If the title doesn't give you the gist of the article, the fact that the article's google pole position is held by antiwar.com should. But here's the thesis of the article:
"The bell is tolling for the GOP warmonger caucus. Unless the leading Republican presidential contenders join Ron Paul – soon – in detaching themselves from the failed Bush policies, many more Americans are likely to conclude that the Republicans are crazy. And to vote accordingly."Bandow is beside himself that Republicans (not just the GOP presidential candidates) don't agree with him and Ron Paul and Usama Bin Laden about the Global war against Jihadists, and he r_e_p_e_a_t_e_d_l_y proclaims that Paul is not "blaming America" when he says that we are the subject of the Jihad because we have a military presence in that part of the world and because we have been bombing Iraq for the past decade. It sounds to me like Paul is saying that we are causing Jihadists to hate us or that we are forcing them to defend themselves, doesn't it to you?
But that is a semantic game Paul is playing and it isn't really the issue. We have interests in a stable middle east. Israel deserves our support. Oil is a commodity that we need to be able to buy. We cannot allow Jihadists to plot, scheme, train, and arm themselves unhindered in their war against us. A decisive number of GOP primary voters understand this; ergo, it stands to reason that all (save one) persons seeking to win a GOP primary understand (or at least pretend to understand) this.
But even a Republican candidate for president who doesn't view foreign affairs the same way as George W. Bush (or W's zionist neo-con puppetmasters!!!!) can appreciate that Republican voters balk at suggestions that Bush's motives for this war were nefarious; that the mistakes or misjudgments made in this war--as opposed to every other war in history, were extraordinary; or that we will be safe from Jihadist designs if we simply pull our troops out of Iraq (and are on our best Jihad-neutral behavior indefinitely).
Maybe if GOP primary poll samples included Liberal journalists and other pacifist-lite Americans Ron Paul would be polling higher than 2%. Maybe.
cross-posted at WisdomisVindicated.
3 comments:
I think Ned Williams, in his toe-the-neocon-line homage to hysteria and paranoia, answers Mr. Bandow's question rather definitively: Yes, Republicans ARE crazy!
I will never understand how so many so-called (former) "conservatives" willfully refuse to rememeber that most insightful quote: "War is the health of the State."
When both liberals and "conservatives" march under the banner of Big Government, where are those who value freedom and liberty supposed to turn?
Just to point out, Doug Bandow was a staffer in the Reagan Administration.
Warmongering is not a traditional Republican past time, but is one of the Democrats. Just ask Wilson, FDR, Truman, LBJ, Clinton. Who were all of these guys?
Conservatives traditionally were skeptical of expansive war power, b/c of its radical power to destroy.
So what if he was a staffer in the Reagan Administration? Which raises another issue from the Bandow article that is kind of ironic. Was Bandow supportive of Reagan's "insertion" of troops into Beirut (as derided--without reference to Reagan, in his op/ed)?
To be clear, neither policy was a slam dunk, but Paul's trademark derision is bad form. He ought to go ahead and try for the Libertarian Party's nomination again.
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