“Jefferson did commission the marines to attack the Muslim pirate bases in North Africa. That was not a “neo con conspiracy””
No it wasn’t. It was a use of military force when American interests were attacked. Neocons love using force where America is under no threat whatsoever, or where the outcome will be equally bad no matter who wins. Like Libya, Syria, Ukraine, the Balkans, Sub Saharan Africa,,,etc.
And being left alone works wonderfully when the nation is organized on trade with the world, defending against those who threated our interests. Not this is stated as “interests” this means our direct American interests, not the idea that we should arrange the governments everywhere on earth.
This embroils us in endless wars, and earns us the hate of people everywhere where we are always the interfering outsider.
You pretend we have always been neocon, but nothing could be further from the truth. The current wars have been active longer than our participation in the Spanish American War, WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam,,,,combined. Does that alone not tell you that something is different.
Lick the Bush/Obama/Clinton agenda all you want, but America was never intended to exist in a perpetual state of war.
And our founders were well aware that such conditions quickly destroyed the freedom they worked hard to create.
They didn’t even want a standing army, deferring to a militia and a strong Navy. That combo is bitterly hard for an invader to attack, but it is also a very poor combination for projecting power. That wasn’t an accident.
They envisioned robust defense of trade, and of fighting invaders. They never envisioned us based in 80+ nations and fighting 3 and 4 wars simultaneously,,,for 15 years with no end in sight.
Founders as neocon. That’s utterly mistaken.
When arguing for interventionist foreign policy, neocons love the old bait and switch. You point out how many of our recent (or not so recent) interventions have nothing to do with our national security or any rational strategic interest, and they change subject to argue in favor of intervention based on a defensive war, even though that defensive war was not the one you were arguing against to begin with.
Case in point: once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, nobody was arguing against retaliation. Yet the interventionists attacked the American First Committee (who were trying to pursue a foreign policy that would have PREVENTED Pearl Harbor) as if they had opposed the retaliation.
Similarly, critics of "Nation Building" in Afghanistan, who question the wisdom of using US troops to help one tribe defend its hilltop against an enemy tribe on another hilltop, are attacked with the Red Herring of opposing the initial bombing of Al Quaeda strongholds in Afghanstan following 9/11, even though this isn't the point being argued.
And when all else fails, they play the Hitler card. A historian who questions the merit of our involvement in World War I (which liberal crusaders for "Democracy" like Wilson supported, and conservatives like Coolidge and Hoover rightly opposed) somehow gets changed to a discussion about Hitler and World War II. Similarly, you might point out that there is little sense going to war against tin pot dictators like Assad, Qaddafi, or Milosevic when they people they're fighting are as bad or in some cases far worse, and they'll counter by saying "You're just Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler." If Assad were Hitler, you'd think he would have made a lot more progress in taking over much of the Middle East by now, as opposed to fighting to hold onto (or is it retake) Allepo from the Al Nusra front.
Was our fifth POTUS James Monroe a founder? Ever hear of the Monroe Doctrine? Is it possible that earlier presidents did not yet have the military wherewithal to warn the rest of the world to lay off the Western Hemisphere?