Dumbest statement of the day

Today’s award for idiotic chutzpah goes to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for complaining that Secretary of State-to be John Kerry and SecDef nominee Chuck Hagel are "less-than-ardent fans of the U.S. military." I kid you not.

The first and most obvious problem with Cruz’s remark is that he directed it at two decorated war veterans. Like other GOP chicken hawks, Cruz never served in the military. Apparently his own "ardent" admiration for our armed services wasn’t enough to lead him to enlist.

But the second and more important point is that being an "ardent fan" of the military isn’t a good position for any public servant. Don’t get me wrong: I respect my friends in the armed services and I’m grateful for their service. And I certainly don’t think political leaders or pundits should be reflexively hostile to the military either.

But as the Founding Fathers realized from the start, a large, permanent military is at best a necessary evil. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to spend any money at all defending ourselves, and the only reason we do is because the world in which we live is far from perfect. But there’s nothing inherently wonderful about spending hundreds of billions each year on military forces, even if the weaponry they possess is dazzling and the skill of our troops is impressive. In other words, the fact that we have a large and powerful military isn’t something to celebrate; it’s just one of those unfortunate necessities in the dog-eat-dog world of international politics. A big military establishment also turns out to be pretty hard to control, and as Dwight Eisenhower famously warned, the "military-industrial complex" inevitably wields a lot of political power and not always in a good way

For this reason, public servants shouldn’t be "ardent fans" of the military (or any other big public program). Instead, they should be intelligent skeptics: aware that such programs are needed but constantly holding them to account and looking for ways to make them more effective. Which is why Americans ought to be glad President Obama nominated Messrs. Kerry and Hagel, and why Senator Cruz’s constituents ought to be more than a little embarrassed.