One of the things I was expecting to see at CPAC this year was an interesting debate on foreign policy and defense issues, and I have not been disappointed. Day 2 saw this issue come up several times.
First, there was a panel debate which asked “does security trump freedom?” I don’t particularly care for the question as framed, because it sets freedom and security as opposed, as if one must go down when the other goes up. While that’s often true, I don’t think it always is.
But the debate itself was quite informative, and both sides made decent points. On the one side was Jim Gilmore and Bob Barr, and on the other was Rep. Lungren and Viet Dinh of Georgetown University Law Center.
On the issue of trying terrorist, Gilmore argued that civilian courts are the proper place because it send this message that terrorists are common criminals, and are not waging a justified war. It was a fair point, but I think it’s overwhelmed by the issues of security, in particular the need to protect intelligence sources. Military tribunals are the best way to balance the need to ensure that detentions are not abused without compromising matters of intelligence.
Overall, the audience was as split as the panel, cheering and jeering both sides. The fact that Ron Paul was slated to speak later probably has some impact on that.
The left-wing blogosphere is trumping a very small part of the debate, where Bob Barr got some boos for asserting that waterboarding is torture. I don’t think that’s a particularly important question. Decide it one way or another and move on. It’s the broad policy questions of foreign policy that conservatives will eventually need to settle.
Ron Paul made his case on just that question later in the evening. He said repeatedly that there’s nothing unconservative about calling for foreign policy restraint, avoiding international entanglements and concentrating instead on a strong defense. He is absolutely right that those are valid positions within the conservative movement, and have a strong historical tradition. He was also right to assert that George W. Bush ran and won on a campaign rejecting Clinton-era nation building.
But restraint need not devolve into isolationism, which could ultimately make America more susceptible to certain threats. There is a time and a place for proactive defense. Certainly we’ve learned lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan that ought to caution us against any further efforts to spread democracy through military means. Regardless of one’s opinion of the necessity of those wars, we now know how much it costs to engage in long-term nation and political building of that kind, and the difficulty in achieving success. If it must be done, so be it, but we have to make sure that it is truly necessary before we make such decisions.
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Although he doesn’t explicitly say to end it, Cheney has essentially thrown his support behind repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a move which I recently endorsed.
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The reason Barack Obama made a call to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” in his State of the Union speech is obviously political. He is in a tough way and needs a win to bring home to his base. That said, he has been consistent on this position from the beginning, and it’s not just his base that should be pleased. Conservatives should support repealing the policy as well, for the simple reason that it’s the right thing to do.
The enforcement of DADT has resulted in the loss of key personnel, such as translators, at a time when we cannot afford such. Why must we fight with one gay hand behind our back?
For years, concerns over unit cohesion have been sufficient to prevent revisiting the 90’s era rule. But are these concerns justified? Twenty-five countries allow gays to serve openly in the military, including the highly effective Israeli Defense Force. The Israeli decision in 1993 to allow gays to serve openly, if they choose, had no negative impact on their effectiveness.
It’s time for the U.S. to stop limiting our resources by denying qualified soldiers the chance to serve on the basis of their preferences in the bed room.
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More (previous here) on why it’s so difficult to be the world’s savior:
Leave a commentFidel Castro is questioning why the U.S. and other countries sent soldiers to quake-ravaged Haiti, saying military presence hindered international cooperation.
The former Cuban president writes that “without anyone knowing how or why,” Washington dispatched troops “to occupy Haitian territory,” and other nations followed suit.
In an opinion column Sunday in state-controlled media, Castro said neither the U.N nor the U.S. “has offered an explanation to the people of the world.”
Castro noted that several governments complained that the troops kept them from landing aid flights and called on the U.N. to investigate.
Bolivian President Evo Morales, a Castro ally, is seeking a U.N. condemnation of what he called the U.S. occupation of Haiti.
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While the difficulties continue to mount in Haiti, tough policy choices will have to be made. Do we send in more troops to create order? No matter what we do, it’s clear some will never be pleased:
The United States is using the humanitarian crisis in Haiti as an excuse to occupy the earthquake-hit island nation, two of Washington’s most vocal leftist critics in Latin America implied at the weekend.
