My latest at Responsible Statecraft, “The fight on the right for what constitutes a conservative or Republican foreign policy continues. This time the battlefront is Russia and Ukraine.

That there is a fissure on this issue among conservatives is in a way, a big deal, showing that the ‘America First’ restraint approach that garnered support among the base didn’t go away completely when power changed hands in Washington and its chief advocate, Donald Trump, left town. Unfortunately, many Republicans have gone back to form and are talking like it’s the post 9/11-era — as if Trump’s criticisms of George W. Bush’s wars and nation-building had no effect on their party whatsoever…

Must read @jackhunter74 on how @TuckerCarlson @TulsiGabbard & other populists are peeling off from the Borg & asking why everyone is so bananas about going to war over Ukraine. https://t.co/TbkdMNAaUk @RichardHanania @brad_polumbo @JDVance1 @AndrewBeckUSA @jimantle @ToryAnarchist

— Kelley B. Vlahos (@KelleyBVlahos) January 26, 2022

Suddenly more conservatives and Republicans began speaking out against the prospect of U.S. military action in the region.

‘The United States should not be involved in any future war in Ukraine,’ charged libertarian populist Republican Congressman Thomas Massie on Monday.”

Read the entire column.

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If more people had listened to my father our war in Afghanistan would have been less tragic

By Sen. Rand Paul

After America was attacked by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, my father, Republican Congressman Ron Paul, voted for a U.S. strike on the Taliban in Afghanistan for harboring the 9/11 terrorists.

We were attacked, so we struck back. This is the reason we have and need a strong military: Actual national defense.

But our military is not meant for nation building. Not for policing the world. Not for imposing democracy in places that have never known it.

Not only are these bad ideas, but they aren’t the point of our military and they do nothing for our national defense.

Unfortunately, that was the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney neoconservative vision of perpetual U.S.-led wars around the globe. We know how that worked out in Iraq. Now we are learning how it ends in Afghanistan.

But this isn’t hindsight.

It was always doomed for failure, and some have said so for a very long time, and proved right time and time again through our recent foreign policy disasters.

It was my father, often alone in his party, who said for decades that the neocons’ endless wars would always come back to haunt us.

He did it early, and often. Over the weekend, a video compilation of warnings my Dad issued years ago went viral. Why was a 13-year-old video of a Congressman who retired in 2012 going viral?

Because he was right and more people should have listened to him, to me and to others who have been saying for a decade that this war needed to end.

Ron Paul asked questions like, “What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and bombing Pakistan is directly related to the hatred directed toward us?” The scenes we see coming out of Afghanistan today are rage-filled. We honor and respect the brave men and women who served there for so long, but to ask them to stay another year there would be unconscionable. They did their duty.

“What if all wartime spending is paid for through the deceitful process of inflating and borrowing?” Dad asked. Considering that we were never able to afford the trillions spent in Afghanistan and we are now more concerned about inflation at home, Dad seemed ahead of his time.

My father asked, “What if we finally see that wartime conditions always undermine personal liberty?” Thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden, we have a clearer picture of how our government abuses our constitutional liberties every day, often using post-9/11 jargon to justify it.

And again, on Afghanistan, my father had long urged to bring American troops home after the U.S. accomplished its original mission early on.

If the neoconservatives and others at the time had listened to Ron Paul back then, the tragedy in Afghanistan would not have been prolonged. Most importantly, it would have saved thousands of American lives and also money that we don’t actually have.

During the Tea Party-era ten years ago, I and other libertarian-leaning Republicans followed in my father’s footsteps and managed to change some formerly hawkish minds about war. When Donald Trump became president by blasting the Bush administration’s interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and condemning “endless wars,” Dad’s foreign policy message had come full circle within the GOP.

Yet, if the Republican Party had been more like Ron Paul than Dick Cheney throughout the aughts, it would have saved our country a lot of heartache. If Barack Obama had actually ended the wars he promised too, like Dad had long urged, we would have been better off.

Now the same people who still defend the Iraq War and who also wanted to stay in Afghanistan forever are some of the loudest voices criticizing the Taliban retaking control of that country. If after 20 years of preparing Afghanistan to govern itself, it immediately bends to extremists the moment we leave, what did hawks think we were going to accomplish over another decade—or ever? Was two decades not enough time?

The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban is sad but the blame should attach to the naive neocons who thought they could create a Jeffersonian democracy in a land clinging to the Stone Age, not to those who warned that it would inevitably end in a mess.

What’s clear today is that no one with the last name Cheney should even be speaking publicly right now. This origin of this debacle lies at their feet.

What’s even clearer, is that unfortunately the warnings of a Republican congressman from Texas years ago now feel more prescient than ever.

The post If more people had listened to my father our war in Afghanistan would have been less tragic appeared first on Liberty Tree.

At this point you just have to laugh at neocon Liz Cheney

Congresswoman Liz Cheney spent the weekend blaming both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump for the tragic chaos that continues to unfold in Afghanistan.

Cheney tweeted on Saturday:

The Trump/Biden calamity unfolding in Afghanistan began with the Trump administration negotiating with terrorists and pretending they were partners for peace, and is ending with American surrender as Biden abandons the country to our terrorist enemies. https://t.co/PQ1i5W6zZt

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) August 14, 2021

Trump “negotiating with terrorists” is obviously a shot at the former president meeting with Taliban leaders to agree to a plan for a conditions-based U.S. withdrawal. Biden, who did not attempt to meet with Taliban leaders, is now enduring the worst aftermath imaginable, post-withdrawal.

But never mind Trump or Biden. No matter who is president, the withdrawal was always going to be messy. Cheney and other like-minded “warmongering fools” knew this and it has been their strongest argument to stay forever. Cheney’s fellow forever war cheerleader, Sen. Lindsey Graham, was even calling for permanent American military bases in Afghanistan a decade ago.

There was never a good solution to ending the U.S.’s twenty year overstay in Afghanistan.

But if your last name is “Cheney,” you really should not be talking about it much, according to Twitter:

Have you not met George W. Bush or Dick Cheney?

— Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie (@RevChuckCurrie) August 15, 2021

If I were a Cheney I would sit this one out. Like, really out.

— Tzippy Shmilovitz ?‍ (@Tzipshmil) August 14, 2021

A little selective memory thing going on here?

How exactly did we get into this 20 years ago, and how did we think it would end?

— Khashoggi’s Ghost (@UROCKlive1) August 14, 2021

I see you’ve conveniently forgotten your dad’s huge role in how this nightmare began. Don’t worry. We haven’t.

— ForeverBlessed (@4evaBlessed23) August 14, 2021

It would never occur to Liz Cheney that if making any attempt to extract the US from a 20-year-long conflict is necessarily “calamitous,” then maybe the true “calamity” was the mission itself https://t.co/xY9pzMDtEg

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 15, 2021

I could go on, but it would almost literally mean reposting a significant percentage of Twitter over the weekend.

Given their long record of disastrous foreign policy decisions – including the current chaos in Afghanistan – Liz Cheney and the neoconservatives have forfeited their ability to have a credible opinion on American foreign policy ever again. Even if they haven’t figure this out yet.

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