Posted on 03/16/2013 11:04:50 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
After listening to Rand Paul speak at National Review’s Washington office, Bob Costa concludes that the senator is leading one side of what is “nothing less than a fight for the soul of the GOP on foreign policy.” Let’s hope so.
Whether what emerges is also a conservative foreign policy depends as much on which Senator Paul wins as on whether he wins. If it is the Rand Paul who perceived the common hegemonic denominator between Soviet totalitarianism and Islamic-supremacist totalitarianism in a provocative speech at the Heritage Foundation last month, there is cause for optimism. Not as hope-inspiring is the Rand Paul portrayed in Bob’s NRO report. It is already clear, though, that Senator Paul’s agitations serve conservative ends more consistently than does the erratic adventurism of his opposite numbers in the GOP’s intramural brawl: John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Bob describes these Beltway establishment figures as “the foreign-policy grandees in the Senate Republican conference,” standard-bearers of what is said to be “the Bush-Cheney approach to foreign policy.” The latter claim is not entirely fair, particularly to the Cheney component of the ledger; but that is a story for another day. For now, the point — mine, not Costa’s — is that Senators McCain and Graham are not conservatives. They are progressive-lite populists who bend with the wind, an occupational hazard of service to a fuzzy global-stability agenda rather than to vital American interests pursued within a constitutional, limited-government framework.
Paul proudly claims the conservative tag that seems to embarrass the media-manic McCain except during those dolorous primary seasons when even a maverick must appeal to the GOP base. And once Paul outmaneuvered them (and the Obama administration) in the recent dust-up over U.S. drone-missile strikes, McCain and Graham became strident in their efforts to marginalize the Kentuckian — branding Paul “ill-informed” and a “wacko bird” of the Right. But Paul is far from a “wacko” — or, for that matter, the “extremist” I once made the mistake of describing him as. I was referring to a libertarian position he took against indefinite detention for American citizens suspected of being enemy combatants. The “extremist” descriptor did not fit the man, and it exaggerated the position he’d taken, which extended discussion showed to be less detached from wartime exigencies than it initially seemed.
In the senatorial name-calling, one senses a certain desperation, a fear on the part of McCain and Graham that the ground beneath them is shifting. There’s good reason for that.
You won’t ever hear Paul echoing McCain’s assertion that the way to get foreign policy “back on track” would be to put John Kerry and Joe Biden in charge of it. You won’t find Paul, like McCain and Graham, toasting Qaddafi one minute, then in the next calling for his head; or condemning the Muslim Brotherhood’s sharia totalitarianism one minute, then in the next calling for Americans to work with and subsidize the Brothers. You won’t find Paul, in vertiginous McCain fashion, blathering about democracy-promotion and global stability while championing the secession from Serbia of a Muslim state — Kosovo, which now stands as a breakaway inspiration to Islamic-supremacist insurgents the world over. You won’t find Paul lamenting, à la Graham, that “free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war”; to the contrary, Paul appears to grasp that if you are prepared to subordinate the First Amendment to a desire not to pull the hair-trigger savagery of your enemies, then you have already lost the war.
In this sense, Dr. Paul perfectly diagnoses the GOP’s sorry condition after years on the McCain/Graham regimen: “When you saw the debate between President Obama and Romney on foreign policy, they sounded pretty similar. In the vice-presidential debate, Biden was more assertive, but Ryan didn’t disagree with most of his positions.”
Bingo: It has been a while since Republicans were led by a Reagan — by someone who looks totalitarianism in the eye and calls it what it is. You don’t hear today’s GOP saying of the Muslim Brotherhood and its sharia-supremacist allies, “We win, they lose.” Today’s GOP is more likely to tell the Muslim Brotherhood, “We’re here to partner with you.” Today’s GOP looks at ideologues who promise to conquer the West and sees not an “evil empire” but a “Religion of Peace.” Yes, it was Obama who opted to arm and fund the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt — where a new sharia constitution has been imposed, women are thus reduced to a lower caste, and minority Christians are systematically persecuted. But it was Republicans who voted decisively to approve these measures.
To his great credit, Senator Paul tried to stop our government’s transfer of F-16 aircraft and Abrams tanks to Egypt. He certainly has that half of the equation right. At Heritage, he observed that while “the war is not with Islam but with a radical element of Islam — the problem is that this element is no small minority but a vibrant, often mainstream, vocal and numerous minority.” I’d say “minority” is hopeful — at least in the Middle East, where, as Paul further noted, the enemy ideology grips “whole countries, such as Saudi Arabia.” Islamic-supremacism — what he called “radical Islam” — is, as he described, “no fleeting fad but a relentless force.” To empower Islamic supremacists is a grave mistake.
