Most of the commentators expressing outraged reaction to my post, “Where’s the Line?” argue along the lines of “Obama is so endangering our national security, so what’s your problem, bub?” As I tried to make clear, the point of my post wasn’t to defend the Obama national security policy–although I think on the whole it’s been pretty centrist and sensible.
Much of the change from the Bush administrative has been rhetorical not substantive. For instance, Obama has made a big deal out of banning “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding but they had already been discarded by the Bush administration in its second term. Much of what the commentators object to (and that I object to also) are a continuation of President Bush’s weak policies toward North Korea and Iran. In some areas Obama is actually being more hawkish by authorizing more Predator strikes in Pakistan and by increasing our troop numbers in Afghanistan well beyond the levels previously authorized by Bush. He has also backed off his campaign rhetoric by delaying our withdrawal from Iraq.
As for the defense budget, I have previously expressed some qualms about the Obama/Gates defense budget, but it hardly cuts defense; rather it increases defense spending but by less than I and some others think is appropriate. That’s an issue on which reasonable people can disagree, as they can over whether the F-22 and Future Combat System are worth funding. (Personally I think Gates is right to cancel them.) It’s hardly grounds for claiming that Obama doesn’t believe in a “strong national defense,” especially when he is enhancing spending in other areas such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
Ask yourself this: If Obama doesn’t believe in a strong national defense, what does he believe in? Making America weaker? Helping our enemies? I know Liz Cheney didn’t say anything remotely like that, but that’s the logical next step if we take seriously her claim that Obama doesn’t “believe in … a strong national defense.”
Likewise, when so many liberals claimed that “Bush lied” to get us into the war in Iraq, this raised an obvious question: Why did he “lie”? If he didn’t think that invading Iraq was in our national interest, why did he do it? That kind of thinking led to wacky conspiracy theories about neocons and Halliburton.
To avoid those dangers, we should stick to criticizing a president’s actions, not his motives. Simply because a lot of liberal criticism of President Bush was over the top doesn’t mean that conservatives are now justified in making hyperbolic accusations against President Obama.
