Kerry for the Defense

[Freddie Stubbs]

DLC | New Dem Daily | June 8, 2004

Last week, when events in Iraq and the 60th anniversary of D-Day absorbed most of the media attention paid to international affairs, Sen. John Kerry made an important speech about his plans for military modernization. In particular, he embraced three key reforms long advocated by the Progressive Policy Institute: expansion of Special Forces units; greater investment in technology-driven "military transformation"; and a new role for the National Guard as the primary military component in homeland security.

Kerry chose President Harry Truman's hometown of Independence, Missouri, for this speech to emphasize his belief that America's new security challenges require the kind of new thinking Truman insisted on during the transition from World War II to the Cold War. "To contain communism, and build a mighty alliance, Truman had to rebuild our military both to deter conventional aggression and the threat of nuclear weapons..." Kerry said. "He modernized our armed forces by creating the Department of Defense and the Air Force -- the greatest change in our nation's military structure since the beginning of the Republic."

Terrorist groups, said Kerry, "present the national security challenge of our generation," and require major adjustments in our armed forces and defense doctrines. "Despite all its talk of transforming the military, the Bush administration has done far too little to adapt our forces to the new missions they must undertake. We went into Iraq with too few troops to prevent looting and crime, and we failed to secure nearly a million tons of conventional weapons now being used against our troops... These mistakes have complicated our mission: a stable Iraq with a representative government secure in its borders." Meanwhile, said Kerry, the administration remains stubbornly committed to a very different set of defense priorities, such as spending "billions to deploy an unproven missile defense system," reflecting its obsessions with "threats from other states" as opposed to the "perils of the new century."

Kerry repeated his pledge to add 40,000 troops to our active duty forces, in part to end the administration's "back door draft" of extending tours of duty and delaying retirements, particularly for Guard and Reserve units. But since "numbers alone won't win the war in Iraq or the war on terror," Kerry called for a "New Total Force" designed to give the military the capacity to "defeat any enemy, any time, any place."

more: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=252690

[eagler]

1. This could attract some undecideds

nt

[Freddie Stubbs]

2. Which is exactly what the objective is

Those who hate Bush don't need any convincing. Those who love Bush probably can't be swayed. Convincing those in the middle is the only way to win.