Our nation’s two active wars have received fairly scant attention from this White House, at least as far as high-profile public statements go. The president chose to mention both conflicts in passing last night, but only to serve the political purpose of contextualizing the (supposed) relative affordability of his health care plan.

His citation of the financial cost of an ongoing, multi-front war effort in order to score a rhetorical point in favor of a domestic social program was unseemly. An apolitical friend, who happened to be watching the speech with me, wondered aloud whether there was a “more appropriate example” the president may have chosen to make his point. Obama tossed Iraq and Afghanistan into an overtly partisan paragraph designed to highlight expensive initiatives undertaken by the previous administration:

Add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years – less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration.

By drawing attention to Bush’s war spending and “tax cuts for the rich,” Obama sought to inoculate himself against charges that he’s presiding over an irresponsible explosion of spending and debt. (Where would anyone get that silly idea?) “They did it, too” was the intended takeaway.

Also irksome was the reaction of many Democrats in the chamber who leapt to their feet, delighted, after this line. Several prominent members smiled knowingly, basking in the president’s clever blame-Bush rhetorical maneuver.

They would be well-served to recall that millions of their constituents still believe both wars to be crucially important to the safety of the homeland, and that many elected Democrats agreed…at least when it counted most:

  • A Congressional Joint Resolution expressing ‘Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists’ — passed shortly after 9/11, in advance of the Afghanistan campaign — breezed through both chambers by a combined tally of 518-1.
  • The October 2002 Iraq War authorization resolutions passed by a combined 373-156 margin, including ‘yea’ votes from roughly 40 percent of House Democrats and nearly 60 percent of Senate Democrats.

President Obama appeared to imply that the massive Bush spending items he raised were wasteful, at least in comparison to his vital health care program. (“Hey, if we dropped X amount of money on that stuff, surely we can pony up for the public option!”) The White House may claim he didn’t intend to pass judgment on the war spending in the same way he undeniably did in referencing the 2001 tax cuts. If that’s the case, why link the wars and the tax cuts in a single, partisan paragraph? Perhaps it was just another example of “inartful” phrasing from the administration.

Either way, it was an unfortunate — some might say inappropriate — comparison to draw.