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“What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as U.S. troops have already taken control of the airport,” Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said late Friday.
Did Obama’s betrayal of democracy in Honduras buy us nothing with these dictators? Sheesh.
Even our real allies are complaining about a supposed “occupation.” This just goes to show that in the international arena, no American good deed goes unpunished.
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It’s rare that I find a David Brooks column that I enjoy, but the New York Times’ faux conservative recently took a well-informed look at understanding why Haiti is poor and just what development aid can do different to help.
This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.
The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
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The rest is worth reading.
For some possible answers, I’d recommend Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid and Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital.
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As news reports continue to show just how grim the situation is in Haiti, American marines are landing to help the shaken nation. While the world has responded with an outpouring of support and donations, the earthquake and its aftermath raises important questions about just what moral obligations exist to provide support for disaster-stricken locations, as well as how much and for how long.
From a moral standpoint, Haiti is – at least for the moment – a simple case. We should provide timely supplies and labor to help free victims, offer medical assistance and protect the population from anarchy. This appears to be what we are doing. But from a policy standpoint the questions raised by such disasters can be trickier.
Haiti is also an extr
eme case, and I think most will agree that the moral aspect outweighs other considerations. But what about disasters that are a bit less severe, in nations that are a bit less poor? By responding forcefully to disasters like this one in Haiti, do we raise an expectation in other cases that we will provide similar aid? Being the world’s savior seems like it should make you popular, but no one blames other countries for not helping the way they blame us. That’s because we have given them reason to expect our help, so if it’s ever not provided, we’re bad guys for withholding it.
We also have to figure out just what it is we are obliged, or ought, to do for Haiti. If we get them just back to where they were, then they are still the poorest country in the world. Do we rebuild them to better than they were before? What about the political and social problems that have hampered their development? Do we establish some sort of government to handle things since theirs, such that it was, has been virtually wiped out? How do we distinguish that from occupation, and all the problems that go along with it?
These are not easy questions, and I do not have all – or really any – of the answers. I can only hope that someone, somewhere is at least considering these questions.
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Ok, not really. But the Tea Party movement may be going global.
1 commentIn protest of a new law that greatly curbs the right to freedom of contract and imposes barriers to trade and entrepreneurship, Russian libertarians, many of them graduates of InLiberty.ru summer schools, are banding together to arrange their own Tea Parties modeled after the anti-tax demonstrations that swept America in 2009. They are calling on fellow Muscovites to stand up for the free enterprise system that has allowed them to put the old rationing ways of the Cold War-era behind them.
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Conservative media mogul Andrew Breitbart today launched his third “Big” site, Big Journalism. In his introductory post, Breitbart recounts a conversation with ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis and chastises the MSM for their ineptitude in covering her repeated public lies, and the ACORD scandal in general. He then details the reason behind his new site:
Big Journalism is staking the claim that media is now at war with one another: Big Media versus Small Media; Old Media versus New Media; Left Media Vs Right Media. You get the picture. The practice of journalism will never be the same, and not the New York Times’s Pinch Sulzberger nor all the sniping children at Gawker and Media Matters can un-ring this bell – which, after all, tolls for them.
Another post looks at the absolutely horrid and fraudulent coverage of the Honduran crisis by the traditional media, which did everything possible to support Zelaya and those falsely screaming “coup!”
If his past ventures are anything to go by, Big Journalism will quickly be a big player in the media wars. That, no doubt, has his chagrined critics frothing at the mouth.
Disclosure: I am an occasional contributor at Big Government, another Breitbart site.
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Obama’s speech on Afghanistan is perhaps as notable for what the President did not say as what he did. What do I mean by that? Well, he never uses the words ‘victory,’ ‘win,’ or ‘jihad.’ He does use ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorism’ five times, and ‘defeating’ a grand total of once.
He had to wiggle hard to avoid using some of these verboten words. We don’t fight ‘jihadists,’ for instance, but rather “a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam.” Despite being too busy to talk about winning the war, he did find plenty of time to talk about himself, using the word ‘I’ on 40 separate occasions, and ‘me’ another six times.
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
