The Political Inquirer

I decided to swing into Pat Buchanan’s page at Human Events, because I hadn’t gone in a while, and I returned to find the same intelligent and thoughtful man as before, he is probably one of the greatest critics of the neocon take-over that’s in the mainstream these days. In many of his most recent columns, he has taken aim at their disastrous foreign policy, and has made a head shot:

Looking back on the years since 9-11, it is hard to give the Bush foreign policy passing grades. We pushed NATO eastward and alienated Russia. We have 140,000 Army and Marine Corps troops tied down in Iraq in a war now in its sixth year, from which our NATO allies have all extricated themselves. We have another war going in Afghanistan, where the situation is as grave as it has been since we went in.

The Bush democracy crusade was put on the shelf after producing election triumphs for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, after Iraq, appears to be headed there, as well.

America remains the first economic and military power on earth. But after seven years of Bush, we no longer inspire the awe or hopes we once did. We are no longer the world hegemonic power of the neocons’ depiction. And the reason is that Bush embraced their utopian ideology of democratic empire and listened to their siren’s call to be the Churchill of his age.

Of Bush, it may be said he was a far better politician and candidate than his father, but as a statesman and world leader, he could not carry the old man’s loafers.

And with the past seven years in the books, both Bush and the neocons have become irrelevant. Not to mean that their damage is over with just yet. Any person running around proclaiming this to be 1938 all over again, regardless of their other views, can fit right in with the neocon crowd. We all know Iran is the most effective military power around, just like Germany was at the time. Iran is also annexing their neighbors. Oh wait, the United States is occupying most of their neighbors.

I also find Pat’s term use of “democratic empire” to be comical, since the two things do not mend together very well. An empire is ruled by an excessive executive branch (which is being called for, perhaps not coincidentally), and the government of an empire has to be large.

They want Bush to be the new Churchill rather than the new Chamberlain. This is also fitting since WW2 saw a few socialists (Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill) fighting more socialists (nazi Germany).

For Conservatives and Neocons alike, World War II is the ultimate event to bring forth emotion and argument in support of going to war. To stop the evil of our time, or whichever profound statement is being made. What they fail to mention is that the causes of World War II were … World War I, the biggest crapshoot and waste of human life, possibly in history.

Why did Neville Chamberlain go to Munich? How did Munich lead to World War II? The seeds of the crisis were planted at the Paris peace conference of 1919. There, the victorious Allies carved the new nation of Czechoslovakia out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

But instead of following their principle of self-determination, the Allies placed under the rule of 7 million Czechs 3 million Germans, 3 million Slovaks, 800,000 Hungarians, 150,000 Poles and 500,000 Ruthenians. These foolish decisions spat upon Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points, under the terms of which the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians had laid down their arms.

These individuals were denied the right to self determination. As were millions across the world who were victims of the superficial national boundaries constructed in the post-World War I era, the Middle East was especially hit by this. Being beaten down by the allies, and hitting hard times, the Nazi’s became increasingly influential. The first item on Hitler’s list was to reunite the Sudeten Germans with their countrymen.

The next issue was Danzig, a town of 95% Germans that was taken away in 1919 as well.

This was palpable nonsense. Hitler had already turned to the next item on his menu, Danzig, a city of 350,000 Germans, detached from the Reich at Versailles and made a Free City to give the new Poland an outlet to the sea. Hitler did not want war with Poland. Indeed, he wanted the kind of alliance with Poland he had with Italy. But, first, Danzig must be resolved.

Here, too, the British Government agreed: Danzig should be returned. For of all the amputations of German lands and peoples at Versailles, European statesmen, even Winston Churchill, regarded Danzig and the Polish Corridor that sliced Germany in two as the most outrageous. The problem was the Poles, who refused to discuss Danzig.

