Constant Intervention and War

The Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow paints Hillary Clinton as the poster child for this failed foreign policy strategy. And Doug lumps most of the front running 2016 Republican presidential candidates into the same sinking ship. Rand Paul is, however singled out by Mr.Bandow as an exception. Paul seems to remember and consider Ronald Reagan’s dictum of “peace through strength” with the emphasis on peace.

U.S. foreign policy is a bipartisan fiasco. George W. Bush gave the American people Iraq, the gift that keeps on giving. Barack Obama is a slightly more reluctant warrior, but he is taking the country back into the Mideast.

Hillary Clinton, the unannounced Democratic front-runner for 2016, supported her husband’s misbegotten attempt at nation-building in Kosovo and led the drive for war in Libya, which is violently unraveling. Most of Clinton’s potential GOP opponents share Washington’s bomb, invade and occupy consensus.

The only exception is Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. He stands alone advocating a foreign policy which reflects the bitter, bloody lessons of recent years.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is the latest result of Washington’s incessant and counterproductive meddling in the Middle East. Nowhere has U.S. policy been more disastrous.

But the usual suspects are calling for more intervention, more war. This time, they promise, everything will go well.