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 ...
And has contributed to the violent destruction of Christian communities throughout the islamic world. Pointing this out 10 years ago would have got you purged from this forum, pursued by a pack of mad dogs howling for your blood.
It is good to see some people have finally recovered from this madness.
Absolutely...Like the other Bush becoming the CIA boss was no mistake.
Should have been split into three nations along ethnic and religious lines. Some of us were called crazy for suggesting that. Now the world is looking at a possible all out Sunni and Shiite regional war.
George Herbert Walker, American International Corporation, 120 Broadway.
The reason is the “guilt” over dead civilians in Germany and Japan.
I think the reason is that Germany and Japan were the last non-Communist, non-politically correct opponents we've had in war--and Japan has picked up a certain amount of PC-ness since then.
For a while there the Israelis were the only western power that regularly won wars against Communists (under left wing governments, ironically), and now they've caught the same disease the rest of us have.
OTOH, the Realists, made up of Dems and republicans say humanitarianism and nation building are admirable things, but we shouldn't include them in our foreign policy. We should act only in our self interest.
Then you have two other groups, rightwing isolationists and leftwing anti war pacifists, but these two don't have much influence on US foreign policy.
Look at Libya. When events began to unfold there early in 2011, the NeoCons came out agitatating for Obama to intervene unilaterally. Bob Gates, the top realist in the Obama administration, said Obama wouldn't intervene because it wasn't in our self interest.
Before long 3 prominent liberal interventionists(Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power) had worked up a multilateral agreement involving the UN, Nato, and the Arab League. Based on that, Obama intervened.
The NeoCons praised Obama for intervening. Bill Kristol proclaimed Obama to be a "Born Again NeoCon". But they still criticized him. He should have gone in immediately when we told him to. They complained that because he went in multilaterally, he was leading from behind. And some, like John Bolton, complained because Obama didn't put boots on the ground.
Then 2 of the top realists, Kissinger and Baker, published an editorial in WaPo in which they complained that the US should be more realistically Idealist. They also warned that Libya could blow up in our face. Which it did with Benghazi.
Now you have the same conflicts going on with whether or not to intervene in Syria.
Very interesting history lesson there. Thanks.
It's good news when even formerly die-hard neoconservative allies like Gingrich have started to jump off the sinking PNAC ship. It's a shame that it took trillions of wasted dollars for people like him to see the light.
Remember, not only were neoconservatives behind the Bush administration's misguided and mostly failed crusade for "global democracy," they also represent the most vocal advocates of liberal immigration policy (amnesty and de facto open borders) in the GOP. Get rid of them and the Republican party will return to sanity and electability.
George Kennan outlined the containment policy in 1948. This policy governed relations with the old soviet union for the next 40 years.
The Containment Policy toward the soviet union postulated that communism
was a bogus economic system. That all the USA needed to do was keep the
soviet union from expanding —and its economy would eventually collapse of its own weight.
And the soviet union would implode.
This is precisely what happened in 1991 more than 40 years later. The hard thing to recognize here is that
all the wars against the soviet union’s proxies—korea, viet nam etc—
—korea viet nam—were diversions. In much the same way as in the third of the tolken trilogy “The Return of the King”
The Wizard Gandalf and Aragorn decide to draw out the hosts of Mordor with an assault on the Black Gate,
providing a distraction so that the two hobbits (Frodo and Sam) may have a chance of reaching Mount Doom
and destroy the One Ring, unseen by the Eye of Sauron”
Viet Nam and Korea were just a diversion or a play for time —an effort to contain the soviet union —to give the soviet union time
to collapse of its own weight—which is what happened.
I don’t think that there is a political or military solution
to the problems posed by the moslem world. However, there is a business
solution.
That solution is to collapse the cost of energy and water. Its pretty obvious the
reasoning for collapsing the cost of energy. You defund the gulf states who bankroll
much of the mischief in the middle east and around the world. Anyone following
events in the US energy sector knows that this enterprise is at last underway—with
little help from the government— . and it will yield some amazing fruits within
the next decade.
