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I'm disappointed that the Democratic front-runners aren't articulating anything closely resembling a progressive foreign policy. The articles they wrote for Foreign Affairs are not encouraging.
Let's start with Obama, who is supposedly running against the Washington conventional wisdom that's gotten us in so much trouble. He wants to "rebuild" the military (read: spend a lot more money on it), expand our ground forces, and be the world's policeman. So--a bigger military that's used whenever the President feels like it. Really out of the box there, Senator.
On to Edwards, who wants to double the budget for recruiting and increase spending on equipment. He also thinks the military should be used so that "weak and failing states do not create dangers for the United States." Hmmm. What's the UN for?
And Hillary, who still thinks invading Iraq was a swell idea, took time out of her Iran saber-rattling to call to "expand and modernize" the military. Because, you know, it's gotten really small and obsolete.
Sorry, this is nuts. These three Democrats have watched 7 years of Bush and Cheney's wars and exploding military spending and all concluded, "We need to spend more and make it even bigger!"
The United States currently spends more than the next 14 countries combined on our military. Let that sink in for a minute. If you're not impressed, you should be. Historian Paul Kennedy found this was historically unprecedented -- going back five centuries (and this study was done before the Bush/Cheney war machine really kicked in).
Any rational person can see that we don't need a bigger military. It's unfortunate that one of our candidates isn't saying this.
Tagged as: edwards, clinton, obama, foreign policy, us military
Blue Texan is a regular contributing blogger for FireDogLake.
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