May 3, 2002

The Price of Freedom

By: Matthew W. Fogarty

As presented to Congress in February, President Bush’s $379 billion defense budget constitutes a $48 billion increase over the last fiscal year, the largest such increase since the early 1980s. Curiously, members from the left side of the aisle have been silent about the size of the overall increase, attacking instead the proposed $30 billion budget for the war against terrorism. Led by Sens. Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Democrats argue that this is too much to spend on a military effort that, they say, is unfocused.

At a Feb. 27 Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Mr. Byrd stated that the war budget is an “extraordinary price tag for the initial foray into a war that … has only begun, appears to have no boundaries and has no definable point of victory.” Senate Majority Leader Daschle amplified Mr. Byrd’s comments in a March 14 letter to the Washington Post, in which he claimed that he does not seek to propose limits on the scope and duration of the war. Rather, wrote Mr. Daschle, he and Democrats in Congress merely wish to fulfill their “constitutional obligation to ask where and how” funds for the war on terror will be used.

There is a certain strategy guiding the Democrats’ harlequin effort to reduce debate over the defense budget to a discussion of the war. The Democrats have, for the most part, been careful in their rhetoric to frame their support for the president within the context of the war in Afghanistan, not the larger war on terror. This gives the party an exit strategy if and when the current military effort expands beyond Afghanistan. It also provides political cover for an ulterior motivation: the longer the delay in approving the defense budget, the greater the likelihood of extracting concessions from the White House on domestic spending issues.

Even if Mr. Byrd’s concern were genuine, however, it would be no less misguided. Sufficiently funding the war on terrorism will ensure a swift (or swifter) conclusion to it. In the Vietnam war, for example, bureaucratic indecision and political gamesmanship proved anathema to a strident military endeavor. Today, only Congress stands between the defense budget and a significant military victory in Afghanistan and the broader war on terrorism.

Increases in military spending are necessary in times of war, and ample funding must be made available to fight the present war — in Afghanistan and beyond. Speaking to a cheering audience in Cumberland County, North Carolina, the president stated the issue with clarity: “The price for freedom is high, but it’s never too high.” Indeed, the proposed increase in the military budget is modest when compared with wartime budgets. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz noted to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee, the budget increase is large by any standard other than that of wartime spending. Including the increase, the budget is less than 3.5 percent of GDP. And the $30 billion budget for the war on terrorism is small considering the extent of the U.S. military commitment to
defeating terrorism. While Mr. Byrd may fret over the cost of the war, he cannot contest the justness of the cause.

The war on terrorism is necessary, and not just as a means of exacting revenge for the attacks of September 11. As the attacks made plain, the transnational terrorist threat presents a clear and present danger to American citizens at home and abroad, to American strategic interests, and to global political and economic stability. Certainly, the terrorist threat following September 11 is no greater than the threat before September 11, but that only illustrates the extent to which Washington underestimated that threat prior to the attacks. Stemming the activities of terrorists and state sponsors is central to American national security.

For Democrats like Sens. Byrd and Daschle, defining the war on terrorism as a war against Afghanistan or against Osama bin Laden is politically expedient, and it makes them appear as if they are taking the pacifist high ground in an effort that may expand to include military commitments in Georgia, the Phillipines, and, soon, Iraq. But such rhetoric is also dangerous. The war effort may, as charged, lack a definable point of victory, but the aim is clear and the enemy is scared. Starving that effort only weakens our armed forces and the perception that Washington is committed to vital U.S. foreign policy objectives.

As Robert Kagan notes in the Washington Post op-ed to which Mr. Daschle responded, there is dissent among Democrats in Congress as to the necessary
size and allocation of the proposed defense budget. Indeed, Mr. Kagan notes that Sen. Joseph Lieberman disagrees with Democrats who challenge a budget increase and complain about what they view as expanding war goals. And Mr. Lieberman has an ally in Sen. Joseph Biden, who has publicly stated his desire to topple the regime in Baghdad. Neither Mr. Lieberman nor Mr. Biden believes that a war on terrorism that includes Iraq is unfocused or unworthy of funding.

But support of the President and American troops in battle is quickly fading from the Democrats’ political favor, especially as November approaches. In that respect, the objections raised by the two Senators are more like girders in a political potemkin village than the pillars of constitutional concern that Mr. Daschle claims. Should their criticism become the Democrats’ justification to vote against the president’s defense budget — or, even worse, a plank in the Democrats’ November 2002 platform —
the result will surely be the languishing military effort that Mr. Byrd so rightly fears.