And, if we expected that this new administration would find room to reduce our military deployments abroad, that prospect vanished with the Pentagon's admission a few weeks ago that the overall numbers of deployments are actually expected to increase in the near term, not fall, despite anticipated reductions in Iraq.
In his remarks at State, Pres. Obama was undoubtedly reflecting on his mentor, Lincoln, who stated at Edwardsville, Illinois, on September 11, 1858:
"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoast, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not the reliance against the resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle."
"Our reliance is in the love of liberty, which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is the preservation of the spirit, which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere." Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your down doors."
"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage," Lincoln warned, "and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."
It will be helpful if Pres. Obama remembers these sentiments as his plans for diplomacy threaten to become obscured and overshadowed by the predictable alienating consequences behind his expectations that continuing (albeit, tweaking) Bush's militarism will help accomplish those.
1 | 2
