Soccer Dad

George bush isolationist

James Taranto (and others - via memeorandum) discussed Sen. Lieberman's speech for the Commentary fund. Those attending were very impressed, but one comment of Lieberman's sticks out:

Lieberman argued that in many ways, the 2000 ticket of which he was a part was more hawkish than its Republican counterpart.

This was very true. In fact it was one reason I preferred Gov. Bush. He seemed cautious about the use of military power.

MODERATOR: New question. How would you go about as president deciding when it was in the national interest to use U.S. force, generally?

BUSH: Well, if it's in our vital national interest, and that means whether our territory is threatened or people could be harmed, whether or not the alliances are -- our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force. Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear. Whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be. Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win. Whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped. And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy. I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we've got to be very careful when we commit our troops. The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place. So I would take my responsibility seriously. And it starts with making sure we rebuild our military power. Morale in today's military is too low. We're having trouble meeting recruiting goals. We met the goals this year, but in the previous years we have not met recruiting goals. Some of our troops are not well-equipped. I believe we're overextended in too many places. And therefore I want to rebuild the military power. It starts with a billion dollar pay raise for the men and women who wear the uniform. A billion dollars more than the president recently signed into law. It's to make sure our troops are well-housed and well-equipped. Bonus plans to keep some of our high-skilled folks in the services and a commander in chief that sets the mission to fight and win war and prevent war from happening in the first place.

MODERATOR: Vice President Gore, one minute.

GORE: I want to make it clear, our military is the strongest, best-trained, best-equipped, best-led fighting force in the world and in the history of the world. Nobody should have any doubt about that, least of all our adversaries or potential adversaries. If you entrust me with the presidency, I will do whatever is necessary in order to make sure our forces stay the strongest in the world. In fact, in my ten-year budget proposal I've set aside more than twice as much for this purpose as Governor Bush has in his proposal. Now, I think we should be reluctant to get involved in someplace in a foreign country. But if our national security is at stake, if we have allies, if we've tried every other course, if we're sure military action will succeed, and if the costs are proportionate to the benefits, we should get involved. Now, just because we don't want to get involved everywhere doesn't mean we should back off anywhere it comes up. I disagree with the proposal that maybe only when oil supplies are at stake that our national security is at risk. I think that there are situations like in Bosnia or Kosovo where there's a genocide, where our national security is at stake there.

BUSH: I agree our military is the strongest in the world today, that's not the question. The question is will it be the strongest in the years to come? Everywhere I go on the campaign trail I see moms and dads whose son or daughter may wear the uniform and they tell me about how discouraged their son or daughter may be. A recent poll was taken among 1,000 enlisted personnel, as well as officers, over half of whom will leave the service when their time of enlistment is up. The captains are leaving the service. There is a problem. And it's going to require a new commander in chief to rebuild the military power. I was honored to be flanked by Colin Powell and General Norman Schwartzkopf recently stood by me side and agreed with me. If we don't have a clear vision of the military, if we don't stop extending our troops all around the world and nation building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road, and I'm going to prevent that. I'm going to rebuild our military power. It's one of the major priorities of my administration.

Now I realize that Bush was trying to make a point here: the military had been neglected during the Clinton presidency. Still he very clearly rejects the idea of using the military for nation building. Yet, if there's one policy that marks his presidency it's been nation building. First in Afghanistan and then in Iraq.

As the article about Sen. Lieberman points out, 9/11 changed everything. President Bush realized (or at least believed) that those countries that couldn't function became breeding grounds for terrorist organizations. Nation building was now a matter of national security.

It is ironic that President Bush's critics claim that he is rigid in his thinking. Yet on the defining issue of his presidency he clearly changed his mind based on the information available to him.

(On a related issue, he also, eventually, apparently took the Gore-Lieberman approach. During the 2000 campaign Al Gore argued that AIDS was a security crisis. Whether or not President Bush accepts that premise, he has acted as if he believes that to be the case. I believe that here, too, he was informed by the belief that AIDS was a factor in much of the unrest in Africa so he acted to fight the disease.)

Reading this article by Gen. Kilcullen brings the point home that the military, now, have added "nation building" to their job description.

On the face of it, road-building appears to be a generally-recognized form of force projection and governance extension, hence the extreme frequency of its historical use by governments, colonial administrations, occupying powers, and counterinsurgency forces through history. It is also worth recognizing that there is little that is specifically American (or Afghan) about the engineering aspects of the approach described above.

But the effects accrue not just from the road itself, but rather from a conscious and well-developed strategy that uses the road as a tool, and seizes the opportunity created by its construction to generate security, economic, governance and political benefits. This is exactly what is happening in Kunar: the road is one component, albeit a key one, in a broader strategy that uses the road as an organizing framework around which to synchronize and coordinate a series of political-military effects. This is a conscious, developed strategy that was first put in place in 2005-6 and has been consistently executed since. Thus, the mere building of a road is not enough: it generates some, but not all of these effects, and may even be used to oppress or harm the population rather than benefit it. Road construction in many parts of the world has had negative security and political effects, especially when executed unthinkingly or in an un-coordinated fashion. What we are seeing here, in contrast, is a coordinated civil-military activity based on a political strategy of separating the insurgent from the people and connecting the people to the government. In short, this is a political maneuver with the road as a means to a political end.

Actually it's not all that surprising that Democrats now are less hawkish; they don't control the executive branch. There are two major ways that politicians can show that they are doing something: by spending or by making war. So the party in power is more likely to be hawkish and the party out of power is likely to be more cautious in the use of force. (If our next president is Barack Obama, I wouldn't be surprised if he found a conflict at some point during his term that, according to his principles, necessitated military action.)

I'm not saying that the use of force is motivated by cynical calculations. I certainly don't think that's true in the case of Iraq. (If Al Gore had been president in 2001, I'm sure he still would have gone after the Taliban. He may have even attacked Iraq.) However the use of force or "hawkishness" tends to be a trait of whomever is in control of the executive.

foreign policy.