[lbo-talk] All hail Clinton's military!

[Seth Kulick]

from the Matthew Miller piece they cite: "The reality is that Bill Clinton's 
defense budgets roughly tracked the blueprint left by then-defense secretary 
Dick Cheney in 1992.  But politics explains why Bill Clinton insisted the 
Pentagon maintain a Cold War budget even without a Cold War, to protect his 
party's right flank.  For the same reason, Al Gore called for bigger 
defense budgets during the 2000 campaign than did  George W. Bush - a 
fact that almost no one recalls..."

----- Forwarded message from New Democrats Online <admin at mail.ndol.org> -----

Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 12:42:41 -0500
From: New Democrats Online <admin at mail.ndol.org>
Subject: NEW DEM DAILY: Victory Is The Work of Many Hands
To: skulick at linc.cis.upenn.edu

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THE NEW DEM DAILY, 10-APR-03
Political commentary & analysis from the DLC
=============================================
[ New Democrats Online: http://www.ndol.org ]

Victory Is The Work of Many Hands

The fall of Baghdad may not mean the end of the war in Iraq, but 
it probably means the end of the second-guessing of U.S. military 
capabilities and war planning heard so often during the last 
three weeks. 

You can hardly blame Vice President Dick Cheney for his derisive 
remarks yesterday about the "retired generals embedded in TV 
studios" who doubted the high-speed, high-tech plan for Operation 
Iraqi Freedom. But while he was at it, Cheney should have 
repudiated his own comments of less than three years ago about 
the weakness of the U.S. armed forces. "There is an enormous 
amount of evidence out there ... in terms of readiness and 
morale, the problems with recruiting, problems with retention, 
that the military is in trouble today," Cheney said on the 2000 
campaign trail.

Well, it's basically that same military that entered Baghdad 
yesterday. As journalist Matt Miller noted, "The remarkable feats 
in Iraq are being performed by Bill Clinton's military.... It's 
true that President Bush has been throwing money at the Pentagon 
since Sept. 11, but defense planners will tell you that none of 
the impressive leaps in our military capability have taken place 
suddenly in the last eighteen months."  

Indeed, back in 2000, even Cheney, reflecting on the First Gulf 
War's dependence on defense planning in the 1980s, said: "A 
commander in chief leads the military built by those who came 
before him."  

In other words, every military victory is the work of many hands. 
And while the Bush Administration, like all Americans, can be 
rightly proud of the performance of the armed forces in Iraq, 
it's not an accomplishment that one Administration, much less one 
political party, can rightly claim as its own.

We congratulate those in both parties who worked for decades to 
build today's military, and those in Congress who voted last 
October to put it to use in a just cause.

Related Material:

"Clinton's Military Triumphs in Iraq!"
By Matthew Miller, Tribune Media Services, April 9, 2003:
<http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?custid=67&catid=1104>

"A Time for Resolve,"
New Dem Daily, October 3, 2002:
<http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=250924&kaid=131&subid=192>