Posted on 08/05/2013 8:12:29 AM PDT by mandaladon
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a leading neoconservative hawk and staunch supporter of Israel, says the U.S. military interventions he has long supported to promote democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere have backfired and need to be re-evaluated. “I am a neoconservative. 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,” the 2012 Republican presidential hopeful said in an interview.
Mr. Gingrich supported the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but he said he has increasingly doubted the strategy of attempting to export democracy by force to countries where the religion and culture are not hospitable to Western values. “It may be that our capacity to export democracy is a lot more limited than we thought,” he said. Mr. Gingrich at times has expressed doubts about the U.S. capacity for nation-building, but he said he now has formed his own conclusions about their failures in light of the experiences of the past decade. “My worry about all this is not new,” Mr. Gingrich said. “But my willingness to reach a conclusion is new.” Mr. Gingrich said it is time for Republicans to heed some of the anti-interventionist ideas offered by the libertarian-minded Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, and Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, tea party favorite and foreign policy skeptic.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
bttt
War game? Those aren’t chess pieces we’re sending overseas to get killed.
Their would be no issues here at all if we ‘intervened’ as we did from 1941-45 in a couple of locales...dont recall a peep from any of those areas in 75+ years....after our ‘intervention’
In my opinion...there are only three legitimate uses for the US military:
1. to defend the US against enemy attack.
2. To defend vital US interests. and
3. To provide humanitarian aid during a natural disaster—and then only until civilian organizations can reach the scene. That’s it!
I respect him for being able to rethink his views.
To think, bombing the hell out of people in the guise of “democracy” actually back fires?
Should have gone into Afghanistan with 300k troops, finished off AQ and the Taliban quickly and once and for all, sealed the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the military could have been out of there by 2006.
Going into Iraq was a stupid mistake by Bush and Cheney. A trillion dollars spent to give Iran a client state in the ME.
Eventually he had to. Few can support our activities around the world today.
Better late than never. However, the problem is not intervening or intervening but HOW we intervene ie: WWI, WWII, Iraq vs Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan.
There no point in either Iraq war.
Anyone who declares themselves or is a “neo-con” should be immediately purged from the conservative movement as everything they have advocated for the last 15+ years has been wrong.
Bolton, Wolfowitz, Kristol, Cheney, etc should never be listened to again. Listening to them cost us trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, more expensive gas and has gotten us nowhere strategically.
Halliburton and Carlyle Group did quite well though
McCain will be last to come around.
war games ... with books and computers
Newtie rethink his views?
Me thinks the GOP insiders smeared him good in ‘12 campaign so he is re-aligning himself with the grass-roots rebels. Cuz the insiders don’t want him.
I don’t trust Newt.
The problem with many neocons is that the light comes through too late for them.
I’d suggest that we need to avoid both extremes: (1) intervening as much as we have; and (2) never intervening at all.
Never intervening at all has one big problem — what do we do if the bad guys keep intervening and expanding their captive territory? It happened before WWI with a bad guy named Adolph. Sooner or later, we’d have to call on the so-called “neocons.”
It’s funny, because in the late-90s, Bush and the GOP were arguing ‘against’ all the interventionist nation-building of the Clinton administration. It sounded like the Republican line was to get back to the solid conservative tradition of having a strong, defensive military, be less inclined towards foreign adventurism, and if-and-when ‘war’ became a necessity, go all-out for total victory and then leave.
We got the opposite. Anyway, the aspect that leaves the most bitter taste in my mouth is that while the Bush crowd was singularly obsessed by all this, the rest of the country has gone to utter hell... mind-boggling debt, ever-increasing government tyranny, and a culture that has dived headlong into the sewer with utter deviancy like fag marriage. The upshot is that I frankly no longer give a damn about anything to do with the Middle East.
“It may be that our capacity to export democracy is a lot more limited than we thought,” he said.
The UNDERSTATEMENT of the Millenium.
In Islam, there are only three possibilities: Anarchy, Theocracy, Military Dictatorship.
Its in our interests to support the latter as least harmful to us, as long as that military dictatorship serves OUR needs.
Islam is a totally evil, indefensible, anti-western fascist ideology. There are no such thing as “good” Muslims, just Muslims who practise their religion and those who are Muslim in name only. They are ALL dangerous.
Well, when GWB left the office of Presidency, the world was not this screwed up. What we have had the past 4 1/2 years is neocon policies administered through Obama/Hillary/Kerry. That has been a recipe for disaster. They could not get massive military support for any neocon policies because they had railed against the second war on Iraq. So the only tool the neocons had was to fund rebels and terrorist with arms. The result is civil wars throughout the region. Iraq was stable when GWB left office.
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