Obama as Jimmy Carter

Writing in National Review, Peter Hegseth makes a pretty stunning assertion:

The American military, according to Obama particularly, is severely limited in its capacity, and therefore should be reduced in size and mission scope. Rather than grow the military to meet global needs, Obama-Biden will likely do the opposite — a dangerous approach in (what Joe Biden, at least, recognizes to be) a dangerous world. And a lesson not lost on America’s enemies.

I say this is stunning because anyone who's been paying even a modicum of attention to the campaign knows this is utter nonsense.

Just unpack it. First, it's not simply Obama asserting that the U.S. is overstretched. Here's Army Chief of Staff George Casey telling Congress the same thing last year. According to the AP, the Joint Chiefs have issued a similar warning directly to President Bush, albeit quietly.

Second, Obama has pledged, repeatedly, to expand the size of American military. Who knows, maybe he's lying. But Hegseth doesn't actually present any evidence for his claim that Obama "will likely" pare back the U.S. military.

In fact, in two debates (here and here), it was John McCain who suggested he would comb through the Pentagon's budget for cuts.

Stepping back, what I find fascinating about most of the conservative commentary on Obama's prospective foreign policy is that it is framed almost entirely as if the last eight years haven't happened. No conservatives are arguing that Obama is going to undermine all the good work that the Bush Administration has done on Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, Africa, Syria, Arab/Israeli peace, etc. All we get is some talk about the surge - which is a round-about way of saying that the Bush administration incompetently waged the Iraq war for years before course-correcting. What an endorsement!

Conservatives and those sympathetic to the views Hegseth expresses in his article have more or less steered the ship of state for eight years. Anyone is entitled to believe that Obama will do incalculably more damage to American foreign policy than President Bush, but it's telling that those who are so quick to dump on Obama rest the entirety of their case on painting him as Jimmy Carter redux while studiously ignoring the record of the last eight years.