Posted on 07/03/2009 9:11:35 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
There is no area in which Republicans have further strayed from our traditions than in foreign affairs.
Generations of conservatives followed the great advice of our Founding Fathers and pursued a restrained foreign policy that rebuffed entangling alliances and advised America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, not to "go abroad looking for dragons to slay."
Sen. Robert Taft, the stalwart of the Old Right, urged America to stay out of NATO. Dwight Eisenhower was elected on a platform promising to get us out of the conflict in Korea. Richard Nixon promised to end the war in Vietnam.
Republicans were highly critical of Bill Clinton for his adventurism in Somalia and Kosovo. As recently as 2000, George W. Bush campaigned on a "humbler" foreign policy and decried nation-building.
But our foreign policy today looks starkly different.
Neoconservatives who have come to power in both the Democratic and Republican parties argue that the U.S. must ether confront every evil in every corner of the globe or risk danger at home. We need to "fight them over there" they say, so we don't have to "fight them over here." This argument presents a false choice. We do not have to pick between interventionism and vulnerability. The complexity of our world is exactly why the lessons of our past should ring true and demand a return to a traditional, pro-American foreign policy: one of nonintervention.
Moving forward, I suggest that we as Americans adhere to these five principles:
1. We do not abdicate American sovereignty to global institutions...
2. We provide a strong national defense, but we do not police the world...
3. We obey the Constitution and follow the rule of law...
4. We do not engage in nation-building...
5. We stay out of the internal affairs of other nations...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
He does make a rather cogent argument for a foreign policy of non-interventionism here.
This always struck me as a bogus argument in the first place. Any politician truly dedicated to ensuring that we don't have to "fight them over here" would demand that we protect our borders. Yet the same people giving us the above line were surprisingly unconcerned that enemies of the US could easily sneak across the border and wreak havoc on our own soil.
True. And Republicans do not need to be confused any more than what they are.
parsy, who notes the way your sentence was worded.
If we actually had intelligent immigration laws that were properly enforced and we actually acted like we have a second amendment, they wouldn’t come over here, because they’d be denied entry or shot if they somehow got in and tried something.
Ron Paul once again demonstrates 18th century logic in the 21st century.
His arguments would be acceptable if there were no such thing as strategic nuclear missiles or bio-weapons.
If a stopped clock is right twice a day, does that mean you should live you life by it?
Of course he does, but as par, the writer arguably fails to recognize that if one wishes to be a super power, a foreign policy of non-intervention is a liberal myth, one mainly reserved for liberalist, internationalist, isolationist, and transnationalist political paradigms.
Sure, and his arguments about government intervention in the financial sector would be acceptable if there were no such things as collateralized debt obligations or credit default swaps.
Oh, and I forgot, the Second Amendment is also a product of "eighteenth century logic."
***If we must fight, we should do so with overwhelming force, win as quickly as possible and promptly withdraw.***
WHAT A KOOK!
I’d probably agree with him if there were no airplanes, ballistic missiles, submarines, ships and satellites.
So that's what Obama's going to use on us? I thought he was just going to destroy us from within with socialism.
Who needs those things to attack or destroy America? We just decided to commit national suicide. The rest of the world just needs to pull up a chair and watch America in her death throes.
And those things can’t be defended against unless we have troops all over the world?
fyi
Yeah, he sure is crazy./s
Good one.
Duck buddy, because here it comes...
We tried fighting them over here, it ended badly on September 11, 2001.
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