Posted on 12/18/2018 10:32:49 PM PST by Forgotten Amendments
“Kristol was trying to remake the Republican Party,” Carlson says.
A significant part of Kristol’s GOP makeover project was portraying antiwar conservatives as heretics.
Carlson recounts, “Years later, writer Philip Weiss described a conversation he had with Kristol in which this [remaking the GOP] became explicit. There are Republicans, Kristol told Weiss, ‘of whom I disapprove so much that I won’t appear with them. That I’ve encouraged that they be expelled or not welcomed into the Republican Party.’”
“’I’d be happy if Ron Paul left and ran as a third party candidate. I was very happy when Pat Buchanan was allowed to go off and run as a third party candidate,’” Carlson recalls Weiss saying of his conversation with Kristol.
This is no secret. The most high-profile conservative proponents of a more restrained foreign policy over the last two decades—Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, and Rand Paul—were constant targets of Kristol long before the rise of Donald Trump.
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanconservative.com ...
Add Fred Barnes to that mix...Can’t stand the guy! Used to rail against him years ago on FR.
Thanks for that post.
+1 Can’t agree more.
I hear you, but I too supported going into those places and kicking some ass, after what they did on 9-11 and the way Iraq HUMILIATED our country by not complying with the agreements that they signed to end the first Gulf War.
But I’ve changed my stance because I’m not an idiot either and I know that unless you bring people to their KNEES, as in WW2, they will simply ride you out, as has been done to us, since we dumped lives and treasure into those countries that had no intention of ever taking us seriously. A totally different conclusion from the first war, and something that should have never been attempted.
No problem. While I agree with the writer of this article in some sense I think that both sides have to allow the debate on this very important issue of what our national strategy should be.
Bill Kristol on one side trying to oust any conservative who is not for war is dumb.
Similarly, Ron Paul labeling everyone who is for a pre-emption national strategy policy as a neocon and globalist is also dumb.
It’s a very important debate and one we should have. I say make your arguments and let fellow conservatives decide what is best going forward. While I like a lot of what both of them have said over the years, they are the extremes on the issue of our National Strategy post 9/11. I admit I am closer to Kristol on the issue but that in no way means that I favor getting into every possible engagement. The war in Libya is a prime example. I said we shouldn’t help the Europeans at that time and I believe that has shown to be a disaster to our national interests as well as Europe’s.
There are a few things in that I can agree with and a few things I can’t. This particular item indicates a big picture issue that should be addressed:
>thoughtomator, the country harbored and protected an Islamo Fascist group that did attack us.
The Taliban, the de facto ruler of the nation, asked merely for the evidence that OBL was involved in 9/11, since that is perfectly normal and expected in any extradition request - every country does the same, including ours.
The details of how exactly that went down are something you should become familiar with. Eventually you will ask, as so many others, why Bush didn’t simply give them the proof and avoid what is now a generation-long war.
The Taliban were willing to turn OBL over given the evidence, and we give evidence in every other extradition case as a routine matter, yet it was specifically refused here.
While we’re at it, the American people can use this evidence too, as we don’t actually have it. I know that may seem astonishing, but go look - there is no public-domain information definitively pointing to OBL as the perpetrator of 9/11.
That's the core of the problem right there - someone in government is letting them come over - for political reasons. Japan somehow doesn't have to send an expeditionary force to Somalia to keep Somali bombers out of Tokyo - but we import future bombers to Minnesota and hand them welfare checks.
I was personally involved in the decision to move food to Somalia. The NGOs, which like CARE, Catholic Relief, CWS, MSF, etc., etc., have a large following in the Congress, complained mightily that they could not respond to famine because warlords were well armed. (It was a close thing that Somalia came along or Bush may have opted for the occupation of Southern Sudan.) Responding to that pressure, and to the fact that there was an extensive famine, the Marines were sent to Somalia. They accomplished their mission (or your mission, if you prefer). I should have been clear, the Marines left when they should have under the Bush plan. I was unaware that there were Marines in Somalia at the time of Black Hawk Down.
Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, Stephen Hayes, ........all neocons
Bill Kristol and his allies made it their life’s mission to purge the GOP and mainstream conservative media of any and voices that question our commitment to “nation building” foreign policy and an open borders immigration policy. For years, neoconservatives were successful at silencing or marginalizing their critics. Now the tides have turned - conservatives have finally realized that the Beltway elite internationalism peddled by Kristol would have been more at home among Clinton Democrats.
Foreign policy and national security are incredibly fickle subjects.
As the father of two Marines, if my sons get sent out to “war” I would like to know there is a clearly defined objective with an anticipated out come and a viable strategy to achieve that which comes from the military not from a politician.
Go, fight, win and come home.
I do understand there are times to occupy but I think that has been abused by politicians to such a degree that it is nearly unrecognizable.
Neoconservatives have this obsession with "global Democracy" and "nation building" - the insane idea that Third World tribal societies can be transformed into western-style constitutional democracies and market economies. A decade and a half of "nation-building" in Afghanistan has failed miserably, and the same enterprise in Iraq hasn't fared much better, because the primary loyalties there as in Afghanistan are to ethnic group, tribe, and religious sect rather than any abstract notion of a nation-state.
Moreover, the post-9/11 strike against the Taliban and Al Quaeda strongholds were clearly justified from a national security perspective, as are efforts against ISIS today as ISIS targets US and western countries for terrorist attack. However, in the neoconservative worldview, the fact that a country is run by a brutal or corrupt dictator is reason enough to launch a war for regime change and "democratization," in spite of the fact that the brutal dictator in question is usually the only thing keeping a powderkeg of tribal and sectarian rivalries from exploding into outright war. This is precisely what happened in Iraq and Libya when they were targeted for regime change, and what's going on now in Syria after Obama, Hillary, and McCain gave the "Arab Spring" their the green light.
One can love the US, and still see this as nonsense.
Andorra and Slovenia do not have forces in 74 countries around the world.
Iceland and Bhutan are not currently fighting two or three or four or five wars.
People like Kristol were part of that restraint too.
Check your back issues. Whatever else Kristol and friends were, they weren't restrained.
Andorra and Slovenia are not the United States any more than Iceland or Bhutan are. Red herring. Even worse for them, since Slovenia is part of the European Union and surrendered its sovereignty, Andorra is surrounded by two EU “big states”, Iceland cannot fend off the EU without the help of the USA if things come down to that, and Bhutan is bordered by Red China with whom they do not have diplomatic relations (and things would get hot for them if India got friendlier with China).
And what I mean with respect to Kristol is that he was typically not critical of having the rules of engagement that restrained US forces from absolute victory remain in place.
There is none.
The U.S. hasn't had a coherent policy in Afghanistan for at least 15 years.
After the invasion of Iraq in 2003 I wrote the bastard off as a retarded baboon.
I mentioned fighting for total victory in a previous post. If that means wiping out the warlords along with the Taliban and criminalizing Islam, so be it. Never mind putting the fear of the true God into Iran and Pakistan.
If there is “none”, then there is none applied. I absolutely agree that what has been in practice in Afghanistan is utterly incoherent.
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