Making Light: Getting serious about "getting serious"

Patrick Nielsen Hayden's Electrolite has been absorbed by his wife's Making Light in what is on Wall Street referred to as a "merger of equals". This leaves him time to get seriously shrill about "getting serious about national security":

Making Light: Getting serious about "getting serious": Atrios discusses self-identified "liberal hawks":

The primary conceit of the "liberal hawks" has been and is that only they are "serious" about the security of the nation. Support for the Iraq war demonstrated that seriousness, no matter how misguided it was. The truth is concern for our national security was a very real reason to oppose the Iraq war, and the primary reason for lots of its opponents.

He's right. The reason so many in the Democratic "base" are infuriated over being lectured by the likes of Peter Beinart and Joe Biden about the need to "get serious about national security" is that the people delivering the lectures are precisely those who were wrong about one of the most important national security questions of our time. As a result we've spent $172 billion and 1600 American lives, damaged our military immeasurably, trashed America's global reputation for justice and fair play, and given the bin Ladens of the world a gift that will keep on giving for generations to come. The entire enterprise has made us profoundly less secure. Meanwhile, I live three blocks from New York Harbor, and port security is still, by all reports, a complete joke.

The fact of the matter is that the supposed distance between self-identified "national security Democrats" and the allegedly dovish party "base" is based on a self-serving slur promulgated by people with something to hide. The NSDs want to impute that run-of-the-mill Democrats and liberals have a deficit of temperament, a persistent inability to understand that sometimes America has got to go out and kill people. In the wake of being spectacularly wrong about Iraq, the NSDs are even more eager to promote this.

It is, of course, a bum rap. Liberal Democrats like Atrios, or me, aren't remotely opposed to "national security." We're strongly in favor of it. Getting killed because I'm an American, at home or overseas: bad. Spending money and resources to protect me from getting killed: good. Maintaining a strong military, at least until planetary utopia breaks out and there are free Jill Johnston posters for everyone: really good. Making all of that far harder, and increasing my likelihood of getting killed, because some politicians and pundits needed to "look tough": really, really bad. Likelihood that I'm going to take my cues on "national security" from those politicians and pundits: low.

At times it all seems like some sort of Bizarro World faith-versus-works argument. Liberals wind up being the ones pointing out, endlessly, that national security is provided by actual practices, not just by holding your face right. Meanwhile popinjays like Joe Biden desperately file their chins to razor-sharpness in the probably vain hope that the electorate, having sometimes demonstrated a preference for strutting phonies, will mistake them for one. And of course the fact remains, as the Poor Man never ceases to remind us: Michael Moore is fat.

Comments

[Jonathan Goldberg]

Then there's the approach to national security that goes "I'm such a trigger-happy maniac that no one will dare to mess with me." Which seems to be what almost elected GWB.

[Ottnott]

The "I'm such a trigger-happy maniac that no one will dare to mess with me" approach is sick enough when it is the personal-security policy of a white supremacist in rural Idaho.

As a national-security policy of the world's greatest military power, supposedly engaged in an effort to spread liberty and democracy around the globe? Madness.

Especially when that military power is supposedly engaged also in an effort to defeat the notion that force is a way to achive political aims that can't be achieved by popular support.

[jeffreydj]

Nah, I think that a "strong military" is much like widespread gun ownership. When one has many people walking about packing heat, such as in the concealed-carry state that I live in, way too many of them come up with with excuses to use their weaponry. My thesis is that monstrous, snarling militaries wind up getting used time and again because, after all, what's the point of blowing hundreds of billions of dollars on them every year if all you get to have them do is march in parades?

Dubious? I direct your attention to a li'l nation known as the United States of America - count up all the military actions that nation's fellas in uniform have gone and blasted their way through since, say, 1945, and then count the number of actions thereof that have genuinely addressed a vital national security interest? If you're gonna go for a quotient, be sure you put the latter number in the numerator, because you cannot divide by zero.

[ozoid]

Here's a mystery: One of the great successes of Democratic foreign policy was the peaceful dismantling of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Ever since the Sharpeville Massacre this seemed to be one massive and inevitable bloodbath.

Nobody ever mentions it. I don't know why.

[john c. halasz]

Actually, ozoid, the Cuban Army's defeat of the South Africans in Angola was the decisive move in breaking the viability of Aparteheid.

