Posted on 12/25/2005 5:20:25 AM PST by rdb3
America Needs a New Foreign Policy
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted Dec 25, 2005
How long ago was it that you last heard some pundit blather on about America being "the greatest empire since Rome"?
Quite a while, I imagine. For if the Iraqi insurgency has done nothing else, it has induced a sense of humility, and of the limits of American power.
Surely, all Americans hope the Iraqi elections will usher in a coalition that will let us depart. But it is time we stood back and took a hard look at what this war tells us, not only about our ability, but about the wisdom of trying to remake the world in our own image.
Is this generation of Americans really up to the task? Is it really willing to pay indefinitely in blood and treasure to realize the ambitious agenda George W. Bush has set out? Consider:
Though our 2,150 war dead are not 4 percent of the men we lost in Vietnam, our home front has buckled. Half the nation wants out. Is this how a mighty empire reacts to a little adversity?
Today, we field armed forces one-tenth the size of U.S. forces in 1945, and not half as large as the forces commanded by Ike and JFK. Yet, the very suggestion of a return to the draft, which we all readily accepted in the 1950s, causes a firestorm of indignation and protest.
Apparently, few of our future leaders wish to risk their lives in the "global democratic revolution."
Nor have the rest of us been called on to sacrifice. Today, we spend 4 percent of our GDP on the military. In Ike's day, it was 9 percent; in Reagan's, 6 percent. But any proposal to raise taxes to expand U.S. armed forces to enforce the Bush Doctrine against Iran or North Korea would have Republican supply-siders digging the cobblestones out of the streets of Georgetown.
When it comes to empire, we are -- in a phrase Bush used to hear often growing up in West Texas -- "all hat and no cattle."
And whether we invaded to liberate Iraq from a brutal tyrant, or to strip a dangerous regime of WMD, or to establish democracy, does the world appreciate it? Does the world really want America to democratize mankind?
A new Zogby poll of 3,900 people in six once-friendly Arab nations finds that, when asked to name the leader they detest most, 45 percent named Ariel Sharon, but Bush has moved into second at 30 percent. Tony Blair was a distant third at 3 percent. No one else was close.
Only 6 percent agreed with al-Qaida's goal of a caliphate ruling the Islamic world, and only 7 percent approved of its terrorism -- but fully 36 percent admired how al-Qaida "confronts the U.S."
How admired is President Bush? When he urged the Iranians to go to the polls and repudiate the mullahs, they responded by choosing as president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who makes Hashemi Rafsanjani look like Ramsey Clark. When Condi Rice stiffed the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood on a visit to Cairo, the Brotherhood soared in Egyptian eyes and swept to victory in 60 percent of the parliamentary races it contested.
Everywhere today, nationalists burnish their credentials by dissing us. In Canada, Prime Minister Paul Martin seeks to save a scandal-ridden regime by pandering to Canadians' dislike of the United States. Hugo Chavez made himself the toast of South America by flipping off Bush at the Argentine summit. Evo Morales just swept to victory in Bolivia by promising to defy the Americans.
When Bush went to Seoul, he was informed that South Korea is pulling out of Iraq. The U.S. ambassador, who denounced the North as a criminal regime, was told to shut up. East Asia just held its first summit -- to which the United States was not invited. The Uzbeks have just told us: Close your airbase, and get out.
Because of charges that we used secret prisons in Europe to interrogate jihadists and EU airports to transfer them there, the United States has never been less admired in NATO Europe, nor its president more despised.
Is it not thus apparent the world does not really want an American empire, or American hegemony, or Bush's "democratic revolution"? Is it not equally apparent that we Americans, unwilling to conscript our young or further tax ourselves, cannot sustain a global policy that commits us to defending nations all over this world, most of which do not even like us?
However Iraq ends, the era that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall has reached its close. That place in the sun the Greatest Generation won for us, and the Cold War generation kept for us, the baby boomer generation appears to have lost. And perhaps forever.
America needs a new vision. America needs a new foreign policy.
For if the Iraqi insurgency has done nothing else, it has induced a sense of humility, and of the limits of American power.
Humility? If I didn't know any better, he sounds like he's happy that we were apparently "humbled." We're not.
Is this generation of Americans really up to the task? Is it really willing to pay indefinitely in blood and treasure to realize the ambitious agenda George W. Bush has set out?
There's that shopworn, hackneyed, boilerplate again, actively sewing the seeds of doubt. Has it ever occurred to Pat that if we would have taken care of business during the Persian Gulf war (the one where he stood against), we would not be in Iraq today? He has thousands of questions, yet he can never ask that one.
Half the nation wants out. Is this how a mighty empire reacts to a little adversity?
Your question begs another one: Who is this half?
So on and so forth. This one is easily vanquished point by point.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Merry Christmas, rdb3.
However Iraq ends, the era that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall has reached its close.
That he would even write such a thing should be an embarassment in the extreme. The "era that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall" ended on 9/11/2001. Any conception of modern foreign policy that does not flow from this understanding is fatally flawed.
Pat has offically become a defeatist DUmmie.
Why is PJB ever posted here sans barf alert?
It's striking how many people seem to regard 9/11 as if it were a natural disaster.
And Hurricane Katrina as if it were man-made.
Is this how a mighty empire reacts to a little adversity?
A LITTLE ADVERSITY???? Tell that to the families of the 3000 folks who died on 9/11 butt wipe.
A) Treat our allies wonderfully.
B) Treat our declared enemies like crap.
More bile from Buchanan. He sounds more like an anti-American liberal than a "true" conservative.
Me thinks Pat had too much egg-nogg.
Buchanan's brain must not be getting enough oxygen.
He claims that the Iraqi invasion proves the limits of American power and influence.
WRONG!
To me, and I'm sure millions of Americans, Arabs, and others ..... it proves the POWER of America and of American ideals that a Muslim country has even gotten THIS far in becoming a republic democracy.
Actually, being as this is Pat Buchanan's writing, we can pretty much dismiss him out of hand. Your point about the US not being an empire is one I will agree with vehemently, however.
PJB is obssessed with something that doesn't even exist. I can almost see "WMD", "Halliburton", and all the bizarre liberal conspiracy catchwords in tiny letters in Pat's wrtings. He really needs to go on medication or something.
That's right ... It's called colonization.
Merry Christmas Christians!
Along with Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, Barbara Walters and other big mouths who cling to the drapes forever, he's one of life's obnoxious people I wish would JUST GO AWAY!
Leni
Pat has been an obvious anti-American ever since he accepted a job from Ted Turner as a performing monkey on CNN. He is a willing tool of the hate-America crowd from any persuasion.
I've always been quick to judge how A) honest or B) smart someone was by whether or not they labeled or accepted the labeling of this clown as a "conservative." Sometimes I've been wrong and the people were simply ignorant, which always amazed me. All you have to do is read what he writes or listen to what he says, not what some so called pundit says about him.
This piece is consistent with almost everything I've ever seen or heard from him. Even when he praises a conservative it's usually done in a fashion that slimes that person by association.
Don't be so fast to dismiss Pat. You cannot ignore the arguments he lays out in the piece. But I have a one word answer to the question raised above:
YET!
The world has not really confronted the truly horrible consequences of the red/islamo-fascist alliance. Once these madmen achieve some success the world will come crying for our help. Let's hope we will be up to the challenge. Otherwise it will be a 1000 years of darkness... Merry Christmas.
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