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August 31, 2000 MEMORANDUM
TO: OPINION
LEADERS FROM:
WILLIAM KRISTOL SUBJECT:
Defense Nonsense. The Clinton-Gore
Administration deepened and extended the post-Cold War defense cuts begun
by the Bush Administration; Clinton and Gore argued that the Bush-Quayle
reductions were not deep enough, and acted accordingly. In particular,
Clinton and Gore: • Doubled the
size of the cuts in defense spending, ignoring their own pledges from
the 1992 campaign, thus causing defense budgets to fall to their lowest
level as a measure of GDP since before World War II; • Reduced the
active-duty armed forces by an additional 200,000 personnel beyond the
Bush "Base Force" plan; • Permitted unit
combat readiness rates to fall significantly across all services; • Extended the
defense "procurement holiday," failing until this year to meet
the minimum weapons spending levels recommended by the Joint Chiefs of
Staff (and then this year only by ignoring inflation and by accounting
legerdemain). Indeed, the Clinton-Gore
Administration has repeatedly complained about the Republican Congress
adding "money the Pentagon does not need" to the defense budget.
Clinton’s promise of Pentagon budget increases in the “outyears,”
Gore's deathbed conversion to the cause of defense preparedness and Gore’s
own plan for increased defense spending are all a tacit admission of the
deleterious effects of the Clinton years. A yawning gap now
exists between America's responsibility to lead the world and its declining
ability to project global military power. There are deficiencies in the
arguments George Bush and Dick Cheney have made with respect to foreign
and defense policy. But this claim by Al Gore is Clintonian in its disregard
for the truth.
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