There’s a lot to be grumpy about in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. The latest Pentagon mega-package would add fuel to the artificial intelligence arms race, seemingly without ever asking tough questions about whether extensive AI use by the military is a good idea. It would toughen sanctions against companies involved in building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in Europe, a jab at Russia but also at our ostensible ally Germany. Donald Trump is annoyed because it doesn’t repeal Section 230 protections for tech companies. I’m annoyed because it’s a $741 billion Publishers Clearing House giant check to the military-industrial complex at a time of unprecedented federal debt.

And everyone of good sense ought to be annoyed that Congress is exploiting the bill to try to keep the troops in Afghanistan forever. From The Hill:

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would block funding to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan until the Pentagon, State Department and director of national intelligence assess how a drawdown would affect threats to the United States, among other criteria.

The assessment would be required before troops can drop below the number there when the bill becomes law and again before troops can drop below 2,000.

The “assessment” is clearly a delaying tactic, an attempt to stall the troop pullout until Trump is gone and a more circumspect President Biden is in the Oval Office. The clucking about “threats” is meant to highlight the obvious: nothing the United States does can guarantee that the Taliban won’t commit abuses once our armed forces are gone. How can they when the Taliban has continued to commit abuses even with a substantial American presence on their doorstep? The NDAA thus turns the futility of our war in Afghanistan into an excuse to prolong it forever—which, of course, is precisely what hawks intend.

Naturally Senator Rand Paul is not pleased. Yesterday he announced he was blocking the NDAA over the “assessment” language, before taking to the Senate floor to torch the neocons for hypocrisy:

Cue Liz Cheney with a deeply substantive and thoughtful response:

.@RandPaul is currently holding up passage of the #NDAA, blaming America, and delaying hazardous duty pay to hundreds of thousands of our service members and their families. Inexcusable.

Rand and I do have one thing in common, though. We’re both 5’2” tall. https://t.co/l0XebRLW3Q

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) December 10, 2020

It is true that height is one thing Paul and Cheney have in common. Here’s something they don’t have in common: Rand Paul’s father is Ron Paul, while Liz Cheney’s father has the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands, having orchestrated the biggest foreign policy catastrophe in at least 50 years, destabilized the Middle East, and spawned a new generation of terrorists, while implementing a torture regime and stamping his boots all over the Constitution. But let’s not get bogged down in the narcissism of small differences. Liz Cheney is gravely concerned about the Taliban—and can you blame her? America has had a mere 19 years to assess the threat they pose.

Except the NDAA doesn’t just try to block Trump’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. It requires a similar “assessment” of Trump’s ongoing pullout of troops from Germany, not a known Taliban stronghold. This is because Paul is exactly right: the common denominator isn’t national security or the unitary executive. It’s an across-the-board effort to keep America militarily overextended, regardless of an individual theater’s mission, duration, cost, or efficacy. Remember, a good number of the troops coming out of Germany aren’t even homeward bound; they’re headed to Poland, even closer to the Russian bear than they were before. But no matter. To the hawks, even a lateral move is enough to draw down the ghosts of 1938.

Trump has threatened to veto the NDAA over his Section 230 concerns, though the House of Representatives mustered up enough votes to override him. Now it looks like the Senate will too. It’s a trend that doesn’t get acknowledged often enough: congressional Republicans only ever stand up to the president when he tries to do something reasonable on foreign policy. Hence Mitch McConnell condemning Trump over his Syria withdrawal; hence the indefinite stalling of Will Ruger’s nomination; hence this. And with a Biden foreign policy unlikely to satisfy much of anyone, this Paul-Cheney spat seems a sign of things to come.