STAR*PAC Hosts Democratic Senate Hopeful Bob Krause

Bob Krause spoke to STAR*PAC members at the Firehouse in Des Moines on Sept. 3. Photo M. Gillespie

Stop The Arms Race Political Action Committee (STAR*PAC) kicked off its series of candidate forums for the 2010 mid-term election with a Sept. 3 presentation at the Firehouse in Des Moines by former Iowa State Democratic Rep. Bob Krause.

“I think the neocon philosophy has been discredited,” said Krause, who plans to challenge Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley next year.

Recommending a speeded-up withdrawal from Iraq, Krause explained that the Bush administration had sought to act as the world’s policeman and to create a worldwide American empire with a military presence across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, including major bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The dreamers that cooked up this scheme, I guess they like glory, but they certainly didn’t think of what it does to the economic environment of the United States when you spend that big chunk of our Gross Domestic Product overseas,” he said.

Krause, who served in the Carter administration as a regional representative for the secretary of transportation and retired as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve in 2001, after 28 years of commissioned service, has authored five books and numerous articles on transportation policy and military transportation, according to information provided on his campaign Web site.

Now chair of the Iowa Democratic Veterans Caucus, Krause cautioned that the withdrawal of troops and equipment from Iraq will take time.

“Logistics are the big one when you talk about getting out of Iraq,” he explained. “Don’t ask me how we did this with only 160,000 to 170,000 troops on the ground, but they’ve got 1.5 million pieces of military equipment over there that have to be moved out of the country. That’s probably the single reason it’ll take at least until 2011 or 2012. We’re estimating, with current logistics in place, it’ll take three to four years to get the stuff out of country.”

Krause called for increasing the domestic production of energy while ending long-term U.S. military commitments in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

“I look back to what life would have been like had not Ronald Reagan completely dismantled all the alternative energy projects back in the 1980s,” Krause said, recalling the Carter administration’s policies on the development of wind, solar and geothermal energy.

“The ideas remain, and they are the base for what we are doing today. The wind power successes we’ve had, the ethanol successes we’ve had, you can point to Jimmy Carter’s energy policies and say, ‘That’s great, and it would have been even greater had we kept those policies in place,’” said Krause.

This reporter questioned Krause about his position on the Bush administration’s increased use of private contractors.

“Historically,” he replied, “the last war that we had even approaching the contractor mix that we have in this war was the Spanish-American war. It turned so rotten, with the same stories of incompetence and corruption, that the Department of War moved away from it.” Krause noted the difficulty of overseeing private contractors in a war environment and the anger aroused by the disparities of compensation between private contractors and military personnel.

“There are huge problems with contracting. I personally feel that it has destroyed a lot of the esprit in the military,” said Krause.

During his presentation at the Firehouse, Krause, who served three years as Iowa state president of the Reserve Officers Association and chaired a state-wide campaign to raise funds for hardship cases among the families of those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, seemed most engaged and passionate when he spoke about veterans.

—Michael Gillespie