Posted on 08/05/2013 3:32:51 AM PDT by TexGrill
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says he's reconsidering his neoconservative views regarding the benefits gained from U.S. military interventions as a way to promote democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Gingrich believes the methods he has long been a supporter of have backfired and require re-evaluation, the Washington Times reports.
“I am a neoconservative,” Gingrich told the Times. “But at some point, even if you are a neoconservative, you need to take a deep breath to ask if our strategies in the Middle East have succeeded.”
Gingrich, who backed the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, said he has become increasingly skeptical about the strategy of attempting to export democracy by force to countries where religion and culture clash with Western values.
“It may be that our capacity to export democracy is a lot more limited than we thought,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich said that while he has expressed his doubts concerning the ability of the U.S. for nation building before, he has only recently reached conclusions about their failures in light of the experiences of the past decade.
“My worry about all this is not new,” Gingrich said.
“But my willingness to reach a conclusion is new.”
Gingrich recommended Republicans put more weight on the anti-interventionist ideas offered by the libertarian-minded Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a tea party favorite and foreign policy skeptic.
“I think it would be healthy to go back and war-game what alternative strategies would have been better, and I like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul because they are talking about this,” Gingrich said.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Perhaps military power wielded as a policy tool in the hands of liberal incompetent “leadership” like the Clintons (either or both) and obama (susan rice??? john kerry??ygbsm) is worse that isolationism
that is the real error
EXCELLENT SUMMATION
4 stars
Datz re-tartet. Datz jus re-tartet..
Read it again. He didn’t say he changed his mind, said he was thinking about changing it.
There is nothing wrong with the Speaker.
Why don’t Romney and Rove and their antiwoman,
BACKSTABBING team, rethink their hatred of conservatives
and women???
Why not? Because Romney and Rove work for Soros and Obama.
You saw it in 2008, and 2009, and 2010, and every year
thereafter.
Yes, I’ll give him props for changing his mind on this.
While I support alliances and swift retaliatory measures against those who do us harm, we cannot keep trying to bring democracy to countries where it is not in their interest or our own.
Who are we to export democracy anyway? Look at how corrupt our system has become. Fourth branch bureaucracy and fifth branch media. Robert Mugabe’s method isn’t the only way to hijack the democratic process.
In addition, this attitude enables cultural malcontents to become cultural imperialists and begin forcing sick agendas onto countries with a far firmer grasp on morality than us.
“I kept quiet (for the most part) because I told myself that the President and his advisors had access to far more information than I did, and if they felt these were necessary steps, I should settle down and let them get on with the job.”
I used to trust that people in power in the corporations I worked for had better information and that’s why they did the things they did. Then, Honeywell bought Wang computers, paying 90% of what someone else had paid for the much larger conglomeration. This, to get mainframe office automation. Us engineers were appalled. PC’s were on the way in and it was obvious mainframe word processing was a still-born. Two years later Honeywell took the largest write-down in business history and my faith in leadership has never been the same. Since then I’ve watched leader after leader charge into the abyss of bankruptcy with all the glee of a winning general. Of course, none of them personally suffered as they drifted in a stately manner to earth on their golden parachutes. The rest of us, on the other hand, suffered mightily. Now I do all my own thinking and I’m generally right. You and I were right about Iraq and the war. On the other hand, all wars have traditionally been sold to the public on truth, justice and the American way. Going over there to kick some ass so they respect us and leave us alone is not a salable regimen. But “giving” freedom and democracy to Islamists is like giving a deck of cards and a Bridge rulebook to a bull.
I agree. You ain't gonna make these Arabs like us. Bomb them, get out and if needed go back in. Too many of our boys have come home permanently disfigured or dead for this nation building crap.
Theoretically, the purpose of nation-building was to create a world that was safer for the US. Having stable, more human-rights friendly countries was seen as creating stability throughout the world and promoting US interests.
The problem is that we long ago dropped US interests from the list of important things and furthermore we didn’t go far enough even when we were in a position to change a country’s culture. Look at Iraq: we could have at least given them the ideal of a secular state but instead we let them enshrine Islam in their constitution, thereby paving the way for chaos as the different Islamic factions fought over who got to be in charge. The same is true of Afghanistan, where we achieved the same result by basically abandoning the people who supported things like free speech, freedom for women, etc. because they might be perceived as conflicting with Islam. The US military really wasn’t allowed to go ahead with the mission of imposing order and we ended by creating an even more dangerous situation.
Nation building is one of those things that you either have to do all the way - or not at all. And US interests have to be primary. In any case, our military is now so weakened that we don’t even have the capacity to do it anymore, so it’s a moot point.
When you fight a war you destroy the enemy and his property until he no longer can fight.
You do not go into his country and try to convince him that your political ideas for his country are right.
It’s more a post-modern variation on the Cold War, only with bursts of military activity and soft occupation added to the mix—mostly in the name of containment.
It’s easy enough to argue they are failures but the idea of “containment” is one that can only be tested over decades. And there are sure to be failures along the way in any case.
I agree with you that if measured the way traditional war is measured, forget it, they are disasters one and all.
Personally, I preferred the pre-Frank Church Committee/CIA op era, in which we installed our own dictatorship into these backwashes and propped them up best we could or until they collapsed of their own corruption. Generally, there was less bloodshed (save for North Korea and Vietnam of course where we stumbled into the new form of “war”).
But back then, when there were two superpowers, there was little uncertainty about which power was best suited to dominate the world. That only started AFTER the new generation leftists began to infiltrate congress.
“Neo conservatism” is sort of a half-assed position staked out to modulate the “peace now” sound effect of the left. It’s probably doomed.
While I agree with your statement, the entire populace of Germany and Japan KNEW they had been beaten, and had undergone significant pain, and not just the military and ruling elites. I’m not sure the same is the case for Iraq and Afghanistan.
People should always rethink their views, in my opinion. Refusing to change one's mind when presented with new information is a sign of someone who is unable to reason. I expect people to adjust their views according to the most current and correct information.
The founding lawyers never rethought their philosophy since at least 1787 and have never had to look back; straight ahead big gubmint ever since w/few, if any bumps in the road!
;)
Semper Trvth !!!!!
Dick G
*****
He still doesn't get it. It doesn't matter how hard or easy it is to create democracy in the Middle East. When the entire culture is dedicated to destroying everything you hold dear, allowing them to vote is simply stupid in the first place.
I think our best bet for the Middle East is to set up networks of spies, and support strongmen who oppose Islamism but are not brutal toward the people they rule.
A decade isn’t a few months.
“It may be that our capacity to export democracy is a lot more limited than we thought,” Gingrich said.
Ya think???
Iraq and Afghanistan were a waste of American soldiers and money.
We haven’t accomplished a thing in either place, because we never meant to. Viet Nam, Korea ,Iraq, Afghanistan, limited wars that only killed our forces without accomplishing a win.
There is no good reason for any American to still be in Afghanistan.
These undeclared wars have led to crazy ROE’s.
You have to let your enemy shoot you before you can shoot back and if a civilian is anywhere near then you cannot shoot back then.
This is a prescription for getting your people killed.
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