John Edwards Talks Some Sense on the Military

Retreat or Advance?

"Military leaders are warning about 'breaking' the force. It is tempting for politicians to respond to this situation by trying to outbid one another on the number of troops they would add to the military . . . But the problem of our force structure is not best dealt with by a numbers game. We must be more thoughtful about what the troops would actually be used for."

--John Edwards, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2007

Alone among so-called major presidential candidates, John Edwards appears to understand that the raw number of troops the US military can muster ceased to matter with the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. Further evidence of this fact came with the American defeat in Vietnam, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. And, nearly every day for the past four-and-a-half years in Iraq, we have been taught the lesson again. The ability to apply massive, blunt force no longer helps a "superpower" very much at all.

To the contrary, large-scale spending on the military diverts scarce financial resources from economically productive activities, and removes our youth from civilian life, where they could have become teachers, engineers and entrepreneurs. Instead, they are added to the ranks of trained killers in an anachronisitc insitution that is tantamount to a federal jobs program. In other words, militarization stunts and diminishes our nation, without making us any stronger or safer.

As an alternative, Mr. Edwards proposes establishing a new organization -- the Marshall Corps -- consisting of "at least 10,000 civilian experts who could be deployed abroad to serve in reconstruction, stabilization, and humanitarian missons." He predicts such a corps will be useful "to stabilize weak and failing states and provide humanitarian assistance to the victims of disasters across the world." This is both an enlightened and prgamatic idea that surely would serve US foreign policy interests better than the application of violence, as in Iraq. Unfortunately, Edwards' support of just this sadistic and reckless action when he was in the Senate greatly undermines his credibility now.

The Democrats' Push to Militarize America

"To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. . . We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines . . . As commander in chief . . . I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary."

--Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

Apparently, the Democrats have spent the last few years examining the US' military situation and foreign policy, including the debacle in Iraq, and concluded that what the nation needs is to take the status quo and give us more of it. How they have drawn such a lesson is a bit mystifying. Iraq is in shambles, with around $600 billion in direct costs down the drain; our nation's international standing is at an all time low. And let's not forget the 3,600 American soldiers killed in Mesopotamia, along with at least 66,000 Iraqi civilians. More than 3 million Iraqis have fled their home country since America overthrew its prior government, and Baghdad now suffers from the worst living conditions in the world. At Abu Ghraib, our nation's youth in uniform - our purported "heroes" -- committed what the Pentagon's own investigator, Major General Antonio Taguba, determined to be torture against the very people who were to receive the gift of democracy.

Time to Change into Battle Gear

That Obama wants to divert more potential teachers, doctors and entrepreneurs into America's military ranks, where they will be trained to kill while drawing a salary on the back of the taxpayer, shows a devastating failure to understand what our country needs for long-term prosperity and viability. The US faces no large and imminent conventional military threat. The "peace dividend" of the '90's contributed to the strongest national economy seen in forty years. As baby boomers retire en masse, we will need more young workers to pay into the Social Security system. To take American youth out of civilian life, where they can learn and work in mainstream society, and place them into an institution that constitutes an economic deadweight, is high folly. What happened to investing in our kids' futures, instead of suiting them up for either make-work or death in the desert? America deserves better than the Democrats' vision of further militarization.