Even before the Congress formally declared George W. Bush the winner of last November's presidential election, reports began circulating that he would propose a defense budget for next year that one might have expected instead from the loser, Senator John Kerry.That's not the most tightly written of passages incidentally. To boil it down, Gaffney would have expected Senator Kerry, who promised two new divisions in the Army, and increases in the funding of Special Forces, to gut the military. He expected President Bush, who made no such promise, to strengthen the military. Turns out he was wrong.
Actually, a President-elect Kerry probably would not have dared to suggest the far-reaching cuts Mr. Bush plans to make. In any event, he surely would have had a hard time getting them enacted, given pervasive concerns about his judgment on national security matters.
Yet, here we have the spectacle of $55 billion in far-reaching defense reductions being made by the man who beat Sen. Kerry - largely on the basis of precisely those concerns. It is no exaggeration to say that Mr. Bush will be sworn in again on January 20th because he was widely perceived to be a more credible and robust leader than his challenger when it came to protecting this country.
What he doesn't go into is why President Bush is doing this. Surely he would like to build the Army, but unfortunately for us all, he just doesn't have the money. The pressure on the budget exerted by his short-sighted tax cuts makes further military spending difficult. Mr. Gaffney hints at this in the final lines of his essay. "The public understands the need for, and is prepared to make, sacrifices in time of war. President Bush must ask them to do so - and avoid unduly increasing those already being asked of the U.S. military."
He's not wrong.
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