Axis to grind - Comment - military policy

Progressive, The, March, 2002

There was something almost pathetic about George W. Bush's attempt to make his fight against terrorism akin to the fight against the Nazis.

In his State of the Union address, he famously evoked the comparison when he said that North Korea, Iran, Iraq, "and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil."

That's a big stretch.

North Korea and Iran have both showed signs of opening up to the West over the last four years. Diplomatic efforts could bring them even closer to a rapprochement. Bluster and stigma will only alienate them.

What's more, the idea that North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are somehow working together to take over the world is laughable. Iran and Iraq hate each other and waged a devastating war against each other in the 1980s--back when the United States was supporting Saddam Hussein. There is no evidence today that they are allied together or with North Korea. So Bush was falling on his axis when he tried to make that claim.

And he was guilty of gross distortion, especially in regard to Iran. He said that "an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom." While Iran's conservative clerics do wield a lot of power, President Mohammad Khatami, a moderate reformist, was democratically elected in a huge upset in 1997 and reelected overwhelmingly last June.

"By the standards of the region, it would be hard to argue that there's any country making more steps toward democracy than Iran under Khatami," says Chris Toensing, executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) in Washington, D.C. "Bush's rhetoric certainly strengthens the hands of conservative forces who want the Iranian people to believe that the West is a demon and there's nothing to gain in opening up. It lets the conservatives portray the reformists as traitors."

Bush also hypes the threat against the United States when he says "freedom is at risk." As horrific as the attacks of September 11 were, freedom was never at risk, and the existence of the United States was never in peril. During World War II, the survival of the free world was at stake, as were the lives of millions of innocent people.

Bush is exaggerating the risk for several reasons, on top of the fact that "evil" is his favorite word.

First, doing so helps solve his existential dilemma. Before September 11, he was the most immature fifty-five-year-old in the country, with no clear idea of why he became President. The attacks gave meaning to his life, and the more grave he makes them out to be, the more important is his role.

Second, by magnifying the threats, he is able to play to the traditional Republican strength--being tougher on national defense issues.

Third, it allows him to expand the Pentagon budget to unseen heights. "My budget includes the largest increase in defense spending in two decades, because while the price of freedom and security is high, it is never too high," he said. "Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay it."

The $48 billion increase in Pentagon spending, up to almost $400 billion annually, will not necessarily make the United States safer, but it will make us more spendthrift.

Basically, it gives the contractors a full run on the Pentagon candy shop. No longer does Donald Rumsfeld talk about the need to phase out weapons systems that are "designed for the Cold War," as he put it last year.

The contractors can keep cashing in, as everything military, in the post-September 11 era, is now sacrosanct. Boeing can have its B-1 bombers, Lockheed Martin its F-22 fighter jets, even though both were designed to face off against the Soviet Union, now a dozen years defunct.

Then there's the V-22 Osprey, which has killed thirty Marines in a series of crashes. Why keep tossing $26 billion at this misguided aircraft?

That's just throwing money away. But the Pentagon is insatiable. The brass says even the $48 billion increase is not enough.

And the joke is, the increased Pentagon spending won't increase our security. "Far from it," says William D. Hartung, senior fellow of the World Policy Institute, who cites the funding of obsolete weapons systems. Hartung also contends that Bush's go-it-alone approach to foreign policy actually jeopardizes the ability of the United States to combat terrorism. That fight will "require cooperation with other nations, many of whom have been alienated by the unilateralist posture that the Bush Administration has been taking," he says.

Bush's increased spending on the Pentagon will create a deficit, and he's using that deficit as budget blackmail. To try to make ends meet, he wants to cut spending on crucial social needs, like heating assistance for the poor, public housing, workplace safety, job training, and even enforcement of the minimum wage laws in this country.

"Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term so long as Congress restrains spending and acts in a fiscally responsible way," he says.

The game of budget blackmail has been going on for some time, and Bush and the Democrats are now just giving it a little twist. Typically, Republicans are against running a deficit, and they hype the issue in order to say the government can't afford spending on social programs. From FDR's time up to the Clinton era, Democrats understood the necessity to run deficits, especially in times of recession. But this year, Bush is in favor of the deficit to accommodate Pentagon spending, and the Democrats are against it.