So apparently appeasement in this case, was to discuss giving back to Germany, what was harshly taken from them in 1919, where millions of Germans were removed from their country without much thought. Even Churchill realized the insanity of some of this. This then led to a possible blunder on the part of the British:

Chamberlain, now humiliated, mocked by Tory back-benchers, panicking over wild false rumors of German attacks on Romania and Poland, made the greatest blunder in British history. Unasked, he issued a war guarantee to Poland, empowering a Polish dictatorship of colonels that had joined Hitler in dismembering Czechoslovakia to drag the British Empire into war with Germany over a city, Danzig, the British thought should be returned to Germany.

If this is 1938 all over again, the Kurds in northern Iraq are more suited for Hitler comparisons than Iran is. After all, they are seeking to unite around a common people, and even use questionable means to do so.

Some say that war should be a last option, to fix a problem. This is illogical because for every one problem fixed by an armed conflict, you create one new one, if not more. So at best, you have a 1:1 ratio for problems. We have woven quite a nice web during the twentieth century, with one war going into new ones. World War I led directly into World War II, whose unresolved effects created the Cold War, then the radicalization of Islam with the Soviets in Afghanistan, conflicts of Israel after the UN created it post-WW2, the Americans occupying middle east countries, and the it goes on and on and on.

Sure, you can say evil leaders have to be removed with violence, war, and rebellion. But the worst of leaders are also born from war and rebellion. Leninism and Stalinism. Events in Russia led to the Communist Revolution of 1917, which got Russia pulled out of World War I. Stalinism emerged in the times leading up to, and after, World War II. Fidel Castro overthrew the government in Cuba during the Cold War times.

Neoconservative ideology has had more effects yet, according to Buchanan:

Neoconservative ideology, not U.S. national interests, McClellan is saying, motivated Bush to launch one of the longest and most divisive wars in U.S. history.

When loyalists defect and seek to profit from that defection, it is usually a sign of a failing presidency. And, indeed, events suggest that history is passing Bush by.

Despite the administration’s designation of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and of Syria and Iran as state sponsors of terror with whom we do not negotiate, America’s clients are ignoring America.

Israel has ignored Bush’s demand that it stop building and expanding settlements on a West Bank that is to be the heartland of a Palestinian state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been secretly negotiating with Syria for the return of the Golan Heights in exchange for peace.

When America refused to play honest broker between Jerusalem and Damascus, Turkey, at Israel’s request, stepped into the role.

The policy and practice of the United States, is the number one recruitment tool for terrorists. Out yourselves in the shoes of those in the Middle East, would you look more kindly upon Osama Bin Laden, making attempts to preach self determination, or the United States, whose military is occupying your streets, and their leaders saying they know what’s best for YOU.

Ron Paul attempted to make this point a few times, but not strongly enough in my opinion. Imagine if China said one day “communism is a wonderful thing, we need to make the world safe for communism,” and began occupying countries to spread communism, what would you do?

People do not like self determination being taken away from them. When someone comes in and imposes themselves, people don’t LIKE that. This is seen over and over, when someone tells me I don’t understand history because of my foreign policy views, I wonder if they understand not only history, but basic human behavior and beliefs. Abraham Lincoln and the Union forces came in to take away the Confederates rights to self determination (they removed themselves from the Union, which by the way, is a voluntary pact between states). I’m not here to discuss the morality of slavery or what Lincoln did. But to look at the effects of taking self determination away. It led to brutal race relations for over a century, bloody reconstruction, political strife, and economic bust. So much for war fixing problems.

We are still feeling the aftershocks of Imperialism, the greatest blow to human self determination, possibly in history. Perhaps terrorism is another outlet for this, I don’t know, and it still doesn’t make their tactics right. I just find it ironic that we are fighting in Iraq, mainly fighting sectarian violence, after toppling a dictator we helped in the past, who ruled a country whose borders were created after World War I, by a foreign body, which clumped all these ethnic and sectarian groups together.

In those circumstances, democracy and unity are unlikely to win.

