Posted on 01/05/2009 9:27:52 AM PST by rabscuttle385
Last week I discussed our worsening economic situation and the fact that there are very few options for the new administration to improve things in the long run. The same is not true on the foreign policy front. Our interventionist foreign policy stands ready to be put on a new course with the new administration. Unfortunately, it seems the new administration is likely to continue the mistakes of the past. I've often discussed interventionist foreign policy and the resulting blowback. The current administration's foreign policy, I'm afraid, has created a huge impetus for blowback against the United States. However, I truly believe much of the world stands ready to look beyond our nation's recent blunders if the new administration proves to be heading in a more reasonable direction.
Other nations around the world find our interference in their affairs condescending, and it is very dangerous for us. We may think we have much to gain by inserting ourselves in these complex situations, but on the contrary we suffer from many consequences. Other countries have their problems, to be sure. But how would we feel if China or Russia came to our soil and tried to depose our problematic leaders or correct our policies for us? Our problems are ours to solve, and we need to give other countries that respect as well. Instead, we have been turning alleged, phantom threats into real, actual threats.
We should follow the foreign policy advice of the Founders – friendship and commerce with all nations. One positive step would be to end our destructive embargo of Cuba, which deprives our farmers of a market just 90 miles from US shores while strengthening the Communist regime. We've seen 50 years of statist restrictions not accomplish anything. A change is needed. Other countries should decide how to govern themselves. Even if we don't necessarily approve, it's none of our business. If other people foolishly choose to live under statist experimental regimes, they need to fail in their own right, and not have us as a scapegoat. We need to focus on our own affairs.
However, the pressures exerted on our leadership from the military industrial complex and big business is not in favor of peace or freedom, or especially nonintervention. Intervention is big business. Defense contracts topped $300 billion last year, and total spending on war and our overseas empire is up to $1 trillion per year. That represents a lot of people earning a living off of war and conquest. But rather than adding to our economy, all of this money is taken from the economy in order to wage war and destruction. Imagine if those resources were put to creative, productive use here at home!
We need to rein in our overseas empire, as quickly as possible. We need to bring our troops home, and get our economy back into the business of production, not destruction. The smartest thing we could do is admit we don't know all the answers to all the world's problems. If the new administration can take a closer look at real free trade and no entangling alliances, we would be much better off for it. Economically – we could save hundreds of billions of dollars each year! The new leadership has the opportunity and the political capital to do this. But unfortunately, it is not likely to happen.
He does make a good point here.
*dons flame-retardant suit*
.
He does make a good point here. *dons flame-retardant suit*
Ron Paul could double his popularity by giving up on this isolationism bit.
Isolationism has been dead since the 1930s, or even earlier. There are far too many nutcases and fanatics in the world for them to ever leave us alone again.
This leaves three alternatives: move the USA to another planet; kill everyone else on this planet; or put up walls around the US and kill everybody who approaches them, and wait for the inevitable day when they figure out a way to get weapons over that wall we can’t stop.
There isn't an enterprise that conservatives have confidence in the government's ability to run, except our interventionist management of foreign governments. Neo-cons are the cancer eating the Republican party.
It becomes our business the moment these regimes threaten us, our allies and our vital interests.
An Ayatollah sending around terrorists and a Saddam annexing oil-rich neighbours ARE our business.
You must have a perverted definition of isolationism.
Very right, but beside moral issues, the more compelling are the actual threat these terrorist regime pose(d) to US. Two taken down... something Bush can brag about (even though he has little else to be proud of).
Congo and Zimbabwe next. Jump on the bandwagon while you can.
Indeed, they are. And the truth is this: the true neo-conservatives are really nothing more or less than people who USED to be liberal Democrats but who left the Democrat fold when McGovern started taking the DNC in an isolationist direction.
On domestic policy, the neo-con movement is socially liberal.
So you get what we have today: a GOP that is infested with RINO’s.
