The Classic Liberal Blog

Round 1: The Conservative Blogger Debate- The War On Terror

Contrary to the MSM portrayal, conservatives don’t agree on everything. An area of contention is America’s handling of the War on Terror, and it effect on our foreign policy.

To help bring this issue in to focus, Russ from That’s Right and The Classic Liberal, both outstanding conservative bloggers have agreed to a multi-round, multi blog debate on this very subject.

To moderate this event Scratcher form Makes My Brain Itch and yours truly will moderate this event and alternate posting question for our participants.

The first question goes to Russ:

One of the conservative arguments against the current prosecution on the war on terrorism is the fact that, as conservatives, we should not be involved in nation building In Iraq and Afghanistan.

Please explain you position with respect to the fact that after our post WWII reconstruction efforts , Germany and Japan have become our 4th and 5th largest trading partners. The exchange of goods accounts for 10.6% of all of the United States foreign trade.To put this in perspective, China accounts for 12.0% of all U.S. foreign trade (2008 numbers).

You can read Russ' answer here: And So Begins the First Ever Right-Wing Blog Debate Dustup

Here's my reply:

The idea of nation-building came directly out of the Progressive Era and became policy via the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Nation-building is not war, but in fact the New Deal and Great Society dragged overseas. Nation-building is based on the utopian notion that government (a central planner) can create a better, more peaceful society by forcing democracy upon dangerous nations.

However, 2 significant problems arise when it comes to nation-building and the American way of life. First and foremost, we do not believe in nation-building at home. It's unarguable that the New Deal and Great society did nothing less than turn our constitution into a piece of toilet paper. Support these grand utopian plans if you must, but please don't insult anyone's intelligence by claiming they are indeed constitutional. They are central planning devices.

The second problem is that democracy is hardly a deterrent to war. Hitler was elected democratically. Over the last 100 years (America's true Progressive Era), democracies, including our own, have been at the forefront of every major war.

What is the ultimate goal of radical Islam? To raise the Caliphate - an Islamic New World Order! But in our hurry to spread utopia abroad via the omnipotence of central planning, we helped radical Islam's cause instead, by building 2 Islamic States!

Yes, America emboldened her enemy ... bin Laden owes us a thank-you card!

Speaking of Karl von Clausewitz, he wrote:

No one starts a war – or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so – without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.

No argument there, but is that what we've done?

Even "conservatives hate" Ron Paul wanted to lay the hammer down on al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11, yet both are still alive and well!

Not having a clear idea of what we wanted to achieve, we didn't finish the job and moved on to Iraq instead. Not to mention that the majority of hijackers (and bin Laden himself) are Saudis, and that Saudi Arabia is a tyrannical, terrorist-sponsoring State.

So instead of putting America First, we rolled out the red carpet for Saudi Arabia, dropped our major offensives against the Taliban and al Qaeda, and went gallivanting around the globe! And now we're caught in perpetual quagmire ...

In terms of Japan and Germany, one only has to look at their current economic condition (as well as Japan's lost decade) to see what miserable failures our (and every) attempt at central planning was/is. Heck, add in our own economy and the fact that communist China is a larger trading partner than both combined, and it's all the more proof nation-building doesn't work. If it did ... I'd support it here at home.

War is a fight, not a glorified peace corps mission.

UPDATED:

• and so it begins...