I was watching Fareed Zakaria GPS this weekend and Fareed said this:
Now, at the end of August, remember the United States will pull out all but 50,000 troops from Iraq. At the end of 2011, all American forces are scheduled to be gone.
I have too much respect for Mr. Zakaria to "call bullshit" on him but it does strike me as naive. Isn't it pretty much a truism that the U.S. almost never leaves anywhere?! I think that is where many progressives and Ron Paul see eye-to-eye. In fact, Barney Frank and Ron Paul have recently teamed up to argue for cutting the military budget and shutting down some of the military bases we have around the world (and bringing the troops home... or, more accurately I presume, deploying them to where they are actually needed).
This transcript of a joint interview with Wolf Blitzer is worth a read. Here is an (edited) excerpt to whet your appetite:
BLITZER: Congressman Frank, the Pentagon's budget for 2010 almost $700 billion, in your estimation, what should it be?
FRANK: Well, for this year, I would like to cut it about 50. And I want to stress, Wolf, I don't want this argument hijacked. The case that Ron Paul and I are making, along with Representative Walter Jones, a Republican, Ron Wyden, a Democrat, is separate, to a great extent, from Afghanistan.
People can differ about Afghanistan. I voted to go in, I think it is bogged down. But we are talking about useless expenditures which are, for geopolitical reasons that I don't think are valid, in NATO, in Japan.
...
So I want to make it very clear, we are talking about NATO. NATO was a wonderful idea. It was formed in 1949. We are as far away from NATO as NATO was when it was done in time from the presidency of Grover Cleveland.
NATO has served its purpose. And I don't -- The New York Times had a very interesting article a couple of weeks ago about the extent to which Europe -- Western Europe, wealthy nations, facing no real threat, can afford very, very good expenditures for social welfare, because America...
BLITZER: So basically, what both of you are saying, bring the troops home from Germany, from Japan, from South Korea, bring them home...
BARNEY: Yes.
BLITZER: ... from all over the world. It is a waste of money.
FRANK: No, not all over the world. Excuse me, Wolf, I don't argue in extremes. Not all over the world. There are parts of the world where I think...
BLITZER: Where?
FRANK: ... there needs to be -- well, for instance, I do want sea and air power to confront the People's Republic of China. I don't want Taiwan overrun. And I think sea and air power can help with South Korea. But South Korea is larger than North Korea, and can put its own troops in. Fifteen thousand Marines in Okinawa are irrelevant to what we want to do with China.
We're not going to land Marines on the Chinese mainland. So yes, there are parts of the world where our presence would be useful, but -- and I think we have to be very clear that we would be there militarily to confront Iran. But it is not any longer reasonable to have troops virtually everywhere.
The general view is America must be the superpower and be everywhere. And that exacerbates our national security, doesn't help it.
In spite of the political clout of the Frank/Paul combination, allow me to make a not very bold prediction, U.S. troops will be in Iraq when the 45th president takes the oath of office in January 2017.
It's not very often I say this - but I really hope I'm wrong (except about Barack Obama being re-elected of course).
No comments:
Post a Comment