Why "Libertarian" Rand Paul Wants the Government to Have More Tomahawk Missiles

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http://www.alternet.org/why-libertarian-rand-paul-wants-government-have-more-tomahawk-missiles



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Wait, isn’t Paul supposed to be the libertarian anti-interventionist Republican? The only one who is actually serious about cutting the size of the government, including the bloated military budget? He is, yes, but that doesn’t make him some hippie.

Nobody wants to cut spending, including Pentagon waste and abuse, more than me. I agree with former Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen who has said that the greatest threat to our national security is the national debt.

But I don’t want to cut weapons that have been integral to maintaining a strong military.

We should retain our strength and strategic advantages while looking for ways to reform the Pentagon and cut waste.

Here we see Paul trying to thread the needle by adopting a form of the “Obama wants us to be weak” argument that is compatible with his oft-stated belief that defense spending can be (and should be) deeply cut without harming our national defense. That position, along with his general dove-ishness, is what makes him a unique figure among modern Republicans, who have long been hypocrites on the subject of government spending. But that position is also what may make Paul open to attacks for being weak on national defense in a Republican presidential primary contest. So here is his bumper sticker solution: Cut “waste,” not missiles.

Paul then links to Sen. Tom Coburn’s exhaustive study of what Sen. Tom Coburn believes the Pentagon should not be spending money on. It’s an interesting document, and worth reading. Coburn is one of the few Washington Republicans who is quite sincere in his (completely wrong-headed) belief that the national debt is a severe problem that must be dealt with by any means necessary, including the gutting of popular programs and agencies. Coburn’s report finds that a lot of Pentagon research grants fund scientific studies that are only tangentially related to “defense.” DARPA spends a (poorly overseen) fortune on pie-in-the-sky sci-fi research. The Pentagon is funding a few very expensive elementary schools on American soil for reasons dating back to the era of legal segregation. It operates a massive chain of domestic grocery stores and commissaries as a legacy of a program that perhaps made more sense in the 19th century.