You’ve presented your readers with utter nonsense. At best you’ve caricatured the NatCons.
Has it occurred to you that there might be numerous excellent reasons to oppose an internationalist foreign policy (whether of the neocon or liberal varieties) without pledging fealty to Putin?
First there’s the hundreds of billions wasted on our losing efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We spent two decades in Afghanistan and came home two summers ago with our tails between our legs. The U.S. military demonstrated the same incompetence that the Russian military is experiencing in Ukraine. The Taliban were in charge before we got to Afghanistan and they’ve been in charge since we left.
Then there’s the failure of the bipartisan internationalist effort in Iraq. Supposedly we won two wars there; but we ended up with an Iraq as divided as ever and at least as partial to Iran as to the United States. That’s some victory, don’t you think, Thomas?
How much military equipment did the U.S. abandon in Afghanistan? How many billions of dollars were squandered in Iraq? Has it occurred to you that the recent debacles delivered by the bipartisan clowns calling the shots in our Government might just have something to do with the genesis of the NatCon ideology?
Of course, the hundreds of billions of wasted money amount to nothing compared to the ruined lives of our service members. I’ve talked to many of them while volunteering for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. See,
Almost to a man, these brave soldiers will tell you that their efforts and their sacrifice was in vain. When you were in Viet Nam, Thomas, soldiers who lost more than two limbs practically never made it. Thanks to medical advances, many triple and even quadruple amputees from Afghanistan and Iraq made it home alive; alive yes, but their lives were ruined.
I’ve met many of these young men; their stories are heartbreaking. Those who were married or had fiancés more often than not end up divorced or alone. Most men with these injuries are unable to perform sexually. They require a lifetime of care. They can’t work and they often have horrendous emotional issues. Few women are prepared for a lifetime of dealing with this, especially when there in their early to mid 20s. The majority of these soldiers end up moving in with their moms. What man in his mid 20s faces a lifetime of being cared for by his mom with glee? What do you suppose the reality of a lifetime without sexual gratification or a family life does to young me with severe PTSD?
The accommodations required for their survival are remarkably expensive. The Tunnel to Towers Foundation builds home for these young men (and a very small number of women) with all of special equipment (home elevators, low kitchen cabinets, special bathroom equipment, etc) that they need to survive. Almost all of this equipment is special made and remarkably expensive. A soldier, who’s only source of income is a disability payment, could never afford it (thank goodness, Home Depot provides millions of dollars needed to build these homes free of charge).
This tragedy was hand delivered to the United States by neoconservatives and liberal internationalists convinced that their wars were necessary as long as it was working stiffs doing the fighting.
Talk to these soldiers and a small number will tell you that they volunteered for Afghanistan and Iraq out of patriotism. Most admit that their reason for enlisting was a bit less noble. What they say is that they signed up because most of the jobs held by their fathers and grandfathers didn’t exist any more. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Dubya and Barack Obama happily shipped their jobs to Asia, all in the name of free markets. The destruction of the economy of huge swaths of our nation was delivered by the same geniuses who never saw a foreign intervention that they couldn’t embrace.
Since our country was defeated by the Vietnamese which hot war have we actually won? We did capture Noriega and we did free a bunch of medical students in Grenada, but which of our other military engagements actually ended in success? We won every single battle in Iraq and still lost the war. Thank goodness we won the Cold War barely firing a shot because our nation’s real wars have not resulted in much success.
Maybe, Thomas, that’s why NatCons are more skeptical of American foreign policy than you are. Maybe after decades of failure, they think a new approach is called for. Maybe the Anti-American crowd isn’t the NatCons but is instead the internationalists who couldn’t care less that we’ve spent decades squandering American strength and resolve with too little to show for it.
Just maybe the NatCons have ample reason for disdaining the internationalists and just maybe Putin has little or nothing to do with it.
Whatever we think about the "natcons" now, however, they likely represent an important strain in the future of the Republican party, a return to its pre-1940s isolationism. Large swaths of voters in the West want an end to neoliberal globalization policies, which I don't think ever really had more than shallow majority support in most Western countries. Of course, those policies are of recent vintage, from the 1990s, and can, with some pain and effort, be reversed. What cannot be reversed is the replacement of old-style "checkerboard," multipolar balance-of-power with "cooperative security" or "collective security" or whatever you want to call it.
The bitter lessons of the 1930s and (to a lesser extent) 1970s are now half forgotten, even by more mainstream figures and thinkers. The old "realist"-type foreign policy was already dying before the end of the 19th century, a fact only a few (like Norman Angell) perceived correctly before 1914. The two world wars and the Cold War should have killed it for good, for we no longer live in 1850, much less 1750. Many people vaguely and intuitively get this, but often can't articulate it. It makes for a vacuum that can be filled by pseudo-intellectual trash from Tucker Carlson, Christopher Caldwell, Zero Hedge, and certain crackpot academics.
(I'm not saying these gentlemen are stupid. Rather, I'm saying that intelligence-on-paper is no guarantee of common sense or honesty or not bathing oneself in a decade-long tub of sophisticated disinformation.)
Well said. By the way, is "NatCon" the commonly-accepted term for America's rightist Quislings, a.k.a. Putin's Peanut Gallery? I have been trying to come up with a phrase that doesn't include the word "jerk".
