Today is Veterans Day. Thank you veterans and everybody else who has sacrificed for the rest of us. Thanks to those in uniform and to those in regular clothes.
A rumble has broken out amongst DC defense wonks and it will be a defining fight for the Tea Party. The Libertarians and the fiscal realist Liberals are in one corner, most Democrats and all Republicans are in the other.
Will these new Tea Party Members -- at long last -- force both parties in Congress to put defense spending on the budget cutting table?
The Defense Department should be red meat for the Tea Party. It is the largest government entity. Its budget has grown 67 percent in the past decade. It can't be audited. It doesn't respect the Tea Party's cherished free market principles. If DoD had a real business plan, we would be better prepared to fight bin Laden than Imperial Japan. And we're not. Its programs are subject to far less scrutiny than any other agency -- and forget about rigorous oversight of war spending. Abuse of uniformed personnel -- from over-privatization to over-reliance on them for policy implementation -- is rampant because of Congress' refusal to update and modernize its worldview on defense.
The best thing the Tea Party can do for veterans will be to stop these unaccountable behaviors.
Question the Republican Leadership's talking points. One argument we are going to hear is that defense is the only Congressional responsibility that truly meets the Constitutional litmus test (the preamble also mentions justice, the general welfare and Liberty, but let's save those fights for later).
But if we're going to use the Constitution as starting point, I need someone to explain how a gold-plated barnacle like missile defense gets billions of dollars a year when our veterans can't get adequate mental health care. Missile defense would not have worked in 1787 either. Airplanes are another problem concept in the Constitution time-machine. Don't use the Constitutional argument. Call missile defense what it is, a permanent ear mark for the aerospace industry.
Defense budget exceptionalism gets strange. Second Republican in Command Eric Cantor (VA) recently suggested putting Israel aid into the defense budget to keep it safe. Just what we need! Less leverage with Israel! Excuse the sarcasm, but this is a road you don't want to go down.
Here's the defense problem: The circumstances that we keep finding ourselves in are unconventional and can't be solved by the military. So,
Scrap the "War on Terror" framework. This distorting and inaccurate label has led us to where we are today -- with a safety addiction to the military and a bad hardware hangover. We didn't transform ourselves when our last strategic era ended (Soviet Union RIP 1991). This despite the fact that our military services were in the Balkans, Haiti and elsewhere innovating outside normal expectations: building city councils, fighting AIDS, starting small businesses. These are civilian tasks. Fighting terrorism is a subtle endeavor, lots of police and detective work. Watch the UK -- its more Sherlock Holmes than Braveheart. Read How Terrorism Ends.
Be careful with your anti-government talking points: Most military professionals who have been deployed over the past 18 years will tell you that government is a great counter-terrorism strategy. Look at Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan. Contemporary defense includes long term economic development plans and successful governance. But nearly all of this work must be done by locals and civil society. American involvement should minimize uniforms and guns.
Talking about national security outside of the military is HOT! Bureaucrats might be ideologically pesky for you, but they have done fantastic work to make our country safer. Nearly all of our government agencies have international desks. They are helping combat modern threats like criminal networks and disease contagion. They are innovating, applying American ideas to the international realm -- port security, gang violence reduction and rule of law among them.
Restrain your urge to whack the State Department. It will be very unhelpful to the military if you gratuitously beat up on the foreign affairs budget. Same goes for the United Nations. In order to compete and lead in today's world, we need far more non-military personnel working on behalf of our interests. This is the cardinal lesson for Congress on Afghanistan. Today, credibility is as important as hardware to influence national security. Its like marriage: our relationship with the world is the most important part of our security. Female Tea Partiers, help me out here! We need more investment in relationships: public sector, private sector, non profit, whatever. The American people are the key pillar of our security in a world where borders are less important.
Hire a smart 24-year-old who has taken classes in conflict resolution and/or peace studies. Peace is cool. It no longer lives exclusively in the Berkeley Hills, it lives in every Tea Party district, too.
Make sure you have both a foreign policy and a defense staffer. There is too much to do in each of these realms to have one person handle it all. Make sure your district office is included in these issues.
Tea Party victors, you must take up this challenge. If you shift defense budget politics and priorities, the populist transformation you seek will be possible and a more secure America will be the result.
Follow Lorelei Kelly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/loreleikelly
All articles like this do is to give the Tea Party undeserved recognition as a real political party. Everything the American press should be writing about them should be in the form of scorn and ridicule which they so richly deserve.
...or maybe I am missing the point and this is just some kind of subtle sarcasm.
If that is the case...hahahahahahaha......ha!
You miss the point the constitution says about congress and the millitary - "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;"
Do we really need all those foreign bases to "repel Invasions" certainly not.
If the Tea Party wants to adhere to the constition any part of the defense budget that doesn't actually defend the borders of the United States shoul be on the chopping block.
is why we buy expensive drones. Can't we do this
with "drones"? Then what "job" will the expensive
soldier perform if not surging on threats to the national
security.
Now that you mention it...that's why FDR could justify
rounding up US citizens of Japanese heritage..and to take the
war to Germany....they certainly wanted to invade USA
The U.S. Navy protects all the foreign merchant vessels from pirates on the high seas so that their cargo can be sold at Walmart to undercut our job market. Let's limit our navy's role to protecting the Pacific sea lanes only east of the International Date Line. We don't need to subsidize the foreign competition.
and I wonder why you don't just step into the spotlight. Useful, concrete and realistic.
Thanks PeterNY !!
L I K E
> State name a single accomplishment since 1945
> Education they have never educated a single child
>Commerce heck they can't even get a trade deal with Korea
>Interior they get more thing wrong than right
>NIH name a single cure or vaccine
>Headstart 40 years of flushing $$
And what about some limits and an end to wars? There should be limits to how long you can continue100% funding of a war. Try progressive withdrawal and declining funding to coincide with the amount of effort that is expended. I never hear any reports on people voting in a way to keep wars going, so why the lack of attention all of a sudden?
One question I have for all of the people so concerned about "socialism," "government-run healthcare," and the dreaded "Obamacare," is what's their position on the VA health care system?This is true "socialized medicine," certainly has room for improvement, but operates with very low overhead, and a rate of prescription drug errors way below private hospitals.
I remember a few Tea Party candidates advocating privatizing the VA, but not all. Shouldn't all Tea Party supporters be for dismantling the VA system, because it would help the troops, right?
I'd say Bachman, Paul, Rubio et al should introduce bills eliminating the VA, then campaign really hard on their principles. If not against it, how can they be expected to be taken seriously?