Thursday, April 28, 2016

Pat Buchanan on Trump's Foreign Policy Speech



By Patrick J. Buchanan

*  *  *

Whether the Establishment likes it or not - and it evidently does not - there is a revolution going on in America.

The old order in this capital city is on the way out, America is crossing a great divide, and there is no going back.

Donald Trump’s triumphant march to the nomination in Cleveland, virtually assured by his five-state sweep Tuesday, confirms it, as does his foreign policy address of Wednesday.

Two minutes into his speech before the Center for the National Interest, Trump declared that the “major and overriding theme” of his administration will be — “America first.” Right down the smokestack!

Gutsy and brazen it was to use that phrase, considering the demonization of the great anti-war movement of 1940-41, which was backed by the young patriots John F. Kennedy and his brother Joe, Gerald Ford and Sargent Shriver, and President Hoover and Alice Roosevelt.

Whether the issue is trade, immigration or foreign policy, says Trump, “we are putting the American people first again.”

U.S. policy will be dictated by U.S. national interests, candidate Trump declared.

By what he castigated, and what he promised, Trump is repudiating both the fruits of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy, and the legacy of Bush Republicanism and neoconservatism.

When Ronald Reagan went home, says Trump, “our foreign policy began to make less and less sense. Logic was replaced with foolishness and arrogance, which ended in one foreign policy disaster after another.”

* TRUE! ALL TRUE!

He lists the results of 15 years of Bush-Obama wars in the Middle East: civil war, religious fanaticism, thousands of Americans killed, trillions of dollars lost, a vacuum created that ISIS has filled.

(*NOD*)

Is he wrong here?

* NOPE! HE'S RIGHT!

How have all of these wars availed us?

Where is the “New World Order” of which Bush I rhapsodized at the U.N.?

(*SILENCE*)

Can anyone argue that our interventions to overthrow regimes and erect "democratic states" in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen have succeeded and been worth the price we have paid in blood and treasure, and the devastation we have left in our wake?

(*CONTINUING SILENCE*)

George W. Bush declared that America’s goal would become “to end tyranny in our world.” An utterly utopian delusion, to which Trump retorts by recalling John Quincy Adams’ views on America: “She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”

(*STANDING OVATION*)

To the neocons’ worldwide crusade for "democracy," Trump’s retort is that it was always a “dangerous idea” to think “we could make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming Western democracies.”

We are “overextended,” Trump declared; “We must rebuild our military.”

(*HALF-NOD*)

* TRUMP IS CORRECT THAT WE'RE OVER-EXTENDED. AS TO "REBUILDING" OUR MILITARY... WHAT TRUMP IS CALLING FOR ISN'T THROWING GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD AND FEEDING THE SAME MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX THAT HAS TIME AND AGAIN PLACED ITS NEEDS - AND ITS GREED - ABOVE THE NATIONAL INTEREST. NO... WHAT TRUMP SEEMS TO BE CALLING FOR IS RATIONALIZING AND REORDERING OUR SPENDING PRIORITIES TO CREATE THE SORT OF MILITARY AMERICA REQUIRES TO DEFEND OURSELVES AND OUR VITAL NATIONAL INTERESTS AS WE RATIONALIZE OUR ALLIANCES AND REEXAMINE EXACTLY WHAT "SERVING THE NATIONAL INTEREST" ACTUALLY ENTAILS.

Our NATO allies have been freeloading for half a century.

* TRUE!

NAFTA was a lousy deal.

* ALSO TRUE! (OBVIOUSLY TRUE!)

In running up $4 trillion in trade surpluses since Bush I, the Chinese have been eating our lunch.

* YEP...

(*SIGH*)

This may be rankest heresy to America’s elites, but Trump outlines a foreign policy past generations would have recognized as common sense: Look out for your own country and your own people first.

(*ANOTHER STANDING OVATION*)

Instead of calling President Putin names, Trump says he would talk to the Russians to “end the cycle of hostility” if he can.

(*NOD*)

This writer served in President Reagan’s White House...

* YEP! HE SURE DID!

...and the Gipper was always seeking a way to get the Russians to negotiate.

(*NOD*)

He leapt at the chance for a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva... and Reykjavik.

(*ANOTHER NOD*)

“Our goal is peace and prosperity, not war,” says Trump, “unlike other candidates, war and aggression will not be my first instinct.”

* LET ME REITERATE, MY FRIENDS; CRUZ'S CHOICE OF NEOCON CARLY FIORINA AS HIS CHOSEN RUNNING MATE...

(*PAUSE*)

...DEMONSTRATES TO ME THAT CRUZ MAY WELL HAVE MORE IN COMMON WITH THE NEOCONS (THE BUSH FAMILY, LINDSEY GRAHAM, JOHN MCCAIN) THAN WITH RAND PAUL, RON PAUL... OR RONALD REAGAN FOR THAT MATTER.

* AND SPEAKING OF RAND PAUL...

(*SIGH*)

BOTH RAND PAUL AND RON PAUL SHOULD LOGICALLY BE SOUNDING THE ALARM BELL CONCERNING FIORINI - JUST AS I HAVE BEEN DOING.

Dwight Eisenhower ended the war in Korea and kept us out of any other.

* YEP.

Richard Nixon ended the war in Vietnam, negotiated arms agreements with Moscow, and made an historic journey to open up Mao’s China.

* YEP.

Reagan used force three times in eight years. He put Marines in Lebanon, liberated Grenada and sent FB-111s over Tripoli to pay Col. Gadhafi back for bombing a Berlin discotheque full of U.S. troops. [Please note:] Reagan later believed putting those Marines in Lebanon, where 241 were massacred, to be the worst mistake of his presidency.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

(*NOD*)

Military intervention for reasons of ideology or nation building is not an Eisenhower or Nixon or Reagan tradition. It is not a Republican tradition. It is a Bush II-neocon deformity, an aberration that proved disastrous for the United States and the Middle East.

* TRUTH...!!!

The New York Times headline declared that Trump’s speech was full of “Paradoxes,” adding, “Calls to Fortify Military and to Use It Less.” But isn’t that what Reagan did - conduct the greatest military buildup since Ike, then, from a position of strength, negotiate with Moscow a radical reduction in nuclear arms?

* YES! THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT REAGAN DID!

“We’re getting out of the nation-building business,” says Trump.

* FROM TRUMP'S MOUTH TO GOD'S EARS! I PRAY TO GOD TRUMP GETS THE CHANCE TO TURN THIS DREAM INTO REALITY!

“The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.” No more surrenders of sovereignty on the altars of “globalism.”

Is that not a definition of a patriotism that too many among our arrogant elites believe belongs to yesterday?

* YES. YES IT IS. GOD BLESS DONALD TRUMP. AND IF CRUZ WERE HALF THE MAN I ONCE THOUGHT HIM TO BE HE'D BE ECHOING MY SENTIMENT - AT LEAST WHERE TRUMP'S FOREIGN POLICY AND TRADE POLICY ARE CONCERNED.

* AND AGAIN FOLKS... BOTH RAND PAUL AND RON PAUL SHOULD BE LAUDING TRUMP'S SPEECH - AND RAILING AGAINST CRUZ'S DECISION TO DECLARE THAT IF GIVEN THE NOMINATION HE WOULD PUT NEOCON CARLY FIORINI A HAIR'S BREATH FROM THE PRESIDENCY.

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