Category Archives: Foreign Policy

UPDATED: MIAMI Breakthrough: Not Just ANOTHER GOP Debate

Donald Trump, Economy, Elections, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Labor, Middle East, Republicans

For your convenience, here are my tweets in real time of the 12th, GOP debate, in CORAL GABLES, at the University of Miami (3/10). Since so few networks respect the written word, let us thank CNN for providing a transcript. For the first time, I’m comfortable saying Mr. Trump won the debate. He had never done so before.

UPDATE (3/11):

From first to last, with the most important tweet—you’re looking at it—in the lead:

UPDATED: Conservative For Trump Crucifies The ‘Con-servative’ Movement

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Elections, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Neoconservatism, Republicans

Somehow, being conservative now means denying the obvious and saying idiotic fantasies like ‘Islam is always peaceful’ or ‘Our war is not with a radical strain of Islam.’ Uh, sorry, but no it is not, and yes it is. And if getting a president who at least understands that means voting for Trump, then I guess I am not a conservative.—John Kluge

A conservative attorney and veteran of failed, unconstitutional wars the kind Rubio/Cruz would continue, motivates his support for Trump and his disgust for “con-servatives.” (Doff of the hat to Jack Kerwick for sending this). He does seem confused about the genesis of our un-American foreign policy, blaming Democrats (Wilson), not incorrectly, but not considering the neoconservative interlopers who’ve hijacked conservatism. The parts I like:

* “it doesn’t appear to me that conservatives calling on people to reject Trump have any idea what it actually means to be a ‘conservative.’ The word seems to have become a brand that some people attach to a set of partisan policy preferences, rather than the set of underlying principles about government and society it once was.”

* “Conservatism has become a dog’s breakfast of Wilsonian internationalism brought over from the Democratic Party after the New Left took it over, coupled with fanatical libertarian economics and religiously driven positions on various culture war issues.”

* “Lost in all of this is the older strain of conservatism. The one I grew up with and thought was reflective of the movement. This strain of conservatism believed in the free market and capitalism but did not fetishize them the way so many libertarians do. … This strain understood that a government’s first loyalty was to its citizens and the national interest. And also understood that the preservation of our culture and our civil institutions was a necessity.”

* “Conservatives have become some sort of schizophrenic sect of libertarians who love freedom (but hate potheads and abortion) and feel the US should be the policeman of the world.”

* “… when the hell did being conservative mean thinking the US has some kind of a duty to save foreign nations from themselves or bring our form of democratic republicanism to them by force?”

* “… Trump said what everyone in the country knows: that invading Iraq was a mistake. Rather than engaging the question with honest self-reflection, all of the so-called “conservatives” responded with the usual ‘How dare he?’”

* “I do not care that Donald Trump is in favor of big government. That is certainly not a virtue but it is not a meaningful vice, since the same can be said of every single Republican in the race. I am sorry, but the ‘We are just one more Republican victory from small government’ card is maxed out. We are not getting small government no matter who wins. So Trump being big government is a wash.

* Sixth, Trump offers at least the chance that he might act in the American interest instead of the world’s interest or in the blind pursuit of some fantasy ideological goals. There is more to economic policy than cutting taxes, sham free-trade agreements and hollow appeals to “cutting government” and the free market. Trump may not be good, but he at least understands that. In contrast, the rest of the GOP and everyone in Washington or the media who calls themselves a conservative has no understanding of this.”

* “Our country is going broke, half its working-age population isn’t even looking for work, faces the real threat of massive Islamic terrorist attack and has a government incapable of doing even basic functions. Meanwhile, conservatives act like cutting Planned Parenthood funding or stopping gays from getting marriage licenses are the great issues of the day and then have the gumption to call Donald Trump a clown. It would be downright funny if it wasn’t so sad and the situation so serious.”

* “Some of us are pretty serious people and once considered ourselves conservatives. Even if you still hate Trump, you owe it to conservatism to ask yourself how exactly conservatism managed to alienate so many of its supporters such that they are now willing to vote for someone you loathe as much as Trump.”

Via New York Post.

John Kluge is an attorney living in Washington. He served in the US Army for nine years, including two deployments in Iraq and Kuwait. This essay first appeared on Ricochet.com.

UPDATE (3/10):

The Winning Trump Ticket & Cabinet (Part I)

Bush, Crime, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Justice, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul, UN

“The Winning Trump Ticket & Cabinet” (Part I) is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

If Donald J. Trump wishes to lessen the impact of his disappointing second in the Iowa caucuses and walk back the tack he’s taken with Ted Cruz—he must begin to think big and talk big.

Loud in not necessarily big.

Call it triangulation, a concept associated with Bill Clinton’s successful strategies, or call it “the art of the deal”: It’s time for Trump to DO IT.

To this end, Trump must quit the “we don’t win anymore” formulaic rhapsody, and start fleshing out substantive positions. A pragmatist does so by introducing the people he’ll be recruiting to “Make America Great Again.”

To Cruz belongs