{"id":24308,"date":"2015-10-21T07:28:46","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T11:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=24308"},"modified":"2015-10-21T08:24:58","modified_gmt":"2015-10-21T12:24:58","slug":"24308","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=24308","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump Confronts U.S. Foreign Policy Head On …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… But What Would He Do In Office?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Trump vs. Jeb<\/h1>\n

I know who I\u2019m rooting for!<\/p>\n

by Justin Raimondo<\/p>\n

You may not like Donald Trump, for any one of a number of reasons, but anti-interventionists have to give him some credit for opening up the presidential debate to a critique of US foreign policy that hasn\u2019t been seen or heard since the Ron Paul campaign. On Syria<\/a> and on Iraq<\/a>, he challenges<\/a> the GOP\/neoconservative orthodoxy in a way that Sen. Rand Paul hasn\u2019t been able to do: indeed, one could argue that Trump has stolen Rand\u2019s thunder \u2013 such as it is \u2013 in sounding the anti-interventionist note. And now Trump is upsetting the conventional GOP wisdom in an even more fundamental sense by challenging the \u201che kept us safe\u201d theme<\/a> that Jeb Bush has been pushing on behalf of his brother \u2013 you know, that former chief executive who left office with a popularity rating lower<\/a> than any President in recent memory.<\/p>\n

The Jeb-Trump contretemps played out over the weekend\u2019s talk shows, with The Donald telling Fox News<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, Jeb said we were safe with my brother \u2013 we were safe. Well, the World Trade Center just fell down. Now, am I trying to blame him? I\u2019m not blaming anybody. But the World Trade Center came down. So when he said, we were safe, that\u2019s not safe. We lost 3,000 people, it was one of the greatest \u2013 probably the greatest catastrophe ever in this country if you think about it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Ouch!<\/p>\n

Jeb came back at him<\/a> on CNN, the cable station nobody watches, protesting that brother George \u201cunited the country,\u201d and going on to aver:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why he keeps bringing this up. It doesn\u2019t show that he\u2019s a serious person as it relates to being commander in chief and being the architect of a foreign policy. Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things that \u2013 as though he\u2019s still on <\/em>The Apprentice<\/em><\/i>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure Jeb has never seen a single episode of \u201cThe Apprentice,\u201d and that\u2019s because he\u2019s a Very Serious Person who is fast becoming the architect of his own defeat. This kind of condescending snootiness is a definite turnoff for voters, many of whom have<\/em>seen<\/a> \u201cThe Apprentice\u201d and don\u2019t appreciate being talked down to. Because in talking down to Trump, voters feel Jeb is talking down to them. <\/em>That Jeb and his advisors don\u2019t get this is the chief reason why the Bush campaign is sinking like a stone.<\/p>\n

And just how serious is Jeb\u2019s critique of Trump? If you parse it, it makes no sense: what does being commander-in-chief have to do with Trump\u2019s criticism of brother Bush that, after all, the twin towers came down on his<\/em> watch? What does being \u201cthe architect of a foreign policy\u201d have to do with Trump\u2019s assertion that the hijackers wouldn\u2019t have even been allowed into the country if he had been President at the time? And what, exactly, does \u201cacross the spectrum of foreign policy\u201d mean, anyway?<\/p>\n

While Jeb may believe attacking his brother is a mistake Trump will come to regret \u2013 he immediately launched a fundraising drive asking his Twitter followers for $5 to \u201cdefend my brother\u201d \u2013 the reality is that Trump has hit a nerve. And he dug the stiletto in deeper when he tweeted this New York Times <\/em>op ed piece<\/a> pointing out that George W. Bush had plenty of warning before 9\/11 that something big was in the works.<\/p>\n

