Sherry Chandler

Money doesn’t talk, it swears…

On this anniversary eve of our invasion of Iraq, Kevin Drum draws together two articles that indicate how the current administration is militarizing our “War on Terror” (the very terminology makes me shudder).

First is a report by Josh Meyer in the LATimes indicating just how much our military effort overshadows our diplomacy:

The overall cost of the U.S. war on terrorism has ballooned to at least $502 billion since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with the administration now requesting that Congress fund another $93 billion this year for the Pentagon’s counter-terrorism programs alone, and $142 billion for 2008.

Conditions are much different at the State Department, which is charged with coordinating the U.S. government’s international role in the war on terrorism. Its task includes overseeing aid to foreign governments and making sure the overall campaign balances military power, diplomacy, economic development, law enforcement and intelligence gathering.

The State Department requested $157.5 million for its major counter-terrorism programs this year but received $20 million less than that from Congress.

Why? Well because, apparently, the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist:

The U.S. approach to counter-terrorism is that “enemies simply need to be killed or imprisoned so that global terrorism or the Iraqi insurgency will end,” Bruce Hoffman, a senior fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy, told a House Armed Services subcommittee last month.

Throwing everybody in jail worked so well in the War on Drugs. (Yuck! Another horrible term.)

Second is an item from William Arkin at the Washington Post that points out just how many civilians in our counterterrorism and intelligence systems are being replaced by military men:

[General Dell] Dailey at the State Department, Admiral Mike McConnell as the Director for National Intelligence, General Michael Hayden in charge of the CIA, General James R. Clapper Jr. as Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Lt. Gen. William J. (Jerry) Boykin as Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Michael Ennis as Deputy Director for Human Intelligence at the CIA: All of these men have replaced civilians or sit is normally civilian billets.

Are there no civilians in America who are capable or competent enough to fill these critical political appointments to oversee our military and intelligence establishment? Are there no professional policy specialists, no academics, no consultants, no ambassadors? When it comes to Gen. Dailey’s assignment, are there no civilian Foreign Service officers who can represent our oldest department in the execution of American foreign policy?

So — Bush may say he’s seeking diplomatic solutions — when did we ever believe that? — but as Kevin says:

…money talks, and judging by the money it spends the Bush administration … is all military all the time. It’s the fastest way imaginable to lose the war on terror and mortgage our country’s future to the Bank of China at the same time. Quite a legacy, no?

Related posts:

“Money Doesn’t Talk, It Swears…”

Guns and money

An Armed Diplomacy?

FISA revisited

Fighting them there so we can fight them here

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