|
I wrote this article for my blog, and it dealt with the foreign policy initiatives Mitt Romney was presenting to the public. It was a rebuke of the neoconservative philosophy that led us into two wars.
(it's been quite a long time since my last blog post, but I decided it was necessary to start writing again. With only a little over 40 days left before the election, I decided it was time to give my opinions on a few subjects. This is the first.)
I don't like neoconservatives. In my eyes, they have absolutely no redeeming qualities. Aside from disliking everything about their policies, I'm not real fond of the people either, the ones who espouse these views, the ones who prod us into things, the ones who point the finger but never take the blame. For more than 30 years, this country has been infiltrated by the neoconservative mindset, reaching the pinnacle from 2001 to 2006. If we go back down that road, we have only ourselves to blame.
Before I go off on a tangent about neoconservatives and the importance of this election, I need to give you a quick tutorial on who they are and what they believe. I also need to let you know why I have any semblance of authority speaking about neoconservatives. I received a Masters degree in political studies in 2009, and the focus of my final research was the rise of neoconservativism over the last 50 years and its affect on foreign policy, which also leads into domestic policy. A small piece of my work was shared at a political science conference in Oxford.
Now, as far as what neoconservatives believe, I will give you a very brief overview. For a long time during the 1960s and 1970s, neoconservativism had no home in the political spectrum. Most conservatives considered that perspective too liberal, while most liberals paid little attention to it—to their detriment, I might add. Fundamentally, neoconservatives believe that peace comes through strength or, in many cases, war. In fact, one of the leading early voices of neoconservatism, Jeane Kirkpatrick, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations from 1981 to 1985 under Ronald Reagan, wrote a book called Making War to Keep Peace. It underscores the neoconservative belief that America must use force whenever necessary to maintain its status of power in the world and to spread democracy to "dictatorships" and other "fledgling regimes."
If any of this sounds familiar, it's because almost all the leading neoconservative minds from the 1970s and 1980s came to real power when George W. Bush took office in 2001. At this point, you may be thinking that this is completely irrelevant to your life, and it sure doesn't seem related to this year's election. That's where you're wrong. One of the simple reasons for that is because many of the most outspoken neoconservatives from the Bush administration are now advising Mitt Romney on foreign policy.
If you think back to the Republican National Convention just a few short weeks ago, Condoleezza Rice gave one of the highlighted speeches. Obviously, she served as Bush's National Security Adviser and, eventually, his Secretary of State. She also spoke about the failure of not containing Saddam Hussein in Iraq as, potentially, resulting in a mushroom cloud. Remember that? In her speech at the RNC, one line struck me immediately when I heard it, and that was when she mentioned how our foreign policy is best when we have, "peace through strength." That brought Jeane Kirkpatrick's book back to my mind with a flood of nausea. It was not difficult to realize that the Republicans, in this year's convention, were parroting neoconservative ideas and principles, as the kind of foreign policy tenets Mitt Romney would use as president.
It's equally important to understand that neoconservatives view domestic policy in terms of foreign policy. Under Bush, there were two tax cuts for the wealthy, which had no cost offset. There is a prescription drug plan under Medicare, widely considered a failure, which the administration never bothered to pay for. Of course, I cannot forget to mention the two unfunded wars that are Bush's legacy. Obviously, Afghanistan was justified, but Iraq has no justification to this day. In other words, neoconservatives have no thought of deficits and, especially, no concerns about raising them. In many ways, their domestic policy is as misguided as their foreign policy. It puts off future payments for unnecessary or ill-advised programs until the next administration or next generation, however long they can keep the tab running. Neoconservatives do not cut deficits, and they only add to the national debt. This is the philosophy guiding Mitt Romney as much as anything else is right now.
Romney only has a handful of foreign policy advisors in the first place. If you follow politics closely, perhaps, too closely, if you're like me, you'll recognize some of the names. The aforementioned Condoleezza Rice, Dan Senor, a neoconservative and former spokesman for the Coastal Provisional Authority in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 under George W. Bush, and John McCain of "Bomb, Bomb Iran" notoriety are all top advisors to Romney. They take a very hard stance against Russia, just as early neoconservatives were extremely dead set against the Soviet Union and constantly trying to end the communist threat up to the point of potential war during the Reagan Administration. These are not happy-go-lucky people, who think that diplomacy and sanctions are good starting points to aggressive foreign policy negotiations. These people would answer the 3 AM phone call by saying, "Let's go to war," even before knowing what the situation was.
We've been down this road before, and it didn't end well for the American people. We lost thousands of our best and brightest in the military, squandered literally trillions of dollars on a war that was completely of choice, and ensured defense contractors, who, conveniently, often served as neoconservative advisors, got exceedingly wealthy during the eight years under Bush and beyond. I felt compelled to bring this news to people's attention, since I don't think the mainstream media or Fox news, which doesn't fall in that category, is covering this aspect of the campaign nearly well enough. I never claimed to be a journalist, but someone needs to point out what will happen, inevitably, if Romney is elected.
For me, this is not idle chatter. This is extremely serious. Our military is stretched beyond the brink, and saber rattling with Russia, China, and anyone in the Middle East who happens to offer a differing opinion is reckless at best and warmongering at worst, though I may be downplaying how bad it can be. I apologize to The Who for borrowing one of their song titles as the name of this blog post. Still, if we have learned anything from history, it surely has to be the fact that it has the tendency to repeat itself, and this country can't afford that. I'll leave you with what Pete Townshend wrote and Roger Daltrey sang: "And the world looks just the same, and history ain't changed. 'Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war…Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
|
