Today in Retro Far-Right Alarmism: "Unilateral Disarmament!"
Posted by David Shorr
If FP wonks of a certain age ever worried about losing their bearings here in a 21st Century election year, today brings the comfort of an all-too-familiar right wing shriek. Over on the Weekly Standard blog, Mark Davis today dusted off the old "unilateral disarmament" chestnut, in response to the Obama Administration's new defense strategy.
I should immediately acknowledge that the strategy indeed includes cuts in the nuclear arsenal that will be undertaken on the US' own initiative. So the reductions that have been indicated are, strictly speaking, unilateral. What's most notable about Davis' post, however, is the way he extrapolates far beyond what DoD is planning. Perhaps Davis knows that the scale of the envisioned cuts are not, in themselves, all that shocking -- given that they'll leave us with lots of nuclear weapons.
But even as closely as I follow the rants of our ultra-conservative colleagues, the following passage struck me as a new low in willful mischaracterization:
A larger issue: President Obama, in articulating a cherished goal of abolishing nuclear weapons, seems to conceive this goal of a nuclear free world, which many experts believed was at best the work of decades, as something that could be close to finalized in his second term. How is that going to work when most nuclear powers explicitly reject our zero vision?
I almost feel a perverse awe for the audacity here. (Takes deep breath.) The president thinks he can reach zero nuclear weapons within five years?!? (Oh, hell with it.) I cannot imagine where Davis got this idea except by pulling it out of his -- well, you know. Indeed, when the president talks about this very issue of a timeframe, he says it may well take longer than his own lifetime. Or, to coin a phrase, "the work of decades." Why will it take so long? Probably because of the complex challenges of drawing down all of the world's nuclear powers.
So with apologies to Pete Nicely (aka @LOLGOP), let me conclude by saying that if you have to invent an imaginary President Obama to run against, your ideas suck.
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