In his National Review interview, Senator Paul rightly faulted the 2012 GOP ticket for banking on the fallacy that victory lay in allowing no daylight between its own positions and Obama’s abominable foreign policy. But his critique then skipped the rails. The Romney/Ryan platform, he complained, “was sort of like, ‘We’ll . . . come a little bit slower out of Afghanistan. . . . ’ But Biden had a good response, ‘We’re coming home.’ And I think that’s what people want; I think that’s what people are ready for, that we’re coming home.” And why does Paul think Americans want to come home? Because of “war weariness.”
Americans are clearly not pining for our troops to come home from Europe, Japan, Korea, the Persian Gulf, or other locations where their presence assures the peace through strength on which our prosperity depends. In Afghanistan, Americans are not weary of war; they are weary — as they were in Iraq — of our government’s misconception of the war, the very thing Paul’s Heritage speech undertook to correct. They are weary of expending the lives and limbs of our best young people — and of wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in a time of existentially threatening debt — on nation-building experiments premised on the fiction that Islamic and Western cultures desire the same things.
Like Senator Paul, Americans are not anxious for war. But when it is necessary and fought for our vital interests — particularly our liberty and security — we are extremely supportive. Paul is right that war should be a limited-duration exercise. What he described at Heritage as a foreign policy that balanced our vital interests, our desires, and our strapped resources, is indeed one that, as he put it, “would target our enemy, strike with lethal force,” and exit expeditiously.
If that is truly where he is coming from, though, he ought to study what former Bush Justice Department official John Yoo actually says instead of using a Yoo caricature as a piñata — the tack he took in the NR interview, regrettably reminiscent of the way McCain and Graham have disserved Paul himself. I doubt my friend Professor Yoo would dare dabble in ophthalmology, but in trying his hand at constitutional law, Dr. Paul predictably commits malpractice. He has confused Yoo’s scholarship on the “unitary executive” with advocacy of the executive lawlessness known as the “imperial presidency.”
Yoo’s take on the meaning of the power to declare war that the Constitution vests in Congress is more narrow than mine, but, contrary to Paul’s intimation, Yoo most certainly does not “believe there is no limitation” on executive power. (Senator Paul might peruse “The Presidency Redefined,” Yoo’s essay in the March 11 edition of National Review, in which he contends, inter alia, that “conservatives would be more consistent in their quest to rein in the administrative state if they foreswore the vigorous use of executive power.”) What Yoo argues is that once war is commenced — whether by unilateral presidential response to threats against U.S. interests or by congressional authorization — the “target our enemy, strike with lethal force” approach that Paul commends is an executive responsibility. On that, both law and American history are firmly on Yoo’s side.
Any successful conservative foreign policy is going to marry the clarity about the enemy that animated Rand Paul’s Heritage speech with the clear distinction John Yoo draws between fighting war and fighting crime. And we’d better get about it because the stakes are high.
Foreign policy, inextricably intertwined with national security, must be a core concern of the political Right. It must derivatively be seen by voters as an issue on which trust is better reposed in the GOP — the major party that, in theory at least, is responsive to the Right. If this is not the case, then, as David Horowitz persuasively contends, Republicans are sure to lose elections. Ronald Reagan made the struggle against Soviet totalitarianism central to his campaigns. Mitt Romney regarded the struggle against Islamic-supremacist totalitarianism as something too politically incorrect to mention amid platitudinous five-point economic plans. There are reasons why eminently winnable elections are lost.
— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center. He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, which is published by Encounter Books.
If Rand Paul’s off base, it’s the citizen’s of this country that must change. Any doubt was washed away when the election was gifted to Zero by the RINO’s and NWO gang.
US foreign policy is dictated by new world order through the CFR.
Personally, I resent our nation and our military being their plaything for the past century.
When they come clean about every new world order operation, every CIA operation, and they turn the nation back over to the people, then I’ll start thinking about what truly American interests there are around the world. Right now, it’s what new world order interests there are around the world that US foreign policy is actually concerned with, and it amounts to an endless stream of manipulation. Higher taxes, more control, more agitation and revolution, more economic troubles, more big business monopoly profits, more small business and working schmucks getting hammered, more rejection of the God of the Bible.
American business leaders and government leaders need to wake up and smell the coffee, i.e., the evil of what they are doing, and mend the error of their ways, or they need to be replaced by those who are not corrupted by the beast of new world order, noted for its slavery (physical, as well as to sin and debt), that was raised up against us.
Individual Americans need to get right with God and start owning and operating businesses. That’s the eventual path the power - real Americans have to be “in the driver’s seat” instead of the globalist new world order minions that are in power now.
“Bingo: It has been a while since Republicans were led by a Reagan — by someone who looks totalitarianism in the eye and calls it what it is. You don’t hear today’s GOP saying of the Muslim Brotherhood and its sharia-supremacist allies, “We win, they lose.” Today’s GOP is more likely to tell the Muslim Brotherhood, “We’re here to partner with you.” Today’s GOP looks at ideologues who promise to conquer the West and sees not an “evil empire” but a “Religion of Peace.” Yes, it was Obama who opted to arm and fund the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt — where a new sharia constitution has been imposed, women are thus reduced to a lower caste, and minority Christians are systematically persecuted. But it was Republicans who voted decisively to approve these measures.
