The Democrats confirm they are not serious about national security

Yesterday the Democrats put forth their new national security strategy. (The 123 page document can be read here in PDF.) The document encompasses five main areas.

* 21st Century Military
* War on Terror
* Homeland Security
* Iraq
* Energy Independence

Not all of it is a complete waste of paper. For instance, in discussing the 21st Century Military, their plan calls for getting our troops the best possible equipment, for securing good pay and benefits for our troops and their families and veterans, and the document discusses the dangers of wearing down almost all of our combat troops in Iraq through multiple rotations. These are all things I agree with to one extent or another, and are perfectly reasonable.

However, large chunks of the document are little more than wishes and slogans on par with what you might find in a high school yearbook. "Loved sitting next to ya in English class! Keep on restoring our leadership in the world!"

For instance, you'll be surprised to know that the "foremost threat to U.S. national security today comes from violent extremists who are willing to use catastrophic terror", and that the Bush Administration has "has failed to grasp the nature of this mounting threat." Hmmm. You may disagree with Bush's foreign policy, but there is absolutely no basis for claiming Bush has failed to recognize the danger posed by militant Islamic terrorists.

Here's one way the Dems would defeat terrorists:

Eliminate Osama Bin Laden, destroy terrorist networks like al Qaeda, finish the job in Afghanistan and end the threat posed by the Taliban.

Get bin Laden? Dang, I wish I'd thought of that one. I would've been a world-wide blog star.

Fine, we all want bin Laden to be filling a pine box somewhere. But how to the Dems propose to get bin Laden? What is the magic answer that Bush has been missing these past five years? They don't say.

Do they want to invade Pakistan? Musharraf is quite opposed to the open presence of US troops in his country. It makes him look weak, and like the puppet of the US, not a pleasing image to the radical elements in his country. So, Dems, perhaps reality is a bit more complicated than just saying we should eliminate bin Laden, bang end of story?

Here's another nice wish:

Double the size of our Special Forces

Terrific. If only we had more of the best of the best. But do the Dems think they can wave a magic wand? Do they have any idea what it takes to create an SF soldier? Are they proposing we relax standards in order to lessen the signicant drop out rate in training? The Dems say nothing about the challenges involved in reaching this goal.

W. Thomas Smith Jr. has a good article talking about just this issue with the Navy SEALs. He writes,

The problem is, transforming a good man into a Navy SEAL is not cheap - about $350,000 a copy - nor is it easy. Sure, there are lots of schoolyard scrappers, gym rats, competitive swimmers, and adrenaline junkies who believe they have what it takes to become SEALs. But few pack the gear to endure-to-completion BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training. Some are injured. Many fail to measure up during various training evolutions. Most simply quit, concluding that the wet, miserably cold life of a frogman is not for them.

None of this, however, changes the U.S. Defense Department's requirement for more special operators, including SEALs.

The Pentagon's just-released Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is calling for a 15-percent increase in the number of U.S. special operations forces to fight terrorism and other unconventional threats worldwide. That's a huge demand for senior SEAL officers and petty officers who know that increasing SEAL numbers means proactive recruiting for fresh "talent" and getting a handle on the staggering 80-percent wash-out (attrition) rate without reducing standards.

Special operations experts contend that to lessen costs and to lower training standards would produce a commando that is not quite a SEAL in the purest sense.

After bashing Bush around for three years over invading Iraq, here's how the Dems would handle things:

Eliminate terrorist breeding grounds by combating the economic, social, and political conditions that allow extremism to thrive

And just how do they propose to combat these conditions? Again, they don't say. Are they going to ask politely, and voila, brutal regimes like that in Iran will just relinquish power and go home? Perhaps Bush has figured out that the most effective way to combat the conditions that allow extremism to thrive is through actual combat? You get in the face of a terrorist and you kick it in. It's about the only thing these murderers really understand.

The document goes on at some length like this, but you get the idea. Jim Geraghty has a series of posts on this at his TKS blog.

My fellow briefer C.S. Scott also has an excellent post on this Democratic strategy at Security Watchtower. He writes,

In the end, "Real Security" isn't much more than a plan to look like Democrats have a plan, which is a better alternative in most people's mind to not having a plan at all. Did you get all that? All plans aside, the inescapable fact remains that much of the Democratic leadership is beholden to a voting constituency that is further left then they are on a host of issues, generally opposes the war in Iraq and favors some form of disengagement, supports smaller military budgets to offset larger social spending, and heavily advocates a U.S. foreign policy operating at the behest of the United Nations.

Publicly, few Congressional Democrats can afford to represent the voice of Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore (there are a few who can) and expect to survive politically. By the same token, they have to walk a political tightrope with their voting constituency and be seen as disapproving and critical of current security and defense policies, without looking weak and what you end up with is a slogan. What "tough and smart" really translates into is a broad appeal that says "we're convicted enough to act on threats if necessary, but we're smart enough not to get involved in wars."

Just to reinforce their lack of seriousness, the Democrats presented their plan with former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark present.

Perhaps no American diplomat has ever looked as weak as Albright did when she went running after Yassir Arafat in Paris in 1997 begging him to return to the "peace talks". (A close second might be Warren Christopher allowing himself to be kept waiting on a Damascus tarmac for hours before getting to meet with Assad. Now, hmm, which President did these two work for again?)

Wesley Clark called the war in Iraq a strategic blunder, and said it isn't connected to the war on terror.

Perhaps these two weren't the best image to present when trying to sound tough on national security.