“It is no secret that I have had a lot of foreign policy disagreements with the bipartisan War Caucus in Washington D.C. during my time in office. From Iraq to Syria, and Yemen to Afghanistan, it seems that there is always a war they want to be in.

I was heartened when President Trump spoke of stopping our ‘endless wars’ and I was hoping for more restraint from President Biden. Unfortunately, that wasn’t his history and it doesn’t seem to be his current direction. The endless wars are ramping up again even as I write today.

Let’s hope diplomacy succeeds before we are dragged into yet another war. https://t.co/h1XoA7EnZC

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 26, 2022

The war-as-first-resort crowd, including the Biden Administration, put 8,500 troops on heightened alert for possible deployment to Eastern Europe. Folly best describes the idea of sending a small contingent off to a potentially big war. This mistake was made in Syria and elsewhere in recent years…

From our perspective, Ukraine should not and cannot be our problem to solve. It is not our place to defend them in a struggle with their longtime adversary, Russia. There is no national security interest for the United States…

The neocons are trying to fool people that NATO entrance would lead to deterrence and peace, when in fact it is a recipe for war and disaster.”

Read the entire column.

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The post The U.S. shouldn’t be dragged into another war appeared first on Liberty Tree.

From my latest column at Responsible Statecraft, “Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol and their friends may wag their fingers today at Trump and his supporters’ red meat rhetoric, but the anti-Islamic speech and conspiracy theories that plagued the Republican base throughout the aughts were never denounced by the neoconservative establishment at the time.

Such behavior was more often encouraged or at least ignored because it helped the war cause. Don’t forget Dick Cheney, before he was denouncing Trump’s Muslim ban when it was politically convenient, was telling fellow Republicans that Obama was supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. His daughter Liz, before she was denouncing MAGA conspiratorialists, was on ‘Larry King’ defending the so called ‘Birthers’ who didn’t believe Obama was born in this country:

‘I think the Democrats have got more crazies than the Republicans do,’ Cheney said at the time. ‘But setting that aside, one of the reasons you see people so concerned about this, I think this issue is, people are uncomfortable with having for the first time ever, I think, a president who seems so reluctant to defend the nation overseas …’

Kristol carried himself as being above the anti-Muslim fray, but rarely criticized the rampant, xenophobic Bush-era hate in the way that he goes after Trump today on a regular basis. Joseph Leone at Harvard’s Progressive Policy Review noted of Kristol in February, ‘The war, and the jingoistic propaganda Kristol peddled to support it, have also contributed to the rise in Islamophobia and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim violence within the United States and globally. Although Kristol now opposes Donald Trump, the former president’s Muslim ban and frequent incitement of violence against Muslims are the product of the war drums Kristol played for years.”

Read the entire column.

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How much U.S. weaponry is now in the hands of the Taliban? (Thanks neocons!)

Leaving Afghanistan was the right thing to do. But one of the ways in which the withdrawal was bungled (due to arrogance of Neocons who thought they had taught Afghan security forces to care), is the breadth and depth of US weaponry that immediately fell into Taliban hands. https://t.co/NSpxLW4y9y

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) August 18, 2021

For 20 years, we supposedly trained and armed Afghan forces that would presumably stabilize the country once we left.

We now know this was a complete farce from the beginning.

I presume this is the inventory Taliban Air Force now. I doubt they can operate and maintain it, but a few of those we trained have or will convert. And these items would seem to make for good barter. pic.twitter.com/fvgtJ0PqKY

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) August 18, 2021

We shouldn’t be nation building and we can’t police the world. If the Afghanistan debacle doesn’t teach us this, nothing will.

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