In Crisis, Clinton Hides Behind Pentagon

by David Corn

Now, who have been Clinton's most ardent defenders? Liberal Democrats, most notably Rep. Barney Frank, Jesse Jackson and his flock, the Congressional Black Caucus. What is a consistent cry of this band? That military spending is too high, and that various social programs deserve more support. In fact, the Congressional Black Caucus used to regularly produce an alternative butter- over- guns budget that slashed arms spending to free up federal bucks for more pressing domestic needs, such as housing, Head Start, health care, job training, and education.

For all their Clinton rah-rahing, these progressives have gotten little from the President. Instead, he's doing what he has done so often: kicked his friends on the left in the teeth and bowed to the right. It's amazing that his conservative antagonists despise him so thoroughly. Must be pander-envy.

To his supposed allies, Clinton has displayed little reciprocal loyalty on the policy issue most on the minds of progressive advocates these days: Social Security. You'd think that in return for their crucial support Clinton might yield on his desire to privatize a slice of Social Security. But there's no sign he is ready to relent and say no to Wall Street.

Last month, my Nation colleague Eric Alterman argued that if progressives boasted a stronger political organization they could have rushed to assist Clinton at the start of the scandal and then, as tit-for-tat, squeezed some good out of that no-good political whore. (Alterman noted, not incorrectly, that most pols will prostitute themselves for campaign bucks or other support.)

The past few months have tested that premise. No one has embraced Clinton more than the CBC. Jackson led an anti-impeachment rally with the faithful waving posters proclaiming, "We Are For Clinton." Frank, a steady critic of military spending, has donated his piercing wit -- a valuable commodity -- to the protect-Clinton cause. And the butt they all are trying to save belongs to a fellow who shows no gratitude.

It's a familiar page from Clinton's tattered playbook: Dis your supporters in order to neutralize your enemies. For more than a year, conservatives have been repeating a mantra: Clinton is hollowing out the military. It's a phrase that must have tested well in some focus group, for Republicans in Congress, GOP presidential wannabes and various conservative figures have been promoting this spin ad nauseam. You even run across it in the recent direct-mail appeal for Commentary, which griped that "Nobody in Washington cares that American defenses are more vulnerable than ever."

Since the conventional view is that the economy is humming along just fine -- if you don't mind the bulging trade deficit, the recent rise in layoffs, the decline in job security and an historic level of income inequality -- the policy wonks of the right have been searching for anti-Clinton ammunition that does not involve sex. Increasingly, they have portrayed him as a dire threat to the military. Clearly Clinton, the draft-dodger who attempted and failed to de-hetero-ize the armed services, has been a bit touchy in this theater. So rather than take the flak, he has dumped money on the Defense Dept. The military has been his security blanket. When he's in a jam, he deploys it or funds it.

What about the claims that the military has a readiness problem? It is amusing that when it comes to, say, education, Republicans argue that we cannot throw money at that problem, as though paying teachers more and spending more on school construction would somehow hurt the kids.

But when the Pentagon is the issue, the tune changes. If congressional Republicans and their conservative allies are so concerned about readiness, then perhaps they ought to declare war on Pentagon pork and press for those funds to be diverted to this problem. About $5 billion of the current $271 billion budget was reserved for such fat. Newt Gingrich won funding for cargo planes made near his district that the military did not request. Trent Lott obtained $1.5 billion for a helicopter carrier manufactured in his state that was not on the Pentagon's wish list. And the Pentagon continues to insist it must be funded at a level that would permit it to battle two wars simultaneously without the help of allies. As the National Defense Panel politely put it in 1997, the two-war scenario "may have become a force protection mechanism -- a means of justifying the current force structure."

Let's introduce a little perspective. Look at our potential military foes: Iraq spends less than $2 billion a year on its army; North Korea, about $5 billion (which is countered by South Korea's $15 billion military). The United States military outspends Russia's four to one. If you add up the military budgets of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan and Cuba, it amounts to about five percent of the Pentagon's tab.

If readiness is in decline and needed weapons are aging, the Pentagon can find money to fix that problem if it chucks its two-war theory; or deep-sixes its plans for new attack submarines that have no subs to chase; or reduces its nuclear arsenal to START III levels; or quickens the closing of unnecessary bases (even if members of Congress howl); or rejects a new line of advanced tactical aircraft, since no hostile country can produce weapons that rival existing F-15s, F-16s and F-18s. Clinton's decision to hand the military another $110 billion -- when it is consuming money at 82 percent of its Cold War level -- is a poke in the snout of his progressive defenders and a move designed mainly for the protection of a single American: Bill Clinton.