War isn’t expensive, by comparison to what we’ve done after wars. We could kill nutcases and lunatics on the cheap. It is all this “enforced peace” that costs money.
Consider the amount of money we spent crushing the Nazis vs. the amount of money we’ve spent on maintaining a force structure in Germany since 1948.
We should withdraw our troops from Europe post-haste. We’ve been doing nothing more or less than subsidizing Europe. They’ve had the luxury of spending their tax monies on all sorts of social welfare, because they have not had to pay for their own defense. If we withdraw and pull that money back home, the EU won’t be quite so high-handed with us - because they’ll have to make some hard choices.
The Europeans don’t like us. So let’s leave. The South Koreans don’t like us. So let’s leave.
We should give all of these sad-sack whiners about US ‘hegemony’ what they want: an isolationist US. And when they get stepped on, our response should be “Golly. That looks like it hurt. Put some ice on it.”
But then again, Ron Paul is just "an isolationist kook" who doesn't understand national defense, right?... sigh...
“We should withdraw our troops from Europe post-haste. We’ve been doing nothing more or less than subsidizing Europe. They’ve had the luxury of spending their tax monies on all sorts of social welfare, because they have not had to pay for their own defense. If we withdraw and pull that money back home, the EU won’t be quite so high-handed with us - because they’ll have to make some hard choices.”
Excellent point, and one I’ve pointed out to my Dutch brother-in-law for some time. It’s easy to condemn others for military action when you haven’t a clue about defense.
The only thing that would concern me is the possibility of war breaking out eventually....perhaps the formation of the EU would prevent this....or would the centralized government actually make things worse if they were left to their own defense? IDK....
“A policy of non-participation in international economic and political relations.”
It used to be that a couple of oceans and the Monroe Doctrine would keep them from our shores. But they couldn’t, they can’t, and they won’t leave us alone. Even President Grant had to act to keep the French out of Mexico and off our border.
Right now, China is building a deep water port in the Caribbean, it controls both sides of the Panama Canal, and is wheeling and dealing with every tin horn South American El Supremo they can.
They figure that by attacking and destroying Bremerton and San Diego, by some means, they will have neutralized the US Pacific fleet. And they are very clear about having to “distract” America with a disaster to do so as well. They want the Pacific to be their ocean, not ours.
Yeah, go hide somewhere and ignore the world, full, as it is, of murderous scoundrels, pirates, dictators, conquerors, fanatics and criminals. But don’t expect them to do the same. Ever.
War is going to break out in Europe soon, and it will be a war of Islam vs. the socialist twinks running the place. Unless we want to be in the middle of that, we ought leave.
Either the Europeans will decide that they prefer life to their high-sounding ideals, or they’ll be killed en masse. If we try to stop the Muslims from taking over, we’ll be stabbed in the back by the Europeans. If we allow the Muslims to take over and kill the Europeans, then we’ll have a clear field of fire where we can kill them without recrimination from socialist twinks and academic pecksniffs.
We could solve the Chinese problem very simply, without firing a shot.
Quit sending them money.
Trouble is, the people in DC have gotten us into a position where the “free trade uber alles” rules the day - even to our demise.
Want to take on China and kill the minimum number of people? Then go to DC/NYC and kill some economists - especially the ones that infect the GOP’s foreign policy thinking with the idea that free trade will make dictatorial countries into western democracies. A loonier idea I’ve not yet encountered.
We could kill no more than about 100 people here in the US and then re-establish some common sense in our trade policies that would de-fang China without needing to get into a military engagement. We already are seeing just how sensitive the Chinese economy is to a decline in US consumer spending. Now extrapolate that to a situation where China has no market in the US for all their crap - and they go back to the 1970’s in foreign influence.
Sadly, we’re now addicted to their purchase of our debt.
It’s going to be a long road out of this quagmire.
Ron Paul's electoral appeal seems confined to isolationists, neo Nazi's and 9-11 truthers.
You won’t get any flames from me.
