PAUL RYAN FITS with Mitt Romney’s Pentagon giveaway mindset.
David Stockman, Reagan’s former budget man, who isn’t exactly a foreign policy guy, does the math. He begins by naming Paul Ryan’s foreign policy stance what it is, neoconservative imperialism.
Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk, though the true conservatives of modern times — Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Robert A. Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Gerald R. Ford — would have had no use for the neoconconservative imperialism that the G.O.P. cobbled from policy salons run by Irving Kristol’s ex-Trotskyites three decades ago. These doctrines now saddle our bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion “defense” budget in a world where we have no advanced industrial state enemies and have been fired (appropriately) as the global policeman.
Indeed, adjusted for inflation, today’s national security budget is nearly double Eisenhower’s when he left office in 1961 (about $400 billion in today’s dollars) — a level Ike deemed sufficient to contain the very real Soviet nuclear threat in the era just after Sputnik. By contrast, the Romney-Ryan version of shrinking Big Government is to increase our already outlandish warfare-state budget and risk even more spending by saber-rattling at a benighted but irrelevant Iran.
The other thing Paul Ryan does is continue the tradition of giving the Pentagon more strength over the State Department, which has just begun to recover under Secy. Clinton’s tutelage and strong hand, though she still plays second fiddle to DoD.
graphic via Shutterstock
As far as I’m concerned the US is bankrupt because of all the money spent fighting wars we shouldn’t have fought. And if you want to bring even more financial woes to this country, please vote for Romney/Ryan. I’m sure they’ll oblige you by taking us into another war. I’m tired of this country playing the world’s policeman. It’s time we took care of our country. If the people of Syria and other countries want freedom and democracy, let them fight for it. I wish them well and hope they succeed but we can’t and shouldn’t do it for them because it only makes us look like the perennial bad guy, puts our own troops at risk and breaks the bank as far as funding goes.
Well, the realist view of foreign affairs has real points.
However, I’m on the side of intervening when genocide is present. I don’t care what it costs the U.S.
I was against the Libya bombing, but we got involved because it was doable.
I’m not certain what to do in Syria, but the mass torture and murder is reaching beyond war crimes, including rape and killing children, so intervention of some measure is approaching. Unfortunately, it is now a political decision because of the election, which will wait until after November. That’s understandable, but depending what Israel does with Iran it could get dicey.
Where is the UN in all of the this? Why is it the US that must always take the lead? And then all the flak because of it? Why must we shoulder the burden? I’m as concerned and terribly sad about what is happening in Syria but if Assad is going to be over thrown he better expect no better than what Saddam got. There are consequences for him to consider. He should take his bank accounts and run as fast as he can as far as I’m concerned. As to Iran that’s a whole different matter and could get worse than dicey.