To his great credit, Senator Paul tried to stop our government’s transfer of F-16 aircraft and Abrams tanks to Egypt. He certainly has that half of the equation right. At Heritage, he observed that while “the war is not with Islam but with a radical element of Islam — the problem is that this element is no small minority but a vibrant, often mainstream, vocal and numerous minority.” I’d say “minority” is hopeful — at least in the Middle East, where, as Paul further noted, the enemy ideology grips “whole countries, such as Saudi Arabia.” Islamic-supremacism — what he called “radical Islam” — is, as he described, “no fleeting fad but a relentless force.” To empower Islamic supremacists is a grave mistake.”
You can lay all this on Grover Norquist and spineless Republicans that are terrified of being primaried. The sooner that Republicans tell Norky to GFY, the better off the Republicans will be.
“Americans are clearly not pining for our troops to come home from Europe, Japan, Korea, the Persian Gulf, or other locations where their presence assures the peace through strength on which our prosperity depends.”
This is wrong. Our forces are there propping up other economies. They don’t want us to leave because they’ll lose the dollars that are spent there. As far as I’m concerned, we should bring our guys home & tell these countries it’s time to spend more on their own military to assure the peace.
Is McCarthy talking about continuing a cold war based economy to eternity? Perpetual war for perpetual peace?
A strong defense is necessary, of course, but the US military is in something like 140 countries (AFAIK). Wasn't something said about "entangling alliances" a while back?
“You can lay all this on Grover Norquist and spineless Republicans that are terrified of being primaried. The sooner that Republicans tell Norky to GFY, the better off the Republicans will be.”
AMEN!
Also, after Paul’s filibuster, Van Jones made a comment about liking something in his speech. Many here on FR chose to interpret that to mean Jones was ‘endorsing’ Rand Paul...not hardly!
Jones does plenty of his liberal disagreement with Paul here:http://www.ijreview.com/2013/03/41926-15-most-absurd-or-dishonest-tweets-from-mainstream-media-figures//#post-slideshow2
He even says Paul would stand with the KKK. Hardly an endorsement!
“Only if you think that granting Amnesty to 2 million Illegal Aliens every year is a great idea.
This is a suicide plan for the GOP and America(re: Automatically giving the electoral advantage to the Democrats), and it’s Rand Pauls great idea for handling the Illegal Alien problem.”
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There you go again. YOU KNOW you are being dishonest about this. He would legalize 2 million per year INSTEAD of ALL of them, like your idol Sarah Palin and so many others have advocated. Stop lying, and using the tactics of the left, it doesn’t help your candidate. Ted Cruz is better than that and you insult him with your twisting of facts. He stood up for Rand Paul!
“After ensuring border security, then I would normalize the status of the 11 million undocumented citizens so they can join the workforce and pay taxes. I would normalize them at a rate of about 2 million per year. I would start with Dream Act kids, children brought here illegally as minors. Normalization would get them a temporary Visa but would not put them ahead of anyone already waiting to enter the country. These undocumented persons would now be documented but they would still have to wait in line like everyone else. But their path to permanent legal status would be no faster than those currently waiting in line.
I'll take Rand over our modern day Nero any day.
He compares favorably with the current White House resident who is a full time narcisstic, schizophrenic, megalomaniac with severe delusions of grandeur whose grasp of reality is critically and almost totally impaired by a near terminal case of false self esteem.
And those are his good points.
I stand with Rand.
Rand Paul shows more common sense than any other possible contender in 2016. But that does not mean he can win nomination. If common sense was important to Americans, no way in hell Obama should have won 2nd term.
I have been slowly backing away from the National Review, I am a subscriber and their hawk stance on everything. I like Paul and his strong defense libertarianism.
Is McCarthy talking about continuing a cold war based economy to eternity? Perpetual war for perpetual peace?
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Yes he is, this is one of the reasons I am backing away from NR. This insane police of the world forgin policy needs to end. Strong defense and strong civil defense is the best use of our military.
All Rand Paul has done, both with this normalization crap, and his statements of taking softer stances on the Social Issues and removing marriage from the tax code, IS SIGNAL DEFEAT!
He is moving the ball down the field in the direction of the LEFT’S GOAL POST!
That’s not leadership, that’s compromising your core values, IF YOU ARE A CONSERVATIVE, to gain election.
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No he is being a libertarian, and libertarians believe in privacy and leaveing people to be. lThat is a conservative value as far as I am concerned.
Remember when Republicans used to say “LETS GET OUT OF THE U.N”? ...
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