What’s stranger is to claim that collapsing the cost of water—specifically desalinated water—
is key to success. Basically if you cut the cost of water desalination and tranport low enough —
then it becomes possible to scale up desert farming and turn the deserts of the world green and
double the size of the habitable earth.( here’s good review of a couple technologies that promise to cut the cost
of desalination to 1/10th current costs. http://www.independentnews.com/news/article_bbb4926e-f00f-11e2-8319-0019bb2963f4.html there are more contenders.)
Collapsing the cost of desalination and water transport would do for the world’s deserts
in the 21st century what mechanized farming and railroads did for the world’s plains
in the 20th century.
Why would it be important to make it possible say,....—to turn the deserts of north africa green?
imho the europeans are going to kick out their moslem populations eventually. North africa will
provide a place for the moslems to go. Basically, for example France’s algerians will be returned to
algeria.
here’s a good primer on the coming revolutions in energy and water http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store/dp/B0089Z7V6Y
Germany and Italy were part of Western Civilization, and Japan was well along on its way to joining Western Civilization. All needed long term occupations and security treaties that are still in effect.
The Containment Policy toward the soviet union postulated that communism was a bogus economic system. That all the USA needed to do was keep the soviet union from expanding —and its economy would eventually collapse of its own weight.
And the soviet union would implode.
The same "palaeocons" who nowadays are pacifists branded Kennan's strategy as "soft on Communism." That's right, the John Birchers and the Liberty Lobbyists back then wanted to fight the Commies. They even defended the military draft! Their conversion to pacifism has been very recent.
We should not be there at all. Just leave USA and keep our money and military here!
The problem really wasn’t intervention, it was lack of follow through. We already should have known from what happened in Afghanistan in the 90s what happens when you blow the hell out of things then walk away. You need to stick around, make things better. If you’re not going to help with the rebuild then yes don’t intervene. Of course that has it’s own problems, or have we already forgotten who the primary source of money for the intifada was.
That’s right, the John Birchers and the Liberty Lobbyists back then wanted to fight the Commies. They even defended the military draft! Their conversion to pacifism has been very recent.
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You have to understand that the Obama administration considers these people to be his greatest enemy. Greater than anyone overseas. That’s why overseas enemies seem to be friends and overseas friends seem to be enemies The fundamental change in the direction of America includes defeating the modern equivalent of the John Birchers and the Liberty Lobbyists.
Hey Obama’s father/mentor was a communist.
Obama wants to square the circle.
Had they done so, they would have had the same problems on their hands in the 1990's as we had in the 2000's.
Bush Sr and James Baker opposed the overthrow of Hussein in Iraq for good reasons, not because of "timidity." They realized that his overthrow would be followed by sectarian and tribal strife that would probably spread beyond Iraq, and so it's better to have the secular devil you know than the Islamist devil you don't running things in Iraq. Baker and his fellow realists were proven right.
The realist school of foreign policy, represented by James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Cap Weinberger, and to some extent Bush Sr, has always been far more sane and fruitful than the naive and reckless crusades for "global democracy" peddled by the neoconservatives like Wolfowitz, Ledeen, Frum, and Feith. Bush the younger's main problem in geopolitics was surrounding himself with neoconservative handlers rather than realists.
We would have ended up in a post war occupation a decade earlier.
There was no point in interfering with an Arab affair in the first place
The way to execute this defeat by obama is byo amnesty. If Obama can somehow get amnesty for 12 million illegals—then either Florida or Texas —or both— will be flipped to an inter-generational win in the democrat party. That will be all the dems need to keep the white house for decades. Why? Because the dems already have inter-generational control of New York Massachusetts Illinois and California. All they need is one more big state and the white house and the bureaucracy is controlled by the democrats for decades.
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