Posted on 03/09/2016 6:53:26 AM PST by Kaslin
Last week, 117 "members of the Republican national security community" signed an open letter condemning Donald Trump. It made me think the bellicose billionaire, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is not quite as bad as I thought.
"His vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle," the letter complains. "He swings from isolationism to military adventurism within the space of one sentence."
Although there is some truth to that critique, an inconsistent skepticism of foreign intervention is better than none at all. That is why I have trouble agreeing with Eliot Cohen, the neoconservative foreign policy expert who organized the letter, when he says "Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin."
It is not surprising that Cohen, who always seems to be agitating for another war in the Middle East, would strongly prefer Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Her signature achievement as secretary of state was a disastrous intervention in Libya that, like the U.S. invasion of Iraq, empowered terrorists by replacing a nasty dictatorship with chaos.
In 2014, Clinton finally conceded that she made a mistake by supporting the Iraq war, which killed as many as 189,000 people and may ultimately cost as much as $6 trillion. That long-delayed admission suggests Clinton might see the light about Libya sometime around 2022, by which point she could be halfway through her second term as president -- plenty of time for new mistakes, starting with Syria.
Trump, by contrast, was an early opponent of the Iraq war, although not quite as early as he sometimes claims. "In 2003, 2004, I was totally against going into Iraq," he said during the Republican presidential debate on December 15. "I called it very strongly."
The truth is that Trump expressed tentative support for the Iraq war six months before the invasion and did not publicly change his mind until four months afterward. Still, he beat Clinton by a decade, and it seems significant that he condemns the war as often and as strongly as he does.
"George Bush made a mistake," Trump said during the February 13 GOP debate. "We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East ... They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none."
Trump applies a similar critique to the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi (which he also initially supported) and the proposed toppling of Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. "Assad is a bad guy, but we have no idea who the so-called rebels [are]," he said during the November 10 GOP debate. "They may be far worse than Assad. Look at Libya. Look at Iraq."
The beginning of wisdom in foreign policy is learning from mistakes, something that Clinton, who is supposedly much more sophisticated about such matters than Trump, has proven constitutionally incapable of doing. Unlike Clinton, Trump intermittently seems to recognize the limits of American power and the impossibility of doing just one thing in a world full of complexity and unintended consequences.
But only intermittently. The same candidate who cautions against getting involved in civil wars thousands of miles away, who says "we can't continue to be the policeman of the world," and who rightly wonders why the U.S. continues to defend wealthy European and Asian countries that are perfectly capable of defending themselves also talks about the supposed need to make the military "bigger, better, stronger than ever before."
I'm not sure what Trump wants to do with this bigger, better, and stronger military, although it may have something to do with his promise to "get rid of ISIS," a campaign he says will include waterboarding and torture methods "a hell of a lot worse" as well as the murder of terrorists' families. Also troubling: Trump's tendency to view trade as warfare and immigration as an invasion.
It really says something that Clinton has shown herself to be a worse warmonger than this guy.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
"provide for the common defense", as in spend the money necessary for a strong defense.
"promote the general Welfare", as in, to encourage concern for all citizens, not pay illegals and able-bodied citizens to goof off.
Absolutely wrong.
Here is what actually happens in DC for 3 decades.
Republican Slash the Domestic budget pump up Military spending
Democrats. Slash the Military budget pump up Domestic Spending
DC’s “Solution”: OK we will compromise we will spend more on everything.
Unless you are willing to impose across the board cuts, you are not going to get any cuts.
Here is what actually happens in DC for 3 decades.
Republican Slash the Domestic budget pump up Military spending
Democrats. Slash the Military budget pump up Domestic Spending
DC’s “Solution”: OK we will compromise we will spend more on everything.
Unless you are willing to impose across the board cuts, you are not going to get any cuts.
Neo-conservtism:
relating to or denoting a return to a modified form of a traditional viewpoint, in particular a political ideology characterized by an emphasis on free-market capitalism and an interventionist foreign policy.
Wrong on all counts. Your assumption that “only we” can provide the troops demonstrates a fundamental ignorant of the sizes of the Muslim state military in the Gulf States and Egypt.
BWAhahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!
The "domestic budget" never gets slashed.
Unless you are willing to impose across the board cuts, you are not going to get any cuts.
Horsecrap. Remember "sequestration"? That meant "slash the military and reduce the rate of growth of socialism".
You're absolutely wrong.
“Neocon” is often a code word for “Jew” ...
Really very simple.
When every GOP candidate, and the DC Defense lobby “Caucus for perceptual war” were busy pushing for an armed confrontation with Russia over Syria last fall, Trump was the only one who said “Fighting Russia over Syria on behalf of ISIS is nuts, we would be stupid to do that”.
Just showed you were you are utterly and complete ignorant and wrong. Like most people losing you want to scream “racist” at the oppostion rather then think.
You just showed yourself to be completely and utterly ignorant and wrong, and arrogantly presumed to lecture me with your ignorance.
You can cling to your emotion base ignorance or you can learn some unconformable facts that challenge your opinions.
So far you seem to favor clinging to the ignorance. That is just sad.
I think you mean ignorance. And at least I'm not ignorant enough to believe that Trump could manage to make his fantasy safe zone happen without a substantial U.S. troop commitment. Even Trump himself said he'd get the Gulf States to pay for it. He didn't say he'd get them to provide troops.
How exactly does supporting the overthrow of secular dictators and replacing them with "democracies" that elect Islamists protect America from Islamo terrorist attacks or defend our freedom from Communists?
The foreign policy agenda of Linda Graham and the neoconservatives is basically on the same page as Hillary Clinton's. The only difference is that Graham tries to sell it as "fighting terrorism" while Hillary tries to make it sound humanitarian.
Thank you.
Quote:
“Defending our freedom from Communists?”
“Our” freedom? More like THEIR “freedom” you mean.
Since 1945 well over 100,000 combat deaths, millions of injured and/or disabled veterans and trillions in taxpayer dollars down the drain - and not a single shooting war won(we defeated Soviet Russia by outspending them - a victory that could be described as Pyrrhic).
Our country’s towns and cities are dying and we STILL have troops stationed all over the world defending people who hate us.
We are fools. Stupid, impoverished fools.
Uh-huh. And how would he get Iran and Russia to agree to chopping off part of Syria, in order to create this new Saudi-Qatari dominated state?
Say someone like Chris Christie who was openly willing to start WW3 over Syria. I'd call that a "warmonger."
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