Redeployment Feels So Good
It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to say this, but it looks like Dubya has put another one over on the Democrats. Damn, it feels good.
This morning at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Cincinnati, the President announced the withdrawal of some 70,000 American troops along with their families from deployments in Germany, Japan, and South Korea, the vast majority to Stateside bases. The move is designed to “strengthen our ability to respond to threats overseas” and “improve our capability to protect America and our allies and ease some of the burden on our uniformed military members and their families” according to Administration spokesmen.
All I can say is, it’s at least a decade overdue. For all the talk about needing an “exit strategy” from Iraq, this is an exit from two different wars – WWII and the Cold War – that we’re only now making, and should have made long ago. And indeed, for all the chatter about how this move is due to popular pressure to bring troops home, the fact is that this decision was in the works long before now.
That it is also, shall we say, fortuitously timed is simply good politics, to which Dems would do far better to simply tip their caps rather than snarl and growl in frustration as Richard Holbrooke did splutteringly on CNN today. He lamented at length as to how “we're abandoning our allies” and how we’re “putting national security at great risk” and how we can’t pull troops out of South Korea when North Korea “really does have weapons of mass destruction."
But what “allies” are we “abandoning”? Germany? Heh. South Korea? They wanted us out anyway, remember? Besides, given the enormous conventional imbalance on the Korean peninsula, those 37,000 U.S. troops were nothing but cannon fodder anyway – and that doesn’t even count Pyongyang’s capability for nuclear blackmail. Japan has remained a steady ally (they’re with us in Iraq, so that, by the Democrats’ definition, negates Tokyo as an “ally” anyway, right?) and I’m sure the red carpet will be out if we need to re-deploy forces there again.
How withdrawing unengaged forces from elsewhere “puts national security at risk” but quitting Iraq, where we’re directly engaged with the Islamist enemy, does not, just shows how Bushophobia breeds lobotomized incoherence. Besides, if the Bush Administration started rattling the sabre at Kim jong-Il, would people like “Ricky” Holbrooke really close ranks behind the President, or would he acidly denounce Bush as a “warmonger” who wants to “drag us into another war in East Asia” that can “get us nuked”?
I report, you decide.
This redeployment is just the sort of political jiu-jitsu the Kerry campaign could have used on Bush, but chose not to. Now, instead of the Democrats “declaring victory” in the war on terror and turning the page, forcing Republicans to have to almost become warmongers to keep national security alive as an issue, the President is bringing significant numbers of troops home while keeping us engaged precisely where we need to be to keep the war moving forward.
It is a brilliant move, perhaps a masterstroke. Dare I say it, it’s borderline…Clintonian.
Hee, hee, hee…
This morning at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Cincinnati, the President announced the withdrawal of some 70,000 American troops along with their families from deployments in Germany, Japan, and South Korea, the vast majority to Stateside bases. The move is designed to “strengthen our ability to respond to threats overseas” and “improve our capability to protect America and our allies and ease some of the burden on our uniformed military members and their families” according to Administration spokesmen.
All I can say is, it’s at least a decade overdue. For all the talk about needing an “exit strategy” from Iraq, this is an exit from two different wars – WWII and the Cold War – that we’re only now making, and should have made long ago. And indeed, for all the chatter about how this move is due to popular pressure to bring troops home, the fact is that this decision was in the works long before now.
That it is also, shall we say, fortuitously timed is simply good politics, to which Dems would do far better to simply tip their caps rather than snarl and growl in frustration as Richard Holbrooke did splutteringly on CNN today. He lamented at length as to how “we're abandoning our allies” and how we’re “putting national security at great risk” and how we can’t pull troops out of South Korea when North Korea “really does have weapons of mass destruction."
But what “allies” are we “abandoning”? Germany? Heh. South Korea? They wanted us out anyway, remember? Besides, given the enormous conventional imbalance on the Korean peninsula, those 37,000 U.S. troops were nothing but cannon fodder anyway – and that doesn’t even count Pyongyang’s capability for nuclear blackmail. Japan has remained a steady ally (they’re with us in Iraq, so that, by the Democrats’ definition, negates Tokyo as an “ally” anyway, right?) and I’m sure the red carpet will be out if we need to re-deploy forces there again.
How withdrawing unengaged forces from elsewhere “puts national security at risk” but quitting Iraq, where we’re directly engaged with the Islamist enemy, does not, just shows how Bushophobia breeds lobotomized incoherence. Besides, if the Bush Administration started rattling the sabre at Kim jong-Il, would people like “Ricky” Holbrooke really close ranks behind the President, or would he acidly denounce Bush as a “warmonger” who wants to “drag us into another war in East Asia” that can “get us nuked”?
I report, you decide.
This redeployment is just the sort of political jiu-jitsu the Kerry campaign could have used on Bush, but chose not to. Now, instead of the Democrats “declaring victory” in the war on terror and turning the page, forcing Republicans to have to almost become warmongers to keep national security alive as an issue, the President is bringing significant numbers of troops home while keeping us engaged precisely where we need to be to keep the war moving forward.
It is a brilliant move, perhaps a masterstroke. Dare I say it, it’s borderline…Clintonian.
Hee, hee, hee…
posted by JASmius at 2:54 PM
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