The Political Notebook 10.10.22
Masters unjustifiably smears the U.S. military, including the top brass. Kelly's inflation comments raise serious questions about his grasp of the issue.
Blake Masters says that American generals are incompetent and none of them have won a war.
Masters claims to be differentiating between the top brass and line soldiers and personnel. But his indictment is an unjustified smear on the entire U.S. military and a serious misreading of recent history.
In the relevant timeframe, there have been three engagements that could fairly be called a war, an all-out military action to achieve an objective: The Gulf War in 1991 to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait; the 2001 war to dislodge the Taliban from power in Afghanistan; and the 2003 war to remove Saddam from power in Iraq.
In all three cases, the military objective was achieved rapidly, at minimal cost and U.S. casualties.
The United States became bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq and failed in rendering either country stable, much less the exemplars of successful democratic governance and market economies that was the initial objective of the Bush II administration. And the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan after a shambolic American exit during the Biden administration.
These failures, however, can’t fairly, or remotely, be blamed on the U.S. military. The decision for the U.S. to attempt nation-building in both countries, rather than turn post-war reconstruction over to the U.N., was a political one, not a military one. The military role in both countries was sharply constrained, more of a police function than a true military campaign. At no point was the U.S. military told to deploy whatever resources were necessary to rid Afghanistan entirely of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, or to defuse sectarian militias in Iraq.
Chances are that such military campaigns would have failed as well. But because of the impossibility of the task, not the incompetence of generals.
In any event, the military won the wars. It was the peace-keeping and nation-building that failed. The military’s involvement in that was secondary and constrained.
I share the new right’s skepticism about foreign engagements. I argued for turning over reconstruction in Afghanistan to the U.N. I opposed the Iraq war entirely.
But Masters is dead wrong about the U.S. military, including the top brass. When the U.S. military has been asked to engage in actual war, it has proved itself to be a highly effective and efficient lethal force.
Meanwhile, Mark Kelly is displaying either ignorance or disingenuousness about inflation.
Kelly has attributed inflation to greed in corporate C-suites. And in his ads, he claims to be fighting inflation through things such as authorizing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs and expanding domestic oil production. He made the same assertions in the recent senatorial debate.
We have broad, economy-wide inflation. That’s not the result of a sudden discovery of pricing power by big cigars in corner offices and a coordinated exercise of it. Nor can it be brought down by attempting to lower prices commodity by commodity.
Our broad, economy-wide inflation is the result of excessive monetary and fiscal stimulus. The only way to bring it down is to unwind the excesses through monetary and fiscal restraint.
I think our inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon. But to the extent excessive fiscal stimulus is a factor, Kelly is complicit. The bloated Covid relief bill he voted for is widely considered to have contributed to inflation spinning out of control. There was also some degree of fiscal stimulus involved in the infrastructure bill and misnamed Inflation Reduction Act Kelly supported. And in the student loan forgiveness initiative he has applauded.
Inflation is a key vulnerability for Democrats this cycle. Politically, it is understandable that Kelly would seek to defuse it.
However, the way he has addressed it raises some serious questions. He either doesn’t understand the causes and cures for inflation, or he is consciously not playing straight with voters.
Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.