Plan? Right-size? Here's the reality four years after I asked that question: Absolutely no candidate, including the most progressive one, is talking about cutting or in any way seriously curtailing the U.S. military.
Not surprisingly, in response to the ongoing question of the year, "So how will you pay for that?" (in other words, any project being discussed from massive border security and mass deportations to free public college tuition), no candidate has said: "Let's spend less than 54% of our discretionary budget on defense."
Call me sentimental, but as I wrote in 2012, I'd still like to know from the candidates, "What will you do to right-size the military and downsize its global mission? Secondly, did this country's founders really intend for the president to have unchecked personal war-making powers?"
Such questions would at least provide a little comic relief, as all the candidates except Bernie Sanders lock horns to see who will be the one to increase the defense budget the most.
Since no one outside our borders buys American exceptionalism anymore, what's next? What is America's point these days?
In 2012, I laid out the reality of twenty-first-century America this way: "We keep the old myth alive that America is a special, good place, the most 'exceptional' of places in fact, but in our foreign policy we're more like some mean old man, reduced to feeling good about himself by yelling at the kids to get off the lawn (or simply taking potshots at them). Now, who we are and what we are abroad seems so much grimmer... America the Exceptional, has, it seems, run its course. Saber rattling... feels angry, unproductive, and without any doubt unbelievably expensive."
Yet in 2016 most of the candidates are still barking about America the Exceptional despite another four years of rust on the chrome. Donald Trump may be the exceptional exception in that he appears to think America's exceptional greatness is still to come, though quite soon under his guidance.
The question for the candidates in 2012 was and in 2016 remains "Who exactly are we in the world and who do you want us to be? Are you ready to promote a policy of fighting to be planetary top dog -- and we all know where that leads -- or can we find a place in the global community? Without resorting to the usual 'shining city on a hill' metaphors, can you tell us your vision for America in the world?"
The answer is a resounding no.
See You Again in 2020
The candidates have made it clear that the struggle against terror is a forever war, the U.S. military can never be big enough, bombing and missiling the Greater Middle East is now the American Way of Life, and the Constitution is indeed a pain and should get the hell out of the way.
Above all, no politician dares or cares to tell us anything but what they think we want to hear: America is exceptional, military power can solve problems, the U.S. military isn't big enough, and it is necessary to give up our freedoms to protect our freedoms. Are we, in the perhaps slightly exaggerated words of one foreign commentator, now just a "nation of idiots, incapable of doing anything except conducting military operations against primitive countries"?
Bookmark this page. I'll be back before the 2020 elections to see how we're doing.
Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. A TomDispatch regular, he writes about current events at We Meant Well. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. His next work will be a novel, Hooper's War.
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Copyright 2016 Peter Van Buren
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