In a blog entry last week, I said that I wanted to put together a series on policies that I think conservatives should look for in a candidate. I decided to start the series with the topic that my perspective has changed the most on. That of foreign policy.
If you followed the primaries at all, you'll know that Ron Paul sounded more like the Democrats than the Republicans with regards to foreign policy. You'll also know that I was a big fan of Ron Paul. So clearly I had to reconcile the two, as it is obvious I'm not a liberal\Democrat.
I want to start with a bit of a history lesson. Many today think that being "conservative" includes a believe in a "strong military", mostly meaning that we need to spend a lot of money on our military so that we can face any challenge. As is pretty obvious in recent history, many have used this ideology to promote things like invading Iraq (twice) and forming and participating in alliances such as NATO and the UN. Something we've also seen a lot of lately is giving the president full power to send out military into an area, with or without approving votes from Congress.
However, that is not the traditional conservative viewpoint. This is actually the viewpoint of a group of people that are now called or neoconservatives or "neo-cons". While somewhat based on the conservative movement, neo-cons did introduce some major new ideas that was not included in previous conservative platforms. Related to foreign policy, here is an excerpt from this wikipedia article about neo-cons:
As compared with traditional conservatism and libertarianism, which also sometimes exhibits a non-interventionist strain, neoconservatism is characterized by an increased emphasis on defense capability, a willingness to challenge regimes deemed hostile to the values and interests of the United States, pressing for free-market policies abroad. Neoconservatives are strong believers in democratic peace theory.
If this sounds new to you, you may be wondering - what is the traditional conservative view? I'm glad you asked! :)
By definition, "conservative" indicates that proponents seek to keep to the traditional way of doing things, based on a particular standard. So there are conservative Christians who seek to use the Bible as the standard. People who hold to a conservative political viewpoint seek to stick to the Constitution and the subsequent documents\statements by the framers of the Constitution as the standard. With that in mind, here is a quote from George Washington's farewell address in 1796.
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.
And here is an excerpt from our Constitution explaining the rights of Congress (from Article 1, section 8):
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
I've read that these types of declarations require a two-thirds vote, but I've not found that in the text. So I'm going to take the "conservative" approach and not state that it does. :)
Regardless, we can get from those two statements alone that many of our recent foreign relations moves haven't exactly been done in a traditional\conservative way.
So what am I driving at here. Well, put simply - we should have never used the force we have in Iraq or Afghanistan (or anywhere else) without a full Declaration of War from Congress. What presidents are doing now by seeking resolutions that allow them to use force at their discretion and what Congress is doing by granting them is just a way for both of them to skirt their Constitutional mandate. It's basically a way for the president to get all of the blame if something goes crazy and for members of Congress to to say they didn't intend for things to get so crazy. I believe we could have gotten such a declaration of War for Afghanistan, and I think that is appropriate. With Iraq, I'm not so sure. If there were a declaration, so be it. If not, we shouldn't be there.
As for the entangling alliances stuff, I've never thought we should be in the UN or NATO. We have no business letting agreements with other countries potentially get us into situations where we have no business. Examples of this would be Bosnia, Somalia, and the first Iraq conflict.
Somewhat related is the placement of all of our military bases across the world. This is something that Ron Paul opened my eyes to. Think about this for a minute - what would we think of other countries put military bases in our country? How would you like to have a German military base in your backyard? And what if Germany started doing things internationally that we did not agree with while they had bases in your backyard? Now you probably can figure out why some Muslims consider us evil. Base in Saudi Arabia? Check. Huge support for Israel, a country that is considered enemy-number-one to many of the citizens of Saudi Arabia? Check. Making it easy for those citizens to to gather support for hating us? Check! So yes, I think we should get our military out of those countries, which will restore their sense of sovereignty and give them less reasons to hate us. And bring our troops home to protect our borders.
In addition, we should end our tight alliances with countries like Israel. They can take care of themselves. If they are attacked, we can figure out what to do about it at that time.
Our main goal should be PROTECTING OURSELVES! If a country asks us for help, take it to Congress. Otherwise, STAY OUT OF IT! We are not the world's police.
Ok, so after all of that, let's look at the two candidates.
Obama: Well, Obama says he was against Iraq from the beginning, but I'm not sure I buy that since he wasn't in a national position at the time. He says he'd focus on going after bin Laden. Could be true I guess but nothing he's done supports that. I could see an Obama foreign policy looking a lot like the Clinton policy. Remember how we were attacked during the Clinton presidency and did NOTHING about it? That's what I figure Obama would do. Doesn't want to ruffle any feathers. Also recall that Clinton had a chance to capture bin Laden and did not take advantage. Did not even go to Congress about it. I know Obama is not Bill Clinton but I really don't see any liberal\Democrat acting any differently.
There is one thing that I do find interesting about the Democrat platform. From this link:
We believe we must also be willing to consider using military force in circumstances beyond self defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability-to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities
That looks a lot like the neo-con policy, huh? But it's still definitely not conservative.
McCain: This one should be obvious after reading everything above. McCain is the poster-child for an aggressive foreign policy, and many of the other neo-con policies. He's said we could\should be Iraq for 100 years. I have no doubt he'd take us into war with Iran if given the slightest reason to do so. In the early days of his presidency, he would probably us into stuff like the Russia\Georgia conflict just to show he's serious. Go to Congress first? No way.
So yeah, nothing much for me to like with either candidate in this regard. Neither is going to focus on our own defense. Both could put us into some very dangerous predicaments. I'm pretty scared about this one. Tensions in some areas of the world are escalating and our current foreign policy tends to stick us in the middle of them.
So I'm left with hoping\praying that something will change with our foreign policy. It's sad to me that conservatives have moved away from the traditional ideology. But it's not too late or too hard to turn back. I did it. Only 50-100 million more people need to do the same. :)
I'll be looking at other policies to determine what the RIGHT way to vote is. More to come...
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