Posted on 07/03/2009 9:11:35 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
There is no area in which Republicans have further strayed from our traditions than in foreign affairs.
Generations of conservatives followed the great advice of our Founding Fathers and pursued a restrained foreign policy that rebuffed entangling alliances and advised America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, not to "go abroad looking for dragons to slay."
Sen. Robert Taft, the stalwart of the Old Right, urged America to stay out of NATO. Dwight Eisenhower was elected on a platform promising to get us out of the conflict in Korea. Richard Nixon promised to end the war in Vietnam.
Republicans were highly critical of Bill Clinton for his adventurism in Somalia and Kosovo. As recently as 2000, George W. Bush campaigned on a "humbler" foreign policy and decried nation-building.
But our foreign policy today looks starkly different.
Neoconservatives who have come to power in both the Democratic and Republican parties argue that the U.S. must ether confront every evil in every corner of the globe or risk danger at home. We need to "fight them over there" they say, so we don't have to "fight them over here." This argument presents a false choice. We do not have to pick between interventionism and vulnerability. The complexity of our world is exactly why the lessons of our past should ring true and demand a return to a traditional, pro-American foreign policy: one of nonintervention.
Moving forward, I suggest that we as Americans adhere to these five principles:
1. We do not abdicate American sovereignty to global institutions...
2. We provide a strong national defense, but we do not police the world...
3. We obey the Constitution and follow the rule of law...
4. We do not engage in nation-building...
5. We stay out of the internal affairs of other nations...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
You are right, I agree.
Paul is correct on many issues, but wrong on this one. I don’t know that we could survive with isolationist policies. They could and would, I believe, hurt our economy drastically.
We never learn from history ... it’s mistakes or its successes it seems.
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