Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Afghanistan And The Sunk-Cost Fallacy

Argument, Democrats, Economy, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Military, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

Joe Biden is right in his “Remarks on Afghanistan“: “… if Afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance to the Taliban now, there is no chance that 1 year — 1 more year, 5 more years, or 20 more years of U.S. military boots on the ground would’ve made any difference.”

Tempting as it may be for right-thinking conservatives and paleolibertarians, in particular, to use the inevitable collapse of the charade in Afghanistan against Biden—honesty demand we avoid it.

TV Republicans, no doubt, will join the shrill CNN females and their houseboys, who love nothing more than to export the nanny state, in bashing Biden for his decisive withdrawal. The president said, “I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.”

Falling into the Republican line of partisan, tit-for-tat retorts is wrong. The man made the right choice—as opposed to Barack Obama’s. Afghanistan was a war Obama had adopted.

Beware especially the military men, who will flood Fox New with the sunk-cost fallacy. As I explained in “GOP Should Grow A Brain, Join The Peace Train“:

Military movers and shakers are heavily vested in the sunk-cost fallacy—the irrational notion that more resources must be committed forthwith … so as to ‘redeem’ the original misguided commitment of men, money and materiel to the mission.

“To that end, repeated ad nauseam is the refrain about our ‘brave men and women of the military,’ whose sacrifice for [Afghani] ‘freedoms’ will be squandered unless more such sacrifices are made.

The Skeptic’s Dictionary dispels this illogic: ‘To continue to invest in a hopeless project is irrational. Such behavior may be a pathetic attempt to delay having to face the consequences of one’s poor judgment. The irrationality is a way to save face, to appear to be knowledgeable, when in fact one is acting like an idiot.’

Besides, it’s time the military heed its paymasters, The American People, a majority of whom don’t want to send U.S. soldiers back into Afghanistan.”

 

 

 

 

Cuba: Commerce And Free Market Capitalism, Not Sanctions

Communism, Conservatism, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Trade

Florida Republican congresswoman Maria Salazar shouts out her demands that the US take an active role in supporting anti-government protests in Cuba. This, as the Fox News lineup has been fulminating over the missed opportunities to do the same—meddle—with respect to Iran, and other countries that neoconservatives feel we should “help” be as “free” as we.

Showing comity to Cuba by allowing commerce with its people, as Barack Obama had dared to do—oh no! We can’t have that. That the Fox bots will not condone.

Trade and robust free exchange with Cuba is all I want to see. For the rest, let the Cubans fight their own battles.

Yes, “Cuba is in the midst of [the usual] economic crisis and has been hit hard by US sanctions and Covid.”  Allowing Americans to trade with Cubans is the best—perhaps the only—antidote to the problem that is Cuba.

From conservatives, let’s hear more about the glories of free-market capitalism, the suppression of which accounts for Cuba’s abject misery. US Government declarations “in support of the people,” whatever that means, are worth nothing.

Curious: Why does Rep. Salazar refer to the Cubans in her Florida district as exiles? Surely if they are now Americans they are home, and not in exile.

UPDATE II (11/30/021): ‘American Foreign Policy Advances the Globalist Revolution’

America, Boyd Cathey, Cultural Marxism, Foreign Policy, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, South-Africa

Boyd D. Cathey at LewRockwell.com about my column at CNSNews.com, “Americans Should Recall How Foreign-Policy Alinskyites Destroyed South Africa“: 

“… One writer who is also a dear friend is Ilana Mercer. Ilana writes a regular column that is printed in various venues. A former citizen of South Africa, she has seen quite personally how the ravages of Marxist and Communist revolution can destroy a civilized country and its social structures. And she has recounted that experience—and warning to the West—in detail in her necessary volume, Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa. It’s a book that more Americans should know and pay heed to, for there are certain parallels with the insane post- or neo-Marxist ‘woke’ anti-racist and anti-white revolution now occurring almost unopposed here in the United States. Indeed, what is now happening here makes the revolution in and transformation of South Africa seem mild in comparison. 

In a recent column, Mercer offers a broad survey which examines the tragically obtuse and wrongheaded policies of the United States around the globe: for decades, whether under Democratic or Republican presidents—it seems to make little difference—American policy has been to impose on other countries by whatever method was convenient or available an egalitarian leftist-liberal ‘democratism,’ a uniform global model as part of a universal zeal to remake the world. Older traditions, inherited religious belief, valued customs, and forms of government and statecraft which do not hew the ‘democratic’ line and do not celebrate “equality” (as our government apparatchiks define it successively to suit their globalism) become pariah states. And soon, with the influence of US government-supported and financed NGOs (non-government organizations), ‘opposition’ groups pop up in those non-juring countries. With American funding and the enthusiastic participation of almost the entirety of the US media, including most so-called ‘conservative media’ (e.g. Fox News, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, etc.), new paper ‘heroes of democracy’ are created and showcased. …”

MORE: “American Foreign Policy Advances the Globalist Revolution.

