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 ...
Is Rove running for office?
These undeclared wars have led to crazy ROE’s.
Japan was hardly a “modern civilized” nation in 1941. They had been modern for all of 40 years; still had feudal agriculture, autocratic government heavily controlled by the Army and Navy, and worshipped a man as a god. No, I don’t see a great deal of difference between Japan and, say, Iran.
Japan did have an “established” culture (so does most of the Middle East, just not one you like), but that culture was hardly the liberal western culture people think of when they discuss even Nazi Germany. Japan was a quasi-theocracy, part-autocracy governed by the military through proxies; it had a feudal agricultural system; the emperor was believed to be a god and people could not even look him in they eye; and their “modern” industry was completely socialized. There was not a great deal of difference between Japan and Iran, except Iran doesn’t have any one person who can dictate to it in terms of religion the way Hirohito did.
“Japan did have an “established” culture (so does most of the Middle East, just not one you like)”
It’s not a matter of like or dislike. Japan had an established culture and one that fostered a very productive and educated population. They made complex things like aircraft carriers, aircraft, and had an advanced technological base, even before world war II. No American could like pre-war Japanese brutality and atrocities.
Unfortunately in the Mid-East there are no analogous cultural elements that result in a productive class, like in Germany and Japan. Iran is the closest to that, that’s why they are the ones building nukes - nobody else in the region could manage it on their own, and even Iran needed North Korea to help build their nukes.
A productive dominant culture is entirely absent in Afghanistan, and it is mostly absent in Iraq. There is no way democracy could succeed there, because the productive class was not large enough to ensure wide-spread prosperity.
If you can’t tell the difference between Japan/Germany and Iran, that is definitely a problem for you.
Nothing wrong at all with changing your mind. Anyone who never has is either really smart or really stupid.
But Newtie changes his opinions like most people change underwear.
Anyone who thinks he should have run for President last year is nuts, anyone who thinks he should run again after that abortion of a campaign he ran, is hopeless.
“Anyone who thinks he should have run for President last year is nuts, anyone who thinks he should run again after that abortion of a campaign he ran, is hopeless.”
On that we agree. His constant womanizing is what got me. A moral deficiency. Along with other problems. Was never for him when he ran.
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