Now that candidate Bernie Sanders is drawing crowds in the tens of thousands, it’s time to recognize that what he says will have an influence in the 2016 presidential campaign…. He’s been almost 100 percent consistent in his opposition to America’s wars. For the past decade he’s even voted against every defense budget. His only yea vote was to authorize the use of military force against al Qaeda after 9/11. And in the weird ways of Washington (and our nation), Democrats and Republicans have a hard time attacking Sanders for being “soft” on defense despite his consistency in opposing war. That’s because he has made a huge part of his career ensuring that America’s veterans get the care they need and deserve. So label him what you want—isolationist, socialist, peacenik—this man doesn’t pray at the orthodox national security altar.
The whispering campaign claiming that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) lacks what it takes to protect this country as President. How can he protect America, the argument goes, when his campaign website says nothing about defense? This is what happens to someone who doesn’t toe the line as expected by the military-industrial complex and the Congressmen they’ve purchased.
The truth is that being President doesn’t require a military background (see Obama, Barack and Clinton, Bill). A President need not be in the pocket of Raytheon or Boeing or another defense contractor to be President. In fact, Sanders may be perfectly positioned to look at our defense philosophy and expenditures with a fresh perspective. For too long, we spent trillions on defense because…well, because that’s what America does. There’s been no serious attempt to determine if the need still exists, or even if there might be a better/less expensive/more efficient way of protecting the homeland. Chris Hedges, among other voices, has advocated for the need to re-examine our bloated defense spending and the need to reduce the size of our standing army, perhaps by as much as half. There may well be a significant “peace dividend” to be realized as money currently wasted on defense is reinvested in our economy for more productive tasks.
I’ve argued for years for the need for America to stop being the world’s de facto moral policeman. It’s time to require Western Europe to pay the freight for their defense, a cost that we assume almost in toto. One of the reasons Western Europe’s economies have become as strong and vibrant as they are is that they’re paying a very small portion of their GDP for defense. Our tax dollars subsidize Europe’s military needs, which frees up money to be used more productively. This arrangement might have made sense after WWII, when the Marshall Plan helped to rebuild the continent from the ashes of war. Europe is just fine now, and has been for some time; there’s no longer a need for American taxpayers to be paying the freight for Europe’s defense.
One has to ask at the end whether Sanders’ most audacious proposal, that of calling for a “war tax” on millionaires, is purely rhetoric or a tangible proposal. Daniel J. Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Libertarian Cato Institute, writes that Sanders’ falls into neither camp of the guns-versus-butter debate that has raged since World War II. He is not a Roosevelt, Truman or Reagan ideologue who would increase military spending while reducing domestic spending. And he is not a Johnson or Bush big spender who would conduct a war and throw money at domestic programs. Sanders’ anti-war stance while also focusing on tax increases seems thusly contradictory. Still, maybe that Sanders doesn’t quite align with either historical practice means that a third way can also be a true debate about priorities.
Perhaps what the naysayers are whispering about Sanders “lack of credibility” when it comes to defense issues isn’t a liability at all. Perhaps not being wedded to the military-industrial complex is actually a pronounced strength. The questions that demand to be asked simply aren’t being asked today. Why must we continue throwing trillions at defense? Do we really need to maintain a presence in more than 150 countries? Why are we still playing the role of moral policeman to the world? I look at what we’re doing today and the obscene sums we spend on defense and I can’t help but wonder why. Surely, there are more productive ways to spend our money.
It doesn’t appear that any currently in the race on either side of the ideological divide is willing to look critically at our defense spending…and with it our priorities…except for Bernie Sanders. Why would we not be willing to elect someone convinced that defense spending as currently constituted is as wasteful as it is illogical? Perhaps it’s time for us to elect someone willing to ask the hard questions, questions the military-industrial complex are going to find inconvenient and threatening.
It’s time for a change, and I’m thinking that electing a Socialist might not be such a bad idea.
