Tuesday, August 09, 2005

"Strength/weakness on security – missing the big picture"

"One recurring theme when discussing Democrats’ inability to win the big races and seal the deal with the public is the continued perception of our weakness on military issues. No matter how many times or how many ways we approach it, we’re considered weaker than the Republicans when it comes to national defense. When this problem comes up, the answers are always the same:

Wes Clark will save us! - (full diary here)
We’ll win if we run a real veteran!
Look, another veteran on our side!
We support the troops, not the war!
Democrats just have to stand up and oppose the Iraq war forcefully!
We just need to offer our plan to get out of Iraq!

The GOP, like it or not, agree with it or not, has a plan and a strategy: Spend on defense, prevent anyone else from developing weapons, and scare the hell out of anyone who’s already got them. If someone gets uppity, pound on them fast and hard and apologize later.

Our strategy is, as with most issues, scattershot. If there is an overriding theme, it is “find warriors of yesterday to justify our current opinion of the current military action”. But no one, not on Kos, not in the media, not in the DNC, not in the DLC, can offer a singular, compelling and encompassing plan to ensure the national defense. Hell, with 64% of the country now admitting to doubts about Iraq, we can’t even offer a single plan on this. As long as we’re fighting among ourselves whether to: A: pull out now B: pull out strategically, or C: increase troop strength until we’ve “won”, Bush doesn’t HAVE to do anything. We’ve got nothing coherent for him to respond to, so he can just hold the course and his homeland security numbers stay above 50%.
We have to get our heads out of the sand, stop waiting for one-off saviors from 40 year old wars, and decide how we intend to protect this country today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year and in future decades. Will we build up the military strategically and invest in better technology, as Clinton started to do? Will we invest in combination of diplomatic efforts, foreign aid to poor communities in at-risk areas and a tough stance on radical outliers? Will we deploy more resources on the coastlines, at ports? Do we have the stomach to say we will hunt down people who threaten us – even if we have to do it here at home?
We have to provide answers to these, and as yet unforeseen, threats. A Department of Peace isn’t the answer. A bloated, endlessly and unquestioningly funded Department of Defense isn’t the answer. But right now, we can’t say truthfully that we have a coherent plan for national defense moving to the future.

Howard Dean is one of the Democrats trying to get us there, but his stock message, that we won’t send our children to war without telling the American people the truth, is only part of the issue, and doesn’t identify what we’re willing to tell the truth about. What will trigger those decisions for us, and what will we do differently to ensure that we’re ready? We have to make those decisions, and we have to agree on them. We have to be willing to compromise among ourselves, hawks and doves alike. We can’t simply adopt a war posture and call us safe, nor can we ignore the real threats. We have to answer the question not just of what we will do to protect America, but how we will do it.

In the short term, we keep setting ourselves up for long-term failure by our myopic focus on biography over substance, story over planning. The latter must underscore and precede the former – not vice versa."-from the post by Ray Minchew on his blog.

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