When Politics Trump Security Concerns

By Colonel Kenneth Allard (US Army, ret.)

....It is a classic line from a forgettable movie, a bygone era when Hollywood was joyfully even-handed. In the 1940 film Ghost Breakers, Claudette Colbert and Bob Hope are discussing zombies, those soulless, hollow-eyed creatures who blindly follow pointless orders. Hope deadpans, "You mean like Democrats"?

Actually, yes! As part of this newspaper's convention coverage, and while trying to be equally unfair to both parties, let me invite your attention to the recently rediscovered issue of national security. And to make certain that you catch my drift, let me underline the argument presented here and repeated next week: Both parties, in their own ways and for their own less-than-noble ends, placed narrow constituency interests ahead of their overriding responsibility to provide for the common defense.

The living memories are fading rapidly but presidents like Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson once made Democrats almost synonymous with national security. Vietnam partly shattered that consensus but things really got crazy after the Russians threw in the towel. Thereafter, it was only a short step from opposing Vietnam to squandering the peace dividend, never once conceding that peace had been the real dividend all along. Profligate peace-keeping under Bill Clinton was a temporary palliative for a confusing multi-polar world, although we studiously ignored genocide in Rwanda and overlooked four years of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia before intervening.

Along the way, a new Democrat generation apparently bought into an unspoken canon: that national security is not their party's core competency; that diplomacy and negotiations are the be-all of statecraft (although launching cruise missiles is sometimes permissible for signaling sore displeasure in non-confrontational ways); that defense budgets are, always and forever, needless diversions from social spending; above all, that retreat and withdrawal are the hallmarks of great statesmanship.

In 2006, the Democrats were finally able to put their West Wing instincts into practice after winning control of Congress. The nation clearly had ample grounds for frustration with the war policies of the Bush administration. But within days, Donald Rumsfeld had been dismissed, his policies reversed and Gen. David Petraeus appointed to lead the surge, a last-ditch attempt to prevent defeat, debacle and bloodbath in Iraq.

In his new book, The Strongest Tribe, former Marine grunt and war correspondent Bing West documents the turn-around which gained remarkable momentum throughout 2007. The strongest tribe in Iraq turned out to be the Americans, who finally arrived in the numbers and with the strategy capable of taking the deadly fight to al Qaeda - where it was always meant to be.

But West also recounts virulent opposition by a pantheon of Congressional Democrats. Chairman John Murtha, the kind of backroom-dealing politician "the mainstream press ordinarily despised" but lionized because of his anti-war stance; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who essentially called Petraeus a liar; even Sen. Joseph Biden, who said of the surge as recently as last September, "I give the strategy zero chance of succeeding. Zero." No matter how brilliantly Petraeus and his soldiers succeeded, the Democrats acted as if permanently stuck-on-stupid.

West argues that their attacks went far beyond policy disagreements, even permitting the "anti-military venom of the Vietnam era" to reappear and pollute an already difficult political dialogue. He mercilessly lays out why Democrat ambitions for 2008 ruled out any possibility of bipartisan cooperation in 2007: "There would be no compromise when rigid opposition garnered more votes for the presidency."

Opposition is one thing, governing another. A President Obama may find that his party's protracted record of silliness on national security issues is a huge handicap when dealing with the crises surely confronting the next administration. Two notable and local exceptions are Congressmen Charles Gonzales and Ciro Rodriguez, who deeply understand those cutting-edge issues (border security, cyber defenses and interoperability). Better yet: neither permitted opposition to the war to override deep-seated concerns for soldiers, veterans or their families.

Those are important first principles if the Democrats truly understand that a new consensus on national security is fundamental if they are ever to be trusted with governance - and inevitably judged by performance.