Posted on 03/09/2016 6:53:26 AM PST by Kaslin
Last week, 117 "members of the Republican national security community" signed an open letter condemning Donald Trump. It made me think the bellicose billionaire, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is not quite as bad as I thought.
"His vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle," the letter complains. "He swings from isolationism to military adventurism within the space of one sentence."
Although there is some truth to that critique, an inconsistent skepticism of foreign intervention is better than none at all. That is why I have trouble agreeing with Eliot Cohen, the neoconservative foreign policy expert who organized the letter, when he says "Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin."
It is not surprising that Cohen, who always seems to be agitating for another war in the Middle East, would strongly prefer Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Her signature achievement as secretary of state was a disastrous intervention in Libya that, like the U.S. invasion of Iraq, empowered terrorists by replacing a nasty dictatorship with chaos.
In 2014, Clinton finally conceded that she made a mistake by supporting the Iraq war, which killed as many as 189,000 people and may ultimately cost as much as $6 trillion. That long-delayed admission suggests Clinton might see the light about Libya sometime around 2022, by which point she could be halfway through her second term as president -- plenty of time for new mistakes, starting with Syria.
Trump, by contrast, was an early opponent of the Iraq war, although not quite as early as he sometimes claims. "In 2003, 2004, I was totally against going into Iraq," he said during the Republican presidential debate on December 15. "I called it very strongly."
The truth is that Trump expressed tentative support for the Iraq war six months before the invasion and did not publicly change his mind until four months afterward. Still, he beat Clinton by a decade, and it seems significant that he condemns the war as often and as strongly as he does.
"George Bush made a mistake," Trump said during the February 13 GOP debate. "We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East ... They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none."
Trump applies a similar critique to the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi (which he also initially supported) and the proposed toppling of Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. "Assad is a bad guy, but we have no idea who the so-called rebels [are]," he said during the November 10 GOP debate. "They may be far worse than Assad. Look at Libya. Look at Iraq."
The beginning of wisdom in foreign policy is learning from mistakes, something that Clinton, who is supposedly much more sophisticated about such matters than Trump, has proven constitutionally incapable of doing. Unlike Clinton, Trump intermittently seems to recognize the limits of American power and the impossibility of doing just one thing in a world full of complexity and unintended consequences.
But only intermittently. The same candidate who cautions against getting involved in civil wars thousands of miles away, who says "we can't continue to be the policeman of the world," and who rightly wonders why the U.S. continues to defend wealthy European and Asian countries that are perfectly capable of defending themselves also talks about the supposed need to make the military "bigger, better, stronger than ever before."
I'm not sure what Trump wants to do with this bigger, better, and stronger military, although it may have something to do with his promise to "get rid of ISIS," a campaign he says will include waterboarding and torture methods "a hell of a lot worse" as well as the murder of terrorists' families. Also troubling: Trump's tendency to view trade as warfare and immigration as an invasion.
It really says something that Clinton has shown herself to be a worse warmonger than this guy.
Linda never met a war she didn’t like.
The “Caucus for Perpetual War” hates Trump. These “national security” experts are a whos who of K Street Defense Contractor lobbying.
Just another example of the corruption in the GOPE. It not about the best way to defend the USA, it about keeping the defense contract money flowing out of the treasury.
Conservative have got to wake up. We are BROKE. We cannot have any sacred cows in the Fed Budget. ALL of it is going to have to be reduced.
Florida has bad news for TRUMP HATERS
The neo-con-artists and their open borders toadies are the ones waging war on Trump. They hate it that he doesn’t come crawling to them to beg for their money. They hate him because he wants our country to actually be a country with borders, and they hate him because he routinely attacks their media lapdogs. They are afraid that if Trump becomes president, and they inevitably start howling and yapping for another war in the Middle East, he may not pay attention to them.
Trump caps night of wins with victory in Hawaii caucuses
HONOLULU -— Donald Trump has won the Hawaii Republican presidential caucuses, claiming the last prize in a night of victories for the Republican front-runner.
Wind, rain and long lines didn’t keep the state’s passionate voters from the polls to decide how the Republican presidential candidates would split the state’s 19 delegate votes.
“Our votes here might be a small vote, but nevertheless, we’re here to do our duty,” said Al Carvalho, 49, who co-owns a contracting business with his wife. “I’m voting for Donald Trump because I’m tired of the career politicians, and I’m willing to give somebody else a chance.”
Trump took to Twitter to note his night-capper:
Uh...What’s a warmonger?
Somebody who believes in protecting America from Islamo-Terrorist attacks?
Defending our freedom from Communists?
“Warmongers” being a code word for “Israel,” I suppose?
I doubt that. Trump is probably a man after their own heart. Trump has said several times that his solution for Syria is to create a "big, beautiful" safe zone for them. He's expanded on that by saying somehow he will get the Gulf States to pay for it, but creating it and maintaining it will still take tens of thousands of troops and we're the only ones who would provide them.
“Linda never met a war she didn’t like.”
That’s because she never had to put on her combat tutu and go to one.
Trump only wins in open primaries and caucuses. Hawaii was open.
He says he will rebuild the military after all these years of use and overuse. This alone is a great deterrent!
Another example is how the things Trump has said about waterboarding, for example, are taken very seriously by the very people who would most likely be waterboarded.
They believe him and so do I.
I like that. I like that a lot.
One of the fundamental flaws of our foreign policy has been that we assume every country and every society can handle democracy, and we force it upon them, when often democracy in these uncivilized places amounts to no more than "mob rule".
An evil dictator is sometimes better than the alternative and is often the glue that holds a country together. Besides Iraq, Yugoslavia is an excellent example. Nothing but war and genocide after Tito. Qaddafi and Libya were actually helping us until Madam Benghazi decided it might be a feather in her cap for her ascendancy to the presidency to be "The Liberator of Libya". What we got is a failed nation-state with multiple groups that hate us and breeding ground for al queda and mozlem extremists.
? “I’m not sure what Trump wants to do with this bigger, better, and stronger military,”
Sullum was doing Ok until that blurb. The reason Trump wants the military so strong is just as he has said countless times, “so that we never have to use it”.
There is no difference with Trump’s big stick approach to military matters than there is in having a home arsenal to guard against home invasion. Criminals will not think to trespass if they know they are likely to get whacked.
We should be promoting our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Democracy without that as the base leads to the ‘Arab Spring’.
Snarly Carly just announced for Cruz.
More bad new for Canadian Cruz
Trump hater Carly, Hell hath no Fury like a woman scorned
“Uh...What’s a warmonger?”
Any one who does not like Trump or disagrees with his followers.
Yugoslavia was a different matter, much more complicated. Today they live in peace without dictator. This is not the case with Muslim countries, this is backward civilization.
Cut the welfare. I mean actual cuts; reductions (preferably to zero) in actual spending. Cut the regulatory state; I mean actual cuts in actual size, scope, and cost. Get the government completely out of the medical insurance and old-age pension business.
Then we can talk about the military. For decades "all of it must be reduced" has been code for "slash the military and increase the socialism".
“Neocon” is often a code word for “Jew” ...
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