What we support and defend

[davidbfpo]

Carl commented:

Good luck, David, with untangling this.

Yes this thread has gone in so many directions I fear untangling it is impractical. To date I have only seen one point that deserves a separate thread, so may create that one day.

When a thread does this I prefer to copy posts to older appropriate threads.

Meantime my mother-in-law duties are calling, so off to support her. She rarely needs defending.

[Bob's World]

On Fuch's list: A line of truth through all your points, but some are more symptomatic, than causal - a ride down the slippery slope if you will. Hard to sort out where these things begin, as the symptoms take a while to manifest. This is also why so much COIN targets symptoms rather than root causes. Both roots are deep in government action, and government counter action to fix government action that is harming the country tends to be hard for governments to do. As I tell people, "governments are made up of Politicians and bureaucrats - and politicians generally don't take responsibility for the negative effects of their actions, and bureaucrats seek to preserve the status quo. Makes change hard.

The existence of a large, war-fighting military (rather than an appropriate war-deterring/commerce supporting military) has indeed facilitated a shift of power to the executive. While I don't agree with many of her examples, her blaming of conservatives for this (liberal and conservative/ democrat-republican share equally), Rachael Maddow explores this important issue in her current book "Drift." But why do we think we need such a large military?

Go to the National Security Strategy to find that answer. Post-Cold War Republican and Democratic Presidencies have built and expanded a line of "logic" that it is a vital national interest of the US to "lead" the world and to spread US values (as currently defined in our populace and culture) and US-brand democracy to the rest of the world in order to preserve peace and make everyone better off.

Sounds nice, kind of like a big fuzzy stuffed bunny. That is nice - until someone is stuffing that big fuzzy bunny down your throat.

Over at DoD, an organization that I don't think has ever volunteered to get smaller, this is powerful specified rationale for maintaining a large military designed to execute these "bunny stuffing" missions around the globe. To do otherwise would be to disobey a direct order from the President. So they hold themselves harmless in this debate. (Though I cannot think of a more powerful statement, or an act that could do more to put American back on track to being a safer, stronger, more secure enterprise than for the SecDef and the Chairman to appear before a joint session of the Congress and return a check for $ 1 Trillion Dollars, demanding that Congress make equal cuts across the budget, to include social programs. This would make the military even more respected by the populace and would shame the Congress and Presidency to action)

So how do we fix this? Take Washington's final farewell address. The US was not "isolationist" under Washingtonian vision, we engaged the world in our commerce and were an example to the world in our quest for personal liberty and liberal governance. We simply did not believe it was healthy to go about getting caught up in the political affairs of a system of permanent "friend" and "enemies" - better to attempt to stay healthy with all and seek opportunities to advance our own interests rather than go about seeking to support or deny the interests of others.

Then take our current National Security Strategy. Go through the NSS and strike everything that is not consistent with Washington's address. Then take everything that was stricken and seriously ask "do we really need this"? The answer will be "no" in most cases. Delete those sections.

Next, review all of our treaties, roles in organizations, polices for diplomacy, size and design of our military, etc and re-tune all to reflect this new, less intrusive approach. New treaties and new organizational roles will become necessary. Design and Implement those things.

We would need a bold, visionary leader to make such changes. But one who is also humble and willing to allow others to act and think differently than he does and simply be "different" and not "wrong" for doing so. Where is such a leadrer??

The world will continue to get smaller, we will all continue to become more interconnected, but how we approach those changes would become far more tolerable to those around us, less provocative of state and popular violence against the US and our interests, and in no way downgrade the "leadership" of the US. It would just make us more of the type of leader we all like to follow, rather than those leaders we were forced to follow against our will.