My definition of Idiocy is knee jerk reaction in the name of political themes without thought as to the substance.
So we have neo-conservatives criticizing the Obama Administration for trying to limit our volunteer Army's exposure to situations where we have little hope of success. The Economist ran a thoughtful piece in their 2015 outlook on this issue. I will now quote Edward Carr, their foreign editor.
"Just now the world seems uncommonly hard to manage. Citizens are fed up with elites that govern them: Ukrainians rose up against their country's kleptomaniac nomenklature, student's occupied Central district in Hong Kong and Europe's populists, such as France's National Front and the UK Independence Party, are plotting to overthrow the technocrats in Brussels. The Jihadists of Islamic State threaten to wreck havoc in the Middle East and beyond. Whereas democratic governments seem weak and vacillating, authoritarians are busy arresting their opponents, muzzling their media and invading their neighbors."
"Part of the difficulty the world faces in reacting to these developments is that expectations of what governments can achieve in foreign policy run far ahead of what is feasible. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, American power was untrammeled. Far from declaring victory and going home. America became more involved than ever, across the globe. For while intervention seemed just a question of willpower and shrewd policies. But the past decade has shown up that view as naive. The world is messy. As they say, success in politics is not perfection, it is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."
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"The charges against Mr. Obama distort his thinking and vastly overstate America's loss of power. The President who ordered special forces into Pakistan to seize Osama bin Ladan is not a defeatist, and the armed forces that carried out that mission have not suddenly become weak. Mr. Obama has put forward the argument that America cannot act alone as the world's policeman: Countries that benefit from open trade and the rule of law have a responsibility to help."
"Analytically, that argument has much going for it. Yet, politically, it has failed. When Mr. Obama advertises the limits to America's power, Americans hear defeatism, allies detect wavering American commitment to their security and America's rivals in Moscow and Beijing spot a chance to meddle."
"The lesson for Mr. Obama is that, because foreign policy abhors a vacuum, he has to fill the role of leader. That is what he has begun to do in the Middle East, by forming a coalition against IS.....America gets others to bear a burden not when it steps back, but when it engages the world's problems."
"The lesson of other countries is harder still...........When global economic and political collaboration suffers - all these countries suffer too. If 2015 is to count as a big improvement, America must have help."
While there are lessons in all that for the Democrats, my key takeaway is that America cannot go it alone. Our share of global GDP is declining even as our economic growth continue to be amongst the highest in the world. The cost of global military action is higher than ever and the GOP does not support raising revenues to pay for it, but America does have to lead. The President has problems with the Democratic Left over his middle of the road national security policies. He should be praised by the neo-conservatives and worked with through the traditional process of compromise and cordial discussions. You can't have everything but you have to work with the President and he is open to that on National Security issues. And if you want a bigger defense budget, revenues must be raised to pay for it.
Also, unwanted immigrants are a problem for conservatives all over the world. People all over the world do not desire to live in chaos or fear for safety. Those have vision, wisdom and courage will try to go the closest stable place. While I welcome those people because they are motivated workers and citizens of their new home, they also give the less motivated and less able citizens of the destination country more competition for employment, who in turn want to keep the immigrants out. But if you want to stop people from being motivated to move to your country, you need to work to make their home country more stable and a healthier economy. So for the U.S., that means stabilizing Central America and for Europe, it means stabilizing the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Left is going nuts over the nomination of Antonio Weiss to be Under-Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Policy. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and the AFL-CIO are actively working to derail his approval. They ignore 2 key facts: 1st, to be a credible national political party, the Democrats need to have competent people who understand their area of expertise and 2nd, that financiers can be supportive of Democratic policy initiatives while also understanding the appropriateness and need for sound economic policy. By liberal left's standards, I would not be qualified for anything in their world because I worked in the world of finance. But how can anyone be competent at crafting financial policies if they don't understand how finance works. Antonio Weiss is qualified to be an Under-Secretary and should be approved. I will not vote for a Democratic candidate that does not understand that. And that is why I never voted for Bernie Sanders when I was a resident of Vermont. He drove me to vote Republican. Thankfully, NY Democrats understand people who work in finance are not the enemy just because of what they do to make a living. Working in finance is just as honorable as working in any other job.
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