{"id":82435,"date":"2015-12-16T15:58:55","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T23:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=82435"},"modified":"2015-12-16T16:08:02","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T00:08:02","slug":"and-now-for-the-gay-libertarian-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=82435","title":{"rendered":"And Now For The Gay Libertarian Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

BLOG<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The two frontrunners for the GOP presidential nomination aren\u2019t drinking the neocon Kool-Aid, and this became readily apparent on the stage of the GOP presidential debate<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Donald Trump opposed the Iraq war<\/a>, thinks we should be happy<\/a> Putin is taking on ISIS in Syria, and more recently called Charles Krauthammer a \u201cwarmonger<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

This last alone would be enough to provoke his excommunication from the ranks of acceptable GOP nominees, but to make matters worse The Donald is horning in on the neocons\u2019 hate-all-Muslims shtick while combining it with heretical \u201cisolationist\u201d views. You can hear the teeth-grinding all the way from Washington and the West side of Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Ted Cruz is another highly problematic candidate from the neocon point of view. His major sin in their eyes is his co-sponsoring<\/a> of the USA Freedom Act, which kinda-sorta<\/a> (but not really) reined in collection of bulk meta-data by US government agencies. <\/p>\n

Aside from that, however, there\u2019s his deviation from the neocon party line on Syria, \u201cdemocracy\u201d promotion, and the whole \u201cregime change\u201d policy, which has been nothing but a disaster for both the United States and its targets.<\/p>\n

What we saw on the stage was prefigured in the days leading up to the debate. In a recent speech<\/a> to the Heritage Foundation, Cruz said <\/p>\n

\u201cMore data from millions of law abiding Americans is not always better data. Hoarding tens of billions of records of ordinary citizens didn\u2019t stop Fort Hood. It didn\u2019t stop Boston. It didn\u2019t stop Chattanooga. It didn\u2019t stop Garland. And it failed to detect the San Bernardino plot.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Neocon favorite Rubio has been running attacks ads aimed at Cruz, claiming his support for the USA Freedom Act has put the nation in peril, but Cruz didn\u2019t back down. And Rand Paul came to his defense:<\/p>\n

\u201cMarco gets it completely wrong. We are not any safer through the bulk collection of all Americans’ records. In fact, I think we’re less safe. We get so distracted by all of the information, we’re not spending enough time getting specific immigration \u2013 specific information on terrorists.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cThe other thing is, is the one thing that might have stopped San Bernardino, that might have stopped 9\/11 would have been stricter controls on those who came here. And Marco has opposed at every point increased security \u2013 border security for those who come to our country.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

In an election in which protecting the nation\u2019s borders is at the center of the political debate, the Cruz-Paul beat-down of Rubio on this issue has effectively put him out of the running. Rubio can repeat the \u201cradical Islamic terrorism\u201d mantra until he\u2019s blue in the face, but he\u2019ll never get over this huge contradiction.\n<\/p>\n

The argument over regime-change in Syria, Libya and throughout the Middle East was substantial \u2013 and resulted in a clear victory for the anti-regime changers, namely Cruz and Paul. Cruz told the audience that we shouldn\u2019t intervene in Syria\u2019s civil war and that \u201cas bad as [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad was and is, radical jihadis controlling Syria would be a significant turn for the worse.\u201d He skewered not only Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on this question, but also \u201cthe Washington Republicans,\u201d a trenchant phrase.<\/p>\n

The Libyan intervention, says Cruz, was a \u201cdisaster,\u201d and replacing authoritarian leaders like Qaddafi and Assad with radical jihadists is inimical to US interests. He challenged Rubio on his support for the Hillary-Obama policy of regime change in Libya \u2013 which led to chaos and jihadist dominance of that unfortunate country.<\/p>\n

This is not to say Cruz is an anti-interventionist: not by a country mile. He wants to \u201ccarpet-bomb\u201d ISIS, and deploy \u201cwhatever ground troops are necessary.\u201d However, he also denounces the obsession with \u201cboots on the ground\u201d as \u201ca talismanic demonstration of strength. That is getting the deployment of military force precisely backwards. This is not a game of risk, where politicians move armies around to demonstrate their machismo.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he said this in his Heritage speech, this was rightly interpreted as a frontal assault on Marco Rubio, the neocon poster boy, and the reference to \u201cmachismo\u201d was \u2013 again, rightly \u2013 seen as a hit on the chickenhawkish tendency of laptop bombardiers with impeccable neoconservative credentials but no military experience or knowledge. This provoked lots of incoming fire from such worthies
\n as Bret Stephens<\/a>, Stephen Hayes<\/a>, and Max Boot<\/a>. The neocons are particularly perturbed that Cruz has had the gumption to attack them by name, and their anger was channeled in this piece<\/a> by Eliana Johnson and Tim Alberta in National Review<\/i>:<\/p>\n

\u201c[W]hen Ted Cruz, on the campaign trail in Iowa and again in an interview<\/a> with Bloomberg News, recently pointed the finger at \u2018neocons\u2019 in an attempt to defend his own understanding of American interests abroad, the response among some conservative foreign-policy experts \u2013 many of whom the term has been used to disparage \u2014 was of shock, anger, and dismay. \u2018He knows that the term in the usual far-left and far-right parlance means warmonger, if not warmongering Jewish advisers, so it is not something he should\u2019ve done,\u2019 says Elliott Abrams, a former Bush administration National Security Council official and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. \u2018It\u2019s an epithet. It\u2019s always used pejoratively. And the main thing I resent about it is, it\u2019s a label, it\u2019s a way of avoiding arguments,\u2019 says Eliot Cohen, a Bush administration State Department official and a professor at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s School of Advanced International Studies.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

We aren\u2019t allowed to utter the word \u201cneoconservative,\u201d unless of course we\u2019re Irving Kristol, who wrote a whole book about neoconservatism, or unless we\u2019re Eliana Johnson, one of the authors of the article cited above, who last year wrote a piece<\/a> declaring \u201cthe neocons are back\u201d!<\/p>\n

We aren\u2019t allowed to talk about the neocons because to do so would expose them for what they are: a political cult that glories in war, and has infused American politics with its toxic ideology of perpetual conflict and unmitigated statism. Talk of \u201cneocons\u201d also brings to the surface the neoconservative institutions that have been key to pushing America into one disastrous military adventure after another. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLOG: The two frontrunners for the GOP presidential nomination aren\u2019t drinking the neocon Kool-Aid, and this became readily apparent on the stage of the GOP presidential debate. Donald Trump opposed the Iraq war, thinks we should be happy Putin is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29611,4677],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neoconservatives","category-republicans"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t