Peace Be With You

"A new isolationism is metastasizing in the American body politic. At its heart lies not an urge to avoid war, but an urge to avoid contemplating the costs and realities of war. It sees war as having analgesic qualities - as lessening a collective feeling of impotence, a collective sense of fear and terror. Making war in the name of reducing terror serves this state of mind and helps to preserve it. Marked by a calculated estrangement from war's horrific realities and mercenary purposes, the new isolationism magically turns an historic term on its head, for it keeps us in wars, rather than out of them."
-Retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) William J. Astore

Predictably, John McCain claims that Republicans such as Senator-elect Rand Paul represent a wing of the party associated with protectionism and isolationism.

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is having none of it. Good on him. McCain was castigating Paul, and by extension Coburn, for suggesting that military spending needs to be included in any deficit reduction plan. But McCain has it wrong. It is simply absurd to argue that military spending, which has grown by more than 86 percent in real terms since 1998, can and should be immune from scrutiny in an era of austerity. The name-calling might succeed in intimidating the less thoughtful or merely timid, but a few minutes with the actual numbers puts to bed the notion that military spending can and should be held sacrosanct.

But while all Members of Congress, egged on by the public, should be willing to shine the light on the Pentagon's procurement practices, and to ask hard questions about what is genuinely needed as opposed to merely desired, deeper cuts in military spending should be tied to a strategic outlook very different from that which has guided Washington for many years. My colleague Justin Logan has elsewhere documented the too-loose invocation of the loaded term "isolationism" to describe a general approach to foreign policy that looks to most Americans like common sense. That alternative approach holds that countries are chiefly responsible for their own defense, that American taxpayers should not be expected to indefinitely shoulder the burdens of defending the entire world from all manner of threats, and that a smaller, more focused U.S. military would still provide Americans with a level of security that our ancestors would envy.

As Ben Friedman and I have argued elsewhere, a grand strategy of restraint would allow for a smaller Army and Marine Corps as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are drawn to a close (as they should be), deep cuts in the Pentagon's civilian work force, which has grown dramatically over the past 10 years, and sensible reductions in the nuclear arsenal. More modest cuts are warranted in intelligence and R&D. Finally, significant changes in a number of costly and unnecessary weapons and platforms, including terminating the V-22 Osprey and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and greater scrutiny of the F-35 program, for example, must also be in the mix. This Friday, Cato will host a discussion of these issues at a public forum featuring Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) as well as the Lexington Institute's Loren Thompson.

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Sen. McCain might call that isolationism. I'll call spending $700 billion on the military so that our European allies can fund generous social welfare programs foreign aid.

-Christopher Preble

Posted by Ilya Shapiro

Two weeks ago I provided an update on the state of the lawsuits challenging Obamacare and mentioned that I’d be debating the law’s constitutionality at the University of Washington in Seattle.  This event brought my debate tour full circle, because it was UW Law School two months ago that couldn’t find anyone to speak to the serious constitutional defects in the so-called reform.

My debate, against constitutional law professor Stewart Jay, went very well: It was, I hope, both entertaining and enlightening.  Curiously, Prof. Jay insisted on repeating that my arguments boiled down to policy disagreements and “rhetorical flourishes.”  He also accused me of asking courts to make policy rather than defer to Congress’s constitutional powers.  This was all a bit rich coming from someone whose legal arguments focused on standing and ripeness — important in the cases at hand, but 150 people didn’t turn out to hear about technical doctrines — and whose main presentation centered on the need to reform a broken health care system. 

Indeed, Prof. Jay repeatedly criticized my unwillingness to tackle the issue of “spiraling premiums” — which I eventually addressed, though I had been under the impression that the debate concerned constitutional law, not how to reform the system or why reform is needed.  He also mischaracterized the state lawsuits as focusing on exaggerated claims about the cost of expanding Medicaid.  (When the law isn’t with you, argue the facts and when the facts aren’t with you, argue the law — and if both are against you, I guess just be argumentative… )

But don’t take my word for it, watch the whole thing here.  Many thanks to the UW chapters of Young Americans for Liberty (part of the Students for Liberty network), Young Democrats, College Republicans, and the Federalist Society – as well the law school itself — for organizing and sponsoring the event.

This is great news. The folks at GM are rightfully proud of this accomplishment. From what I've read, it's not just that they got a battery/gas-powered car to work. It's that they built a very good car that also runs on electricity. The drive quality and fit-n-finish appear to be top notch. What makes it different from the all-electric Nissan Leaf is that it does have a gas engine that kicks in after 40 miles of electric-only driving. This means you can use the Volt's battery-only mode for the majority of your in-town commutes to the store/school/work, but not be fearful that your car will die when the battery does. Kudo's to GM!

(Now we just need the government to sell its ownership of the carmaker...grrrr.)

When George W Bush sent the US into Iraq in 2003, he believed he would be replacing Saddam Hussein with a peaceful, pro-American Arab democracy that would naturally look to the Christian west for support. In reality, seven years on, it appears that he has instead created a highly radicalised pro-Iranian sectarian killing field, where most of the Iraqi Christian minority has been forced to flee abroad.

I sound like a broken record, but can you say "MORE unintended consequences?" And this guy has the nerve to go out on a book tour. Decision Points? More like Bad Decision Points.