This is important for two reasons: 1) It reinforces one of the major themes of the Trump campaign, which is the utter incompetence of our supposedly all-wise rulers, and 2) It upends one of the central myths of the post-9\/11 era, which is that they attacked us because we\u2019re so wonderful and free. Trump has another view, which he expressed<\/a> in his book, The America We Deserve<\/a><\/em>, published over a year before the 9\/11 attacks. In that book he wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cI really am convinced we\u2019re in danger of the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the bombing of the Trade Center look like kids playing with firecrackers. No sensible analyst rejects this possibility, and plenty of them, like me, are not wondering if but when it will happen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Not only that, but he attached a name to the threat:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day we\u2019re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it\u2019s on to a new enemy and new crisis.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And Trump makes the same point made by Ron Paul during that now famous moment<\/a>in the 2008 GOP debate when Paul described the 9\/11 attacks as \u201cblowback\u201d from our foreign wars. Writes Trump:<\/p>\n

\u201cI may be making waves, but that\u2019s all right. Making waves is usually what you need to do to rock the boat, and our national-security boat definitely needs rocking. Let\u2019s point fingers. The biggest threat to our security is ourselves, because we\u2019ve become arrogant. Dangerously arrogant. It\u2019s time for a realistic view of the world and our place in it. Do we truly understand the threats we face? ,,,<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever their motives \u2013 fanaticism, revenge \u2013 suffice it to say that plenty of people would stand in line for a crack at a suicide mission within America. In fact the number of potential attackers grows every day. Our various military adventures \u2013 some of which are justified, some not \u2013 create new legions of people who would like to avenge the deaths of family members or fellow citizens.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

No, Trump isn\u2019t a consistent noninterventionist:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is one cost of peacekeeping we should keep in mind. I am not a hard-core isolationist. While I agree that we stick our noses into too many problems not of our making and that we can\u2019t do much about, I strongly disagree with the idea that we can pull up the drawbridge to hide from rogue nations or individual fanatics.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Trump takes a Rand Paulian, i.e. ambiguous view of when to intervene abroad. But there\u2019s one big difference between The Donald and Rand: Trump is the frontrunner, while Rand is trailing<\/a> at the back end of the crowd. Yet more evidence that Trump has absorbed the support Sen. Paul hoped to capture.<\/p>\n

In any case, what is truly amazing is that Trump is busy demolishing the post-9\/11 consensus on foreign policy within the GOP: a central pillar of the elaborate mythology that went into justifying the Iraq war is falling by the wayside, thanks to him. Not only that, but the neoconservative agenda is being met head on by Trump, who disdains US involvement in Syria \u2013 a project the liberal Democrats also support<\/a>, with Hillary Clinton leading the charge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No, you don\u2019t have to be a Trump supporter \u2013 and I am not \u2013 to see the benefits of his campaign for the noninterventionist cause. For lo these many years, the Washington Beltway know-it-alls have disdained<\/a> ordinary Americans for their \u201cisolationism<\/a>\u201d \u2013 why, those trailer-park types in flyover country don\u2019t even have passports<\/a>! These same mandarins have celebrated their own dominance of the foreign policy discourse, while politicians of both major parties have given us a \u201cchoice\u201d between different varieties of globalism: the crazed \u201cunilateralism\u201d of the neoconservatives and the smugly self-righteous \u201chumanitarian interventionism\u201d of the cruise-missile liberals. Now, at last, their monopoly on the discourse has been broken \u2013 by a reality show television star and real-estate mogul who speaks plainly and is outpolling everyone!<\/p>\n

Trump embodies the American zeitgeist, circa 2015 \u2013 its virtues, its vulgarity, its inchoate mixture of common sense and incoherence. He is, in short, a mixed blessing, but one can\u2019t help but cheer when he gives voice to the stubborn unwillingness of the American people to take on the role of the \u201cworld\u2019s savior.\u201d As Trump puts it in his book, cited above: \u201cThat job is taken<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

To which one can only add: \u201cAmen, brother!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… But What Would He Do In Office? Trump vs. Jeb I know who I\u2019m rooting for! by Justin Raimondo You may not like Donald Trump, for any one of a number of reasons, but anti-interventionists have to give him … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}