Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul are intellectual heroes of mine because of their consistent opposition to what they believe are unnecessary wars.
When candidate Donald Trump stressed in his major foreign policy speech of 2016 that American “resources are totally over extended”, I saw him as a part of the same great peace loving Republican tradition.
One way I have of describing 2016, is to say that The Donald took Ron Paul’s constituency of 10% and turned it into a presidency.
I offer the following short no budget fictional film from Australia as a dramatization of what can happen once the gods of war are unleashed within us.
https://tujuhbelasan.com/2018/12/17/austral-indonesian-tujuhbelasan-5-men-at-war/
[When candidate Donald Trump stressed in his major foreign policy speech of 2016 that American “resources are totally over extended”]
If we really want to cut government spending, the first thing we could do is decertify government employee unions, and sharply curtail civil service featherbedding. It would also help to eliminate affirmative action in government hiring, so that fewer, more competent workers can do the work that was previously done/undone by more numerous incompetents of favored skin colors and ethnicities. That will happen, of course, when pigs fly.
Erratum:
[To hear Ron Paul talk about it, you’d think defense came to 50% of what the national produced nationally and was climbing.]
The corrected version:
[To hear Ron Paul talk about it, you’d think defense came to 50% of what the nation produced annually and was climbing.]
After the ‘90 to ‘91 war, Wrong Paul toured the morning talk shows presenting to the American people his belief that using armored bulldozers and tanks with plow attachments to clear Iraqi trench lines was tantamount to war crimes. Did he think we should charge them on foot, and jump in with trench knives?
Seeing him on those shows right after I got back from the war was the first time I had ever heard of the filthy scumbag, and I have never had any use for him.
Luckily for Australia, there were enough Aussie and American warriors to keep the Japanese out.
I used to be a hawk, but now I’m dove.
All our fighting has accomplished nothing - mostly because the State Department effs up whatever the military achieves.
Keep our troops home, tighten our borders, and invite the rest of the world to go to devil.
I liked a lot of what Ron Paul said concerning domestic policy. However, his foreign policy was straight out of 1820. Like it or not folks, the post WWII world order with us leading it has kept the world from falling into another massive world war and serves our national interests.
Our Navy assumed the mantle that the UK navy had for 150 + years. That is one that is the unquestioned supreme power on the high seas that keeps the worlds waterways free and open to world wide trade. Without it, have no doubt that we would go back to a world similar to the Barbary Pirates where regional hegemonists would control waterways and key choke points and we would be subject to their ‘taxes’ for transit.
It is true that our NATO allies can do more and Trump is pushing them to do so. He has also set in motion forces which could someday bring home a large portion of our forces from the Korean peninsula. There are many things that we should not get involved in. One is the disastrous toppling of Ghadaffi in Libya. Headed up by our erstwhile ‘allies’.
However, I have no problem with us going into Iraq and Afghanistan and I continue to believe our presence in Afghanistan is warranted. I also believe the small contingency that is in Syria is warranted as well. It is better to fight the crazies over there than over here.