Posted on 02/26/2010 8:25:33 AM PST by rabscuttle385
When Ann Coulter praised Ron Paul at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., the right-wing author and provocateur said she supports everything the congressman stands for except foreign policy. This wasn’t the first time Coulter made this point.
Said Coulter at CPAC in 2008, “I must say I love Ron Paul on everything but Iraq.” Comparing Paul’s foreign policy stance to that of the congressman’s fellow non-interventionist Pat Buchanan, Coulter added “Whenever I listen to Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan I always think ‘I can’t listen too long or they might convince me.”
Coulter is essentially saying that when it comes to foreign policy-ignorance is bliss. Quite literally, conservatives can no longer afford this willful ignorance.
Being pro-war is to the mainstream Right what global warming is to the Left-an unassailable dogma that is integral to their respective political identities. Like global warming, believing in the righteousness and necessity of the “war on terror” is an act of political faith, and any heretic who holds challenging views is not to be tolerated-hence conservatives like Coulter, refusing to even listen.
And yet questioning government, especially on something as important and expensive as foreign policy, is unquestionably a conservative exercise. Much like conservatives have done when considering national healthcare, cap-and-trade and federal stimulus, is it “liberal” simply to consider a cost/benefit analysis of America’s recent foreign adventurism? Speaking at CPAC this year, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski noted: “The phrase ‘war on terror’ has been used to justify trillions of dollars in spending, hundreds of thousands of new government positions, and thousands of new government contracts. At the same time, the ‘war on terror’ has produced very little in terms of new technology or enhanced security, has vastly increased the degree of national centralization, and has created many new permanent trees and branches in the gnarled world of federal and state institutions.”
Mainstream conservative’s usual retort to those who question US foreign policy is that national security is a top priority, for which any cost is justified. This is true. But is it possible that our government is as reckless with foreign policy as it is in every other sphere? During his speech at this year’s CPAC, Ron Paul made this distinction: “There’s nothing wrong with being a conservative, and come up with a conservative belief in foreign policy where we have a strong national defense and we don’t go to war so carelessly.”
Trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives later, too many right-wingers will still not consider-much less admit-that we went to war with Iraq carelessly. What did Iraq have to do with 9/11 or Al-Qaeda? Did Saddam Hussein really threaten the US? These questions are never asked, and are even considered treasonous by many conservatives. Allegedly to reduce the terrorist threat, we are now escalating our war in Afghanistan, bombing Pakistan, eyeballing Yemen and placing sanctions on Iran. How do any of these military actions abroad stop future “shoe bombers” or “underwear bombers” from striking at home? What does any of this have to do with America’s national interest and how does it make us safer? Few conservatives are connecting these dots or asking the obvious questions. On this subject, blindness to government incompetence and recklessness is now considered conservative.
Despite what his critics portray, Paul’s approach to Islamic terrorism is not to ignore it, but to examine motive and develop a sound strategy by pinpointing our defense. Just one month after 9/11, Paul introduced the “Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001,” legislation that would have allowed Congress and the President to specifically target Bin Laden and his associates by placing a bounty on Al-Qaeda leaders. Paul said the Act “allows Congress to narrowly target terrorist enemies, lessening the likelihood of a full-scale war with any Middle Eastern nations. The Act also threatens terrorist cells worldwide by making it more difficult for our enemies to simply slip back into civilian populations or hide in remote locations… Once letters of marque and reprisal are issued, every terrorist is essentially a marked man.”
In hindsight, what would have been the more conservative, productive approach after 9/11–spending three trillion dollars in Iraq or placing a $1billion bounty on Bin Laden and every other Al-Qaeda member’s head? Noted Kwiatkowski at CPAC “that is really what the war on terror has been–a reaction, not a strategy. This reaction, like most poorly thought-out reactions, has been anything but conservative.”
What right-wingers continue to mistake for a “strong national defense” is better described as a “wrong national offense,” and it takes little investigation to determine that what conservatives call “national security,” are just lazy assumptions about a foreign policy that has been of little benefit to the nation and has ultimately made us less secure. Unlike Dick Cheney and most of the speakers at this year’s CPAC, only Ron Paul offered a sound, conservative foreign policy based on an understanding of history, the limits of war, the limits of government, economic limits, human nature and how nation-states can effectively and realistically deal with terrorist individuals and cells.
Concerning Iraq, Ann Coulter said in 2008 “Whenever I listen to Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan I always think ‘I can’t listen too long or they might convince me.’” During the Bush years, Coulter was right to cover her ears, as the truth can be pretty convincing and telling it might have seriously limited her FOX News appearances, talk radio guest spots and book career. But Bush is gone, Obama is now Bush, and Ron Paul is still the only national leader offering any sane, foreign policy solutions. It’s time for conservatives to start listening.
Read Ron Paul’s foreign policy opinion, and then make your case against it. I can’t.
Excerpts:
“It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” – George Washington
Thomas Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.” Washington similarly urged that we must, “Act for ourselves and not for others,” by forming an “American character wholly free of foreign attachments.”
I’ve really missed listening to the Southern Avenger since 96 Wave got taken off the air in Charleston, SC. He was pretty much almost always spot on with everything he said.
...Some of the numbers behind what has happened should appall every true conservative. The United States now spends nearly one trillion dollars every year on the military, homeland security, and intelligence. Much of the money is borrowed from China. If one assumes that there are something like 5,000 active terrorists in the world, and there are likely less than that, it works out to something like $200 million per terrorist per year every year. Fear of terrorism drives growth in government and has led to involvement in multiple little wars and some bigger ones as well as subsequent exercises in nation building, all of which have been unconstitutional, and none of which have turned out well....
Sorry but your “1 Trillion” dollar figure is an out of context factoid. It includes all the various pork barrel projects tacked onto Defense Appropriations because that is the easiest way for Leftist congress critters to hid their spending and get unpopular pork projects passed.
Here are the budget facts in context
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/.
Dr Paul's claims he would favor “going back to a traditional isolationist US Foreign policy”. It demonstrates Dr Paul is completely ignorant of even the most basic grasp of US History. It is Dr Paul's simple minded inability to deal in facts instead of pat political dogmas, that renders him an fringe irrelevance on the modern US political scene.
Paul likes to claim the “foundering fathers were isolationists”.
No they were not.
The founders fought an Undeclared Naval war on Revolutionary France and launched putative expeditions against the Barbary Pirates. They engaged with Napoleon to buy Louisiana and drove the Spanish out of most of Florida. They fought another war with the Brits from 1812-1815 that had NOTHING to do with “national defense”
During the supposed “Isolationist” era between WW1 and 2 the US military waged any number of punitive wars in Central American, and Caribbean nations. The US also maintained a strong military presences in the Philippines and China.
Defending the National Interests of the USA has never involved doing nothing beyond cowering in bunkers on American borders as Dr Paul would have his worshipers believe.
We were also founded as an empire. We had subject peoples, the native neolithic peoples.
Who said anything about being isolationist.
You use quotes very freely. Do you have a link to back up those quotes, or are you just making them up as you go?
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