstate highway system by making it a national security concern. In effect, he expanded our concept of national security to include movements of people within the country. Including issues such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure within a national security framework makes sense to me since politicians seem far more willing to support national security than domestic programs. So why not demonstrate that many domestic programs improve national security or at least permit us to enhance it. This is an idea that must be reintroduced to Washington.

[GKJames]

Agreed, but it's hard to have a serious conversation with a public that (i) knowingly elected, several times over since 1994, either a Congress or White House embodying the view that government is the problem (all this while red states received more federal dollars per capita); (ii) repeatedly falls for jingoistic us-good, them-bad banalities; (iii) continues to tolerate the decades-old practice of classifying virtually all information pertaining to national security topics, even though classified information does little more than shield official buffoonery from public scrutiny and accountability; (iv) fails to condemn universally detention without charge, let alone trial; and (v) wants the government to do all sorts of things, but has the gumption to demand that these things be done without the citizenry's having to pay for them.

And while I agree that the use of mercenaries is not a good idea for the reasons mentioned, the insanity would be mitigated somewhat if our government had the decency to demand public accountability of the agents it uses to carry out PUBLIC business. Try, just try, to obtain a copy of the Blackwater contract, including its legal immunities, liability limits and, likely, obligations by the government (read, taxpayer) to indemnify Blackwater for third-party claims.

A proposal to eliminate the mortgage-interest deduction, on the other hand ...

[sparafucilli]

If they didn't have immunity they'd be out of business. Without immunity there's no way to predict the costs and therefore no way to ensure an adequate revenue stream.

[Scandlus]

Seems as though this "administration" has done a bang up job of handing over a profitable and powerful position to a well connected bunch of repuklikan cronies who run a goon squad thug operation. Way to go....."free" enterprise.

[sparafucilli]

Even Alice's Wonderland wasn't as skewed as this. Ah the joys of unfettered capitalism!. "Beware the Jabberwock....and shun the frumious Bandersnatch."