117,000 good Americans died in 1917 and 1918, so that the DOA League of Nations could be created, so that superficial boundaries would be made to cause quagmires for generations to come, and so that Germany could be stomped into accepting the likes of Adolf Hitler. Wars have never been good to American soldiers or American interests in recent memory.

A lot of good Americans also died, for the rise of the Soviet Union, and the spread of Stalinism across half of Europe. For every problem solved (nazi Germany) through war, more are created.

One of the biggest criticisms against Iran is that their leaders denies the holocaust. That makes him an idiot, not necessarily dangerous and in need of an attack right away. You do realize, that Israel has … on a couple of occasions .. been known to deal with certain nuclear installations (cough 2007, 1981) in the past.

As a certain congressman stated in April 2006, “It’s amazing how soon after being thoroughly discredited over the charges levied against Saddam Hussein the neocons are willing to use the same arguments against Iran. Vocal opponents of an attack on Iran will again be labeled unpatriotic, unsupportive of the troops, and sympathetic to Iran’s radicals.”

Big government loves patriotism, because people are less inclined to use their brains, why do you think nazi Germany, modern China, and all these others try to instill mindless patriotism? We were attacked at home once in seven years, and that was because of a failure of government. The “they will follow us home” argument has been disproven by reality. Spain had troops in Iraq when they were the victims of a terrorist attack on the Madrid subway. They removed troops and haven’t had that since. Britain was attacked in 7/7/04 while having troops in Iraq, who were they following home?

Eventually, we will come to realize that the Wilsonian idealism of using America’s resources to promote democracy around the world through force is a seriously flawed policy. Wilson pretended to be spreading democracy worldwide, and yet women in the U.S. at that time were not allowed to vote. Democracy, where the majority dictates the rules, cannot protect minorities and individual rights. And in addition, using force to impose our will on others almost always backfires. There’s no reason why our efforts in the 21st century to impose a Western-style government in Iraq will be any more successful than the British were after World War I. This especially can’t work if democracy is only an excuse for our occupation and the real reasons are left unrecognized.

It boils down to the fact that we don’t have any sound reasons to continue this fighting. The original reasons for the war never existed, and the new reasons aren’t credible. We hear only that we must carry on so those who have already suffered death and injury didn’t do so in vain. If the original reasons for starting the war were false, simply continuing in the name of those fallen makes no sense. More loss of life can never justify earlier loss of life if they died for false reasons. This being the case it’s time to reassess the policies that have gotten us into this mess. (Ron Paul, A Foerign Policy of Freedom)

Yes, the neocon’s (who now run the Republican Party) foreign policy is based off Winston Churchill, a British socialist and party-switcher, who lost the first election after the war, and Woodrow Wilson, a liberal Democrat academic, who also was a racist (ex. he screened “Birth of a Nation” at the White House, and so on). That’s who your foreign policy comes from. Mine comes from Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison.

The Neocons were able to hijack the Republican Party after 9-11, and were able to promote their ideology, and even put it into practice. Yet after all of this, they are irrelevant and hated. These scum, and their henchmen in the religious right, have given us the likes of John McCain and Mike Huckabee. They are from the left, and therefore, they are of big government. Occupying half the world takes a lot of money and effort.

Buchanan asks us:

What has Bush’s refusal to talk to Hamas, Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran done to make either Israel or America more secure?

The answer: nothing. Like all war, occupation, and refusal to talk. Now they are viciously going after Barack Obama, for daring to claim he would actually deal with them. Gone are the times of the 1990’s when Republicans were willing to go against unnecessary war (Bosnia, etc), and question the powers that be. Now they are those powers, and they have paid dearly, and will pay dearly in November.

War, occupation, and refusal to talk have given us Stalinism, Leninism, Fascism, Hitler, the Holocaust, Genocide of all types, imperialism, the Soviet Union, terrorism, and much more.

And they say it will be Armageddon if we leave Iraq and/or talk with our enemies?