[spencer]

Anthony -- maybe we ought to compare the liberal military record to the conservative record.

WW II liberals prepared for the war -- over fantastic oppositin of conservative republicans --and won it.

Korea -- liberal fought the war at the start,
conservatives took over and settled for a draw

Viet Nam -- liberals stated it and conservatives lost it -- I know if it hadn't been for two liberal congressment we would still be fighting it.

Kosovo - liberal govt fought and won it

Iraq -- right wing war that they seem to be doing a good job of losing.

results, conservatives have lost every war during their
time in the White House and they claim the liberals are weak. What war did the liberals lost?

[Dubblblind]

Anthony, how about if we look at Cheney's record as Secretary of Defense on military spending:

"In February 1990, Cheney told Congress" since I became Secretary, we've been through a fairly major process of reducing the defense budget." Cheney stated that during his the first year of his tenure, he "cut almost $65 billion out of the five-year defense program" and that subsequent proposals would "take another $167 billion out.""

Also, I'm sure we'd all love to hear the details from you on how the quagmire in Iraq is strengthening our military. Please address: How the large scale destruction of military equipment (through not only the direct effect of explosives that Rumsfeld's streamlined military failed to protect, but through the insidious effect of the corrosive force of desert sand) is strengthening our military. How the fattening of Halliburton's executives pockets at the expense of necessary protective equipment for our troops is strengthening our military. How the inability to meet military recruiting quotas and the dubious practice of accepting unqualified recruits instead is strengthening our military.

Get extra credit for telling us how Rumsfeld's plan for closing 33 military bases and reducing forces at 29 others for a total reduction of 10,782 military positions strengthens our military.

[Bill]

Joe Biden is a disaster. Thanks to his cowardly handling of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Thomas is now on the Supreme Court. Later, he supported the Iraq War while saying Bush had to tell the American people about the sacrifices that security would entail. (We are still waiting for that discussion.) Of course, Biden supported the gutting of personal bankruptcy.

However, Biden was always worthless. Back in 1986 -1988, an attorney who worked at the same firm that I worked at went to a conference that Biden also attended. He specifically asked Biden about particular policies in education. (I think that it was education - it has been a while.) Biden did not address his question beyond assuring Ron that he (and his campaign) had a position paper dealing with Ron's question. He promised to send Ron the paper. Eventually, Ron received many papers, but none on education. At the time, I assumed that this was simply a mistake. Ron believed that Biden had lied to him. In retrospect, Ron was probably correct. (The last that I heard, Ron had left law to become a priest.)

[Bruce Webb]

On the substance of Brad's post. In February 2003 being pro-military, anti Iraq War, pro UN Inspectors was objectively the right stance. Saddam at that point in time had no deliverable weapons. He could not have killed 1600 Americans if he tried. He could not have cost this country $200 billion and counting if he tried. More to the point by all reports he was killing fewer Iraqis than we have in the months since.

Some well meaning people did not understand that. And they were free to criticize those that were aware of the likely truths about Saddams capability and more than aware of the likely outcomes of an invasion in terms of American boys and girls coming home in boxes.

But bottom line: we were right and they were wrong. We had a strong Army fully equipped with what it needed to serve the actual security interests of this country. We warned the powers that be that embarking on this adventure was only going to break that Army at high cost in lives and material in the face of a threat that was not real. And they have the balls to lecture us on being "weak".

I supported the troops from day one, in part by begging that we not get a steady stream of "boys and girls in boxes". We have some one-time supporters of this war who have come clean and admitted they were hood-winked, I try my best not to trash them, but I will not stand for being lectured for not embracing this cluster-fuck in the first place.

Dean was right, Kerry was wrong. I swung into line behind Kerry and gave him money, but God Damn it he got this one dead wrong. 1600 dead wrong. And Beinart and Biden can perform some anatomically unlikely acts if they disagree.

I kinda liked an Army that was not falling 40% behind its recruitment target, an Army that was being designed to be lighter yet more lethal, go in, do the job, get out. I liked Rumsfield's Army, I hate Dumsfield's Army and unlike Rummy/Dummy I knew the difference - ahead of time.

[Jennifer]

Where is John Kerry now? Why do these guys give up when they lose?