Playing Politics with the “Troops”

James Carafano / September 16, 2010

The White House has discovered a new tactic for pushing legislation that most Americans don’t want through Congress: implying the legislation in question is either all for the troops or could hurt the troops if not passed.

Wrapping the crassest political messaging in the flag is the lowest of low-ball politics. Pretending to honor the service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform with congressional actions that have nothing to do with “providing for the common defense” is even worse.

Perhaps the most egregious example of playing politics with national security was the Administration’s position that the Senate has to rush through ratification of the New START nuclear agreement with Russia or the troops would suffer. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller recently said, “We also must bear in mind that we have soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan and still working in Iraq… I think that our military leadership would prefer to be concentrating on what’s needed for our soldiers in Afghanistan than having to, through worst-case planning, pour resources into the nuclear forces.” (more…)