Posted on 08/05/2013 3:32:51 AM PDT by TexGrill
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says he's reconsidering his neoconservative views regarding the benefits gained from U.S. military interventions as a way to promote democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Gingrich believes the methods he has long been a supporter of have backfired and require re-evaluation, the Washington Times reports.
“I am a neoconservative,” Gingrich told the Times. “But at some point, even if you are a neoconservative, you need to take a deep breath to ask if our strategies in the Middle East have succeeded.”
Gingrich, who backed the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, said he has become increasingly skeptical about the strategy of attempting to export democracy by force to countries where religion and culture clash with Western values.
“It may be that our capacity to export democracy is a lot more limited than we thought,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich said that while he has expressed his doubts concerning the ability of the U.S. for nation building before, he has only recently reached conclusions about their failures in light of the experiences of the past decade.
“My worry about all this is not new,” Gingrich said.
“But my willingness to reach a conclusion is new.”
Gingrich recommended Republicans put more weight on the anti-interventionist ideas offered by the libertarian-minded Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a tea party favorite and foreign policy skeptic.
“I think it would be healthy to go back and war-game what alternative strategies would have been better, and I like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul because they are talking about this,” Gingrich said.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Oh crud...
Someone who is always rethinking their views is not ready for a WH run ... that is my opinion
When you fight a war you destroy the enemy and his property until he no longer can fight.
You do not go into his country and try to convince him that your political ideas for his country are right.
“Someone who is always rethinking their views is not ready for a WH run ... that is my opinion”
Someone who never rethinks their views is a Luddite. Judge each situation individually as it arises, is my opinion. Sometimes we should intervene, sometimes we shouldn’t. The Arab Spring has been a disaster.
Its a start but mideast policy is far from the only neocon failures. Global warming and immigration are two big ones.
Would you elect someone who changes their opinions every few months?
Sounds like you’re saying Karl Rove is right and Newt Gingrich is wrong on the grounds that Rove doesn’t change his mind about scheming to sabotage the GOP.
did Newt ever release his co-authored Global Warming book?
I always thought there was something a bit simplistic about the neo-con interventionist schtick and remember being somewhat perplexed and irritated by the glib assurances and confidence of its supporters.
I also admit to being uneasy and unsure about the interventions in both Afghanistan and Iraq, thinking that we were biting off way more than we could chew and not seeing any way we could “win” in the long term because those places are simply not manageable in the sense that Western nations are.
I kept quiet (for the most part) because I told myself that the President and his advisors had access to far more information than I did, and if they felt these were necessary steps, I should settle down and let them get on with the job.
Now, with the clarity that hindsight brings, I think I was pretty much spot on, that my doubts about the Neocon platform have pretty much proven true, and that an isolationist, or at least minimal interventionist foreign policy would have served our interests much better.
Cold comfort now, but better late then never, I guess.
True, but Japan and Germany show that after you defeat an enemy, if you make a serious effort to introduce new structures, they can take hold. The key is serious, and you cannot permit Islamofascism in any form any more than you could permit bush idioms or nazism.
....and give your enemy free stuff.
Translated, this means amnesty won’t be a reality soon enough for him to ride the Hispanic wave he’s been plotting and scheming to conquer. Callista and he would look so good in the White House. /s
If you do the job right there aren’t enough Islamofascists left to cause you worry for a thousand years.
You will have to explain that one to me a lot better, I don’t get your point.
This is a man who is always trying to gage the direction of the parade and then acts like he organized it.
I say stop sending $$$ to all Islamic countries, withdraw from Afghanistan and let all those bastards remain in medieval times and keep fighting amongst themselves......
Let me guess....
might as well have been written by AL Gore?
“I can respect an arrogant politician who occassionally admits he’s wrong....”
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I agree and I’ve rethought my views regarding intervention in the Muslim countries. Let them settle their own disagreements. If Shia wants to murder Sunni and Sunni wants to murder Shia, so be it. The US should not be sending its youth and treasure to stand between the sides or to even pick sides.
If they want to create a hell-on-earth in which THEY can live, let THEM have at it. Let’s not support or oppose such idiocy. Let’s not accept the resultant waves of “political” refugees as immigrants—any of them who are dissatisfied can struggle to reform or change their country/society from within THEIR own countries.
If their lives become hellish enough, who knows, they might actually move toward modernizing their thinking.
My issue with neocons would be that they have a simplistic view of foreign policy. Bow down to democracy and human rights or we will destroy you. They don’t even realize that some countries would prefer a non-Democratic government to rule over them. Not only that, neo-cons complain if a country freely elects a government that opposes democracy and human rights. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
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