One of the more unexpected pieces of news that came out over the holidays was the Bush White House’s plans to cut the Defense budget a little. That’s right — Bush, the pro-military president, while we’re still fighting a costly and deadly war, believes the Pentagon needs less money.
Under orders from President Bush to tighten its belt amid the escalating cost of the war in Iraq, the Pentagon is poised to make significant cuts to its budget for buying new weapons systems, aiming to trim some $60 billion over the next six years, industry and government officials said.
The Navy and the Air Force are expected to be among the hardest hit, given the number of big-ticket weapons in their budgets. On the list of possible programs that could see funding delayed or scaled back is the Air Force’s F/A-22 fighter jet and the Navy’s newest DDX destroyer, as well as aircraft carriers and auxiliary ships, industry and government officials said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office is finishing a budget that is expected to be sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget shortly. Top Pentagon officials are looking to cut about $10 billion from their budget for fiscal 2006, which begins next October, as well as in each of the following five years.
I know the election is over, but weren’t we told every day for nearly a year that John Kerry was unqualified to be commander-in-chief because, several years ago, he backed Defense cuts and supported the elimination of popular weapons programs? And isn’t Bush now doing the exact same thing? The answer to both, of course, is yes.
During the campaign — you remember, that painful, year-long exercise that wrapped up just two months ago — Americans were told that Kerry’s willingness to support bi-partisan cuts in the Defense budget and the elimination of certain weapons programs was a sign that he was naïve, weak, and anti-military.
Indeed, these attacks were the basis for most of the Bush campaign’s negative advertising and rhetorical attacks. Zell Miller, in his notorious New York keynote address, said:
“Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security. This is the man who wants to be the commander in chief of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spit balls?… For more than 20 years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure “
The entire line of attack was one of the most vicious and dishonest in recent political history, but facts and context weren’t about to stand in the way of the Bush smear machine.
To hear Bush and his cohorts tell it, anyone who’d cut Defense spending and kill weapons programs in a time of war is clearly unfit to lead. Two months after the election, of course, Bush wants to cut Defense spending and kill weapons programs in a time of war.
The internal budget document, approved by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and leaked to reporters over the weekend, shows deep cuts to weapons programs once seen as the future of the military, including an Air Force advanced fighter plane, a stealthy Navy destroyer, a fleet of modernized transport aircraft and the next generation of nuclear submarines. Even President Bush’s prized missile defense program would be trimmed by $5 billion.
My point isn’t that Bush is anti-military or that these lower figures will somehow jeopardize American lives. On the contrary, these cuts are modest reductions in a Pentagon budget that is larger now than at the height of the Cold War. Even Bush critics can realize that these proposed cuts, should Congress approve them, would hardly be dangerous.
But that’s only because we approach issues using a different standard. If we played by GOP rules, we’d demagogue the hell out of this, asking how any president who cared about the troops would even consider cutting support for the Pentagon and critical weapons programs just three years after 9/11, while the war in Iraq continues to rage on, as Afghanistan is still teetering on the brink, while Iran grows more dangerous by the day and North Korea has nuclear weapons, with Osama bin Laden still on the loose, and while America remains on yellow alert. The threat of another terrorist attack remains a constant, we’d argue, but our president believes our armed forces deserve less financial support, not more.
We probably won’t say any of these things, of course, because we know full well it really wouldn’t be entirely fair. But therein lies my broader point: the president and his campaign operatives were lying — boldly and without apology — throughout 2004 when they smeared Kerry with nonsensical accusations about being anti-military. Our way is predicated on honest campaign pitches and responsible governing, but their way wins elections.
Kerry supports modest Defense cuts? He’s weakening America. Bush supports modest Defense cuts? He’s a responsible leader. Painful, isn’t it?