UPDATE I (4/6/021): Nothing escapes my loyal, and oh-so smart readers. Musil Protege writes quite frankly:

“That’s pretty good. Dr Cathey promoting you on the website that should’ve been carrying you all along.”

UPDATE II (11/30/021):
I said once or twice or thrice to paleos who have consistently submerged my work, pretended it does not exist; and wished me weakly away: Good or bad, your duty is to reflect reality among our ranks . To the extent you cover your faces and wish scary lady ilana mercer away—that she and her wonder-words would vanish—to the extent you’re reality testing has failed. Miserably. A recent eruption from an enforcer of the pack-animal camp reminded me of Musil Protege’s feisty words.

UPDATED (3/27): NEW COLUMN: America’s Radical, Foreign-Policy Alinskyites Destroyed South Africa!

Cultural Marxism, Foreign Policy, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, South-Africa

NEW COLUMN is “America’s Radical, Foreign-Policy Alinskyites Destroyed South Africa!” It is currently on WND.COM, the Unz Review, CNSNews, “Americans Should Recall How Foreign-Policy Alinskyites Destroyed South Africa.

And, newly on the great Townhall.com.

Excerpt:

Certain national-conservative governments in East Europe should be natural allies to conservative policy makers, stateside, if such unicorns existed.

Vladimir Putin’s, for example.

Before his death, from the safety of exile, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of Russia’s bravest and most brilliant sons, praised Putin’s efforts to revive Russia’s traditional Christian and moral heritage. For example:

In October 2010, it was announced that The Gulag Archipelago would become required reading for all Russian high-school students. In a meeting with Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Mr. Putin described The Gulag Archipelago as ‘essential reading’: ‘Without the knowledge of that book, we would lack a full understanding of our country and it would be difficult for us to think about the future.’ …
If [only] the same could be said of the high schools of the United States. (Via The Imaginative Conservative.)

The Russian president patiently tolerates America’s demented, anti-Russia monomania. And, as America sinks into the quicksands of Cultural Marxism, Putin’s inclinations are decidedly reactionary and traditionalist.

He prohibited sexual evangelizing by LGBTQ activists. He comes down squarely on the side of the Russian Orthodox church, such as when vandals, the Pussy Riot whores, obscenely desecrated the cathedral of Christ the Savior. The Russian leader has also welcomed as refugees persecuted white South Africans, where America’s successive governments won’t even officially acknowledge that they’re under threat of extermination. Also, policies to stimulate Russian birthrates have been put in place by the conservative leader.

Hungary is oh-so happy in its homogeneity and wants to keep it. But not if Washington can help it. Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s motto is, “Procreation, not immigration.” Orban plumps for closed borders, and pro-Western, Christian, Hungarian-families-first policies. Yet his ongoing campaign against George Soros, an agitator for global government, was met by Donald Trump’s State Department with a stern rebuke to … Hungary claiming that its anti-Soros law will cost the country dearly.

Americans on the Right could only dream that, like Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic—the US would “shut its border to Islamic migrants to keep potential terrorists out.”

America: A Notion, Not A Nation

Perplexing as it may seem, American foreign policy has been informed less by what Samuel P. Huntington termed civilizational consciousness, than by the idea of the propositional nation. America, to her governing neoconservative and left-liberal elites, is not a nation but a notion, a community of disparate peoples coalescing around an abstract, highly manipulable, state-sanctioned ideology. Democracy, for one.

Yet to Russell Kirk, the father of American conservatism, and an old-school conservative—as well as, arguably, to the founders of the nation themselves—society was a community of souls, joining the dead, the living, and those yet unborn. It cohered through what Aristotle called friendship and what Christians call love of neighbor, facilitated by a shared language, literature, history, habits and heroes.

These factors, taken together, constitute the glue that binds the nation.

By contrast, the rather flimsy whimsy that is the American “creedal nation” is, ostensibly, united in “a common commitment to a set of ideas and ideals.” If anything, when expressed by the historical majority, the natural affinity for one’s tribe—a connection to kith, kin and culture—is deemed inauthentic, xenophobic, and racist, unless asserted by non-Occidentals.

… READ ON … NEW COLUMN is “America’s Radical, Foreign-Policy Alinskyites Destroyed South Africa!” It is currently on WND.COM, the Unz Review, CNSNews, “Americans Should Recall How Foreign-Policy Alinskyites Destroyed South Africa.

And, newly on the great Townhall.com.

UPDATED (3/27): People are getting it. Conservative press is doing wonders in radically questioning past dogma.

Readers at Townhall.com:

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Thanks for this profound column which pushed me to ponder America’s image abroad, as well as our own obvious moral decline. I have shared it with an Afrikaner relation & I await his views.

A very intelligent piece. Thank you.