Jake Brodsky
Jul 21, 2017 · 2 min read

Actually, I have heard more than a few conservatives who didn’t think a war was in our nation’s best interest. For example, in the early days of 2003 I recall the late Ron Smith on WBAL radio. He was as conservative as any of the talk show crowd, but he was adamantly against the Iraq war. He knew that intelligence information often lacked key details.

I knew many more who felt that nothing good was going to come of our involvement in the civil wars among the states of the former Yugoslavia.

But there are also instances where we probably should have intervened and didn’t. Few did anything for the Tutsi in Rwanda as they were being slaughtered by the thousands.

For some crazy reason, the left/right or Conservative/Liberal dynamic doesn’t seem to apply to the use of military force. President Kennedy got us in to the Vietnam War and Johnson escalated it to insane levels. The first president Bush (41) got us in to the first Gulf War. It turned out later that the Iraqis had a real beef with the Kuwaiti regime that nobody actually did anything about. After the oil field fires from the end of the first gulf war were put out, it was discovered that the Kuwaitis were using directional drilling to tap in to an oil reserve that was actually on the other side of the border with Iraq. Nobody took the protests from Iraq seriously at the time. But that’s what got the invasion started.

And then while Carter is applauded for his “peace treaty” work between Egypt and Israel, Nixon is also applauded for helping China to get on its feet economically following a very idealistic and unfortunately disastrous experiment with Communism.

Both Democrat and Republican alike have made some horrifying mistakes. The treaty with North Korea negotiated in part by the administration of Bill Clinton was only a short term success at best. Likewise, the TPP negotiated by the Bush 43 administration didn’t survive either.

So if you’re looking at one party and thinking that one has a more savvy foreign policy, or has more blood on their hands than the other, you’re making a very big mistake. Both parties could use a lot of help. They are all ignorant in the ways of projecting force and economic power.

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    Jake Brodsky

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    I am one of those right wing conservative, married white fathers. Happy, not angry; armed, not dangerous; educated, but always a student.

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