You’ve presented your readers with utter nonsense. At best you’ve caricatured the NatCons.
Has it occurred to you that there might be numerous excellent reasons to oppose an internationalist foreign policy (whether of the neocon or liberal varieties) without pledging fealty to Putin?
First there’s the hundreds of billions wasted on our losing efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We spent two decades in Afghanistan and came home two summers ago with our tails between our legs. The U.S. military demonstrated the same incompetence that the Russian military is experiencing in Ukraine. The Taliban were in charge before we got to Afghanistan and they’ve been in charge since we left.
Then there’s the failure of the bipartisan internationalist effort in Iraq. Supposedly we won two wars there; but we ended up with an Iraq as divided as ever and at least as partial to Iran as to the United States. That’s some victory, don’t you think, Thomas?
How much military equipment did the U.S. abandon in Afghanistan? How many billions of dollars were squandered in Iraq? Has it occurred to you that the recent debacles delivered by the bipartisan clowns calling the shots in our Government might just have something to do with the genesis of the NatCon ideology?
Of course, the hundreds of billions of wasted money amount to nothing compared to the ruined lives of our service members. I’ve talked to many of them while volunteering for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. See,
https://t2t.org
Almost to a man, these brave soldiers will tell you that their efforts and their sacrifice was in vain. When you were in Viet Nam, Thomas, soldiers who lost more than two limbs practically never made it. Thanks to medical advances, many triple and even quadruple amputees from Afghanistan and Iraq made it home alive; alive yes, but their lives were ruined.
I’ve met many of these young men; their stories are heartbreaking. Those who were married or had fiancés more often than not end up divorced or alone. Most men with these injuries are unable to perform sexually. They require a lifetime of care. They can’t work and they often have horrendous emotional issues. Few women are prepared for a lifetime of dealing with this, especially when there in their early to mid 20s. The majority of these soldiers end up moving in with their moms. What man in his mid 20s faces a lifetime of being cared for by his mom with glee? What do you suppose the reality of a lifetime without sexual gratification or a family life does to young me with severe PTSD?
The accommodations required for their survival are remarkably expensive. The Tunnel to Towers Foundation builds home for these young men (and a very small number of women) with all of special equipment (home elevators, low kitchen cabinets, special bathroom equipment, etc) that they need to survive. Almost all of this equipment is special made and remarkably expensive. A soldier, who’s only source of income is a disability payment, could never afford it (thank goodness, Home Depot provides millions of dollars needed to build these homes free of charge).
This tragedy was hand delivered to the United States by neoconservatives and liberal internationalists convinced that their wars were necessary as long as it was working stiffs doing the fighting.
Talk to these soldiers and a small number will tell you that they volunteered for Afghanistan and Iraq out of patriotism. Most admit that their reason for enlisting was a bit less noble. What they say is that they signed up because most of the jobs held by their fathers and grandfathers didn’t exist any more. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Dubya and Barack Obama happily shipped their jobs to Asia, all in the name of free markets. The destruction of the economy of huge swaths of our nation was delivered by the same geniuses who never saw a foreign intervention that they couldn’t embrace.
Since our country was defeated by the Vietnamese which hot war have we actually won? We did capture Noriega and we did free a bunch of medical students in Grenada, but which of our other military engagements actually ended in success? We won every single battle in Iraq and still lost the war. Thank goodness we won the Cold War barely firing a shot because our nation’s real wars have not resulted in much success.
Maybe, Thomas, that’s why NatCons are more skeptical of American foreign policy than you are. Maybe after decades of failure, they think a new approach is called for. Maybe the Anti-American crowd isn’t the NatCons but is instead the internationalists who couldn’t care less that we’ve spent decades squandering American strength and resolve with too little to show for it.
Just maybe the NatCons have ample reason for disdaining the internationalists and just maybe Putin has little or nothing to do with it.
I will also say, well done.
Whatever we think about the "natcons" now, however, they likely represent an important strain in the future of the Republican party, a return to its pre-1940s isolationism. Large swaths of voters in the West want an end to neoliberal globalization policies, which I don't think ever really had more than shallow majority support in most Western countries. Of course, those policies are of recent vintage, from the 1990s, and can, with some pain and effort, be reversed. What cannot be reversed is the replacement of old-style "checkerboard," multipolar balance-of-power with "cooperative security" or "collective security" or whatever you want to call it.
The bitter lessons of the 1930s and (to a lesser extent) 1970s are now half forgotten, even by more mainstream figures and thinkers. The old "realist"-type foreign policy was already dying before the end of the 19th century, a fact only a few (like Norman Angell) perceived correctly before 1914. The two world wars and the Cold War should have killed it for good, for we no longer live in 1850, much less 1750. Many people vaguely and intuitively get this, but often can't articulate it. It makes for a vacuum that can be filled by pseudo-intellectual trash from Tucker Carlson, Christopher Caldwell, Zero Hedge, and certain crackpot academics.
(I'm not saying these gentlemen are stupid. Rather, I'm saying that intelligence-on-paper is no guarantee of common sense or honesty or not bathing oneself in a decade-long tub of sophisticated disinformation.)
Well said. By the way, is "NatCon" the commonly-accepted term for America's rightist Quislings, a.k.a. Putin's Peanut Gallery? I have been trying to come up with a phrase that doesn't include the word "jerk".