As far as China goes, H.W. Bush was regarded as a preeminent world expert on China, and pulled some amazing victories against them, which will likely never be mentioned as such, as it would diminish the victory.
H.W. Bush was also gifted as a strategist, conceiving a concept called “linkages”, which added a third dimension to international strategy. W. Bush, for his part, has likely developed this Bush family capability into the realm of computing. Even before he had entered his first presidential race, W. Bush had locked up the Republican contributors, and begun construction of his Crawford, TX White House, which was finished shortly before he entered office.
In other words, while everybody else is limited to playing checkers, the Bush family are mastering chess. Taking into account thousands of variables, they may have achieved a “no loss” scenario on which to base their decisions.
Planning ahead by at least six months, for decades in the future, makes it very problematic to take on the Bush family, who will likely run circles around you without you even knowing it.
As far as the US and China are concerned, both sides have been deeply engaged in force modernization, anticipating a war between us, since the early 1980s.
But if Ron Paul's assessment of Reagan's administration is “a failure” it says much more about Ron Paul than about Ronald Reagan.
At least put it in context. Ronald Reagan promised to reduce the size of government and then changed that to reducing the growth of government" I was around during Reagan and voted for him, and I was disappointed in him on that issue, too.
Ronald Reagan was a great president, but he wasn't "a god" or "a holy picture". RR was also a politician, who also occasionally said one thing to get elected, and then did another -- just like every other politician alive. It's one thing to love and respect RR's memory, it's another to deify RR as though he was some perfect politician and perfect human being who was too good to be criticized about anything. To those who lived through the Reagan years, and especially those who knew RR personally like Ron Paul did, RR's percieved failures are fair game.
MR. RUSSERT: You're running as a Republican. In your--on your Web site, in your brochures, you make this claim: "Principled Leadership. Ron was also one of only four Republican Congressmen to endorse Ronald Reagan for president against Gerald Ford in" '76. There's a photograph of you, Ronald Reagan on the right, heralding your support of Ronald Reagan. And yet you divorced yourself from Ronald Reagan. You said this: "Although he was once an ardent supporter of President Reagan, Paul now speaks of him as a traitor leading the country into debt and conflicts around the world. "I want to totally disassociate myself from the Reagan Administration." And you go on to The Dallas Morning News: "Paul now calls Reagan a `dramatic failure.'"
REP. PAUL: Well, I'll bet you any money I didn't use the word traitor. I'll bet you that's somebody else, so I think that's misleading. But a failure, yes, in, in many ways. The government didn't shrink. Ultimately, after he got in office, he said, "All I want to do is reduce the rate of increase in size of government." That's not my goal. My goal is to reduce our government to a constitutional size. Completely different. I think that--matter of fact, he admitted in his memoirs that he had a total failure in Lebanon, and he said he relearned the Middle East because of that failure. And so there--he--you know, he...
MR. RUSSERT: But if he's a total failure, why are you using, using his picture in your brochure?
REP. PAUL: Well, because he, he ran on a good program, and his, his idea was a limited government. Get rid of the Department of Education, a strong national defense....."
As for the rest of your insults to Ron Paul supporters, they're not even worth responding to.
I’ve thought this for a long time. We have too many troops in too many countries and it makes no sense to keep them there, especially in the countries that are perfectly capable of defending themselves.
Isolationism involves restricting trade, as in high protectionist tariffs and such, in addition to keeping the military at home. Paul is in favor of the latter, not the former. That makes him him a non-interventionist not an isolationist IMO.
As I said, as a judgment call that one speaks volumes of Ron Paul's judgment. As for his associations, those speak for themselves. You lay with dogs with dogs you get fleas. You give lip service to truthers and play along with their game you get associated with non-serious kooks and fringe elements.
Which is why my conversation with you is ending right now. Don't need fleas!
“We should follow the foreign policy advice of the Founders – friendship and commerce with all nations.”
Does that really sound like non-participation to you??
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