Election Reflections

I voted yesterday, for a lot of winners. Not all of them, but such is life. I was proud to be part of the process. As I mentioned to the Punk Rock Hockey Mom yesterday, I inadvertently wore one of my black hoodies into the polling place (what can I say, it has a lot of pockets?), thus cementing my identity as a purely partisan Democrat. Too bad I pulled an epic fail on voting a straight ticket. Silly moderate independent.

Both speeches last night were magnificent, Obama’s clearly more historic, not for the weight of the words, but just that he was saying them. I think McCain was extremely statesmanlike in his speech and, perversely, it gave me hope that if he had been elected, he would have been able to overcome the base pandering and negativity that characterized his campaign (especially post-convention) and been a good leader. We’ll never know, but I’m okay with that, too.

I’m extremely sad to see a lot fearmongering and Chicken Little attitudes among the conservative blogs I read. I remember having to reassure liberal friends (and family) that a second Bush term was not going to lead to a neocon theocracy and invasion of Iran (and we can argue all day about how much Democratic control of Congress actually served to quash that), and I’m happy to have been right about that. I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s gone the other way, but I think Obama has proved one thing: hope works much better than fear and despair.

I’m tired of fear and despair. They’re not constructive. They’re not going to get us anywhere. They’re not going to inspire us to do anything but hide in the closet and just hope the bad man goes away. Barack Obama did not win this election because he made us fear the Republicans more than the Republicans made us fear him; he won because he offered hope, and he relentlessly pushed that message, nearly to the exclusion of all others. Kerry failed in 2004 because he tried to fight fear with fear, and it was useless.

The Republican campaign, towards the end, focused far more on why one shouldn’t vote for Obama than anything else. It was all that I saw on conservative blogs, and in the McCain ads (such that I saw here in abandoned and conceded Michigan). And it did not work. It cannot work. Fear does not inspire, fear does not create change, it merely provokes reaction. So cut it out.

I’ve got more thoughts, but I’ll probably make other posts.

Crossposted with klech.net

Election Reflections: War & the Military

One thing that I’m seeing a lot of fear of is that Obama is going to Clinton-ize the military.

First let me say that I think Clinton gets a bad rap for being in a place historically where a draw-down of US forces was necessary and inevitable. The Cold War, for all intents and purposes, was over, and without a major war to train for, a lot of Big War units and materiel would have essentially been going to waste. I think he may have gone too far with the draw-downs–in 2000 when I joined my first unit, a deploy-to-fight reserve rifle company, I was issued a lot of Vietnam-era gear, which was just ridiculous. It was peacetime, but only just barely, as the Balkans showed.

Second let me point out that there are quiet a few things that Obama is not going to be able to do with a snap of the fingers, the first being that he will not be able to pull out of Iraq January 21, even if he wants to. However, he (and, should McCain have won, he too) will not be able to ignore a basic reality of Iraqi politics that they are demanding a timetable. I’m proudly on record in support of seeing the mission through. I think it’s absolutely necessary. But the mission looks more and more like completion is at hand. That’s a notable achievement. And that means it’s time to let that achievement stand on its own.

I’ve also been long on record of saying that there’s a tipping point, where our presence does more harm than good. I think we’re at that point. When I was standing in a tower on the edge of a hated monolith to Saddam-era atrocities (and our own edifice of idiocy), armed to the teeth and shouting at kids to just leave the goddamn unexploded ordnance alone, I had the unique moment of clarity when I saw the scene from the opposite perspective. And I knew, as much as me and my fellow Marines and soldiers and sailors and airmen just wanted to help, no amount of good feelings would change the fact that we were a foreign soldiery standing on their soil. At the time, there was very little security infrastructure in the country, and I knew we had to be there lest the place descend into chaos and balkanization, but I also knew that we could not stay any longer than it took to help establish their own security infrastructure.

They’re there. It’s time to move on. Cautiously, to be sure, but it’s time.

Which brings us to the post-Iraq military. Yes, Afghanistan needs more troops. And we could double or treble the number of boots on the ground, and still maintain a much more relaxed op-tempo than we currently strain under, once combat forces start to come home from Iraq. Much less use of the Guard and Reserve, much longer stays at home for soldiers and Marines, much less need for sailors to be driving trucks and so on.

Supporting the military has taken on a different tone and, mostly because they could, Democrats have taken up a mantle of supporting the troops in the field with the right gear and training and logistical support. I don’t think Obama is going to reverse that. There are already expansions of our combat forces underway (with a whole new regiment of Marines being stood up over the past couple of years). In the past, to be cynical, supporting the military has largely meant for Republicans supporting the military-industrial complex: Big War systems with big price tags and (again, being cynical) big kick-backs for supporters in Congress. They’re not as necessary any more. They are necessary on some level, and we should maintain the capacity to kick it up to a Big War footing quickly if we need to… but we showed quite ably that we could go from nothing to one of the biggest militaries ever fielded in a few years back in WWII.

But more crucial is getting the right gear for the people on the ground, and having enough people on the ground to do the job. Public and political sentiment has swung far more in that direction, away from porkish Big War systems, and I don’t think Obama is going to reverse that. It seems to be well-recognized that the US military needs to be able to fight a protracted low-level conflict and that the capacity only just barely exists right now. He’s not going to return the military to the glory days of the “arms-spend them into the ground” 1980s, but neither was McCain. Nobody is going to, absent a large and scary Cold War-esque foe.

And really, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say no one wants that. Except maybe Lockheed-Martin. And General Dynamics. And a few crazies better left unappeased.

Crossposted with klech.net