Adam Kinzinger is what's wrong with American foreign policy

I would like to thank Rep. Adam Kinzinger for his service. This is about the only kind thing I can say about the Republican congressman as it relates to American foreign policy.

U.S. foreign policy has been a disaster for the last twenty years due to people who think like him. Kinzinger spent the weekend whining on social media about anyone who ever tried to end America's longest war in Afghanistan, tweeting:

The withdrawal from #Afghanistan, pushed by @RandPaul negotiated by Pompeo, bragged about by Trump, and executed by Biden, guaranteed the “Forever War” that the terrorists declared against us, continues. That’s the real forever war.

— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) August 22, 2021

While the Biden administration withdrew U.S. forces from Afghanistan in the worst possible way, the notion of having American soldiers another week in a country where they cannot or will not defend themselves after all this time is an insult to our military.

Kinzinger is being cute with his comments about "forever war" in his tweet, but it is what politicians of his ilk truly want: The U.S. to be on a permanent war footing indefinitely.

It was neoconservative Republicans during the George W. Bush administration that got America into this prolonged mess and Kinzinger's intent is to carry on that disastrous foreign policy legacy.

When President Trump announced that the U.S. would finally be leaving Iraq in the near future, neoconservative Republicans like Kinzinger and Liz Cheney teamed up with Democrats to try to stop a withdrawal.

CATO's Doug Bandow touched on those efforts in July 2020, writing, "Republicans also are taking the lead in the Democratic‐ controlled House to sacrifice American interests for foreign governments. For instance, Rep. Liz Cheney...backed a Democratic proposal to limit further withdrawals from Afghanistan, where Americans have been engaged in a nearly 20‐ year nation‐ building mission."

"The measure passed by a 45 to 11 vote: members of both countries seem determined to keep Americans forever fighting in Central Asia," Bandow noted. "They care more for the corrupt, incompetent regime in Kabul than America service members and taxpayers. In contrast, the president, despite his halting, inconsistent policy, better represents this nation’s interests."

Bandow added, "For instance, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R‐ Ill) complained that Trump’s refusal to keep the U.S. forever entangled in another nation’s civil war, tragic but irrelevant to American security, was 'weak.”

That line could have came straight from Dick Cheney's lips. Former President Donald Trump's aversion to war has always been at the heart of Kinzinger's deranged Never Trumpism.

For years, an overwhelming majority of Americans have supported withdrawal from Afghanistan, as Kinzinger now tries to use Biden's poor strategy to argue the U.S. should have never left. Again, he quite literally wants forever wars.

If it is a soldier's job to do his or her duty, it is our job as citizens to question our government when it chooses to go to war. Kinzinger finds it reprehensible that any American would ever question a war or want to end one. The mere inquiry sends the congressman into conniptions.

For all his moralizing and posturing, Adam Kinzinger is part of the outdated and discredited Washington foreign policy consensus that kept the U.S. in Afghanistan for so long in the first place. He will never admit it, he will never learn a single lesson from our foreign policy mistakes, and her will gladly repeat those mistakes with any willing presidents or parties in the future.

Adam Kinzinger is part of what's been wrong with U.S. foreign policy for many years.

Too many.