One of the unintended side-benefits of the Bush presidency is the return of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. I realize that he never actually left, but during the Clinton era, I started to find Dionne as a split-the-difference moderate, afraid to take bold positions.
Bush seems to have brought back Dionne’s fire. It couldn’t have come at a better time. Today, he’s taking on the administration’s back-door military draft — and he doesn’t hold back.
Volunteers are told suddenly that they are not free to go after their period of duty is up. They are in this position because our political leaders ignored the counsel of military leaders who knew the occupation of Iraq would require more troops than the politicians were willing to commit. When they were selling the war, those politicians did not want to admit how hard things might get. Nor were they willing to be candid about how their expansive foreign policy requires more troops than the administration is willing to pay for.
God forbid that Americans earning, say, more than $1 million a year be asked to pony up a little more in taxes to support a larger military at a time when, we are told over and over, the country is in the middle of a war on terrorism. Millionaires can’t be asked to sacrifice even a little bit. No, they deserve to have their taxes cut while others fight and die. And anyone who speaks up in opposition to this injustice risks being called unpatriotic by those who give up absolutely nothing themselves. Patriotism is defined as a solicitude for tidy incomes, a belief in anything Rush Limbaugh says on the radio and a demand that those in charge of the country never be held accountable for their mistakes.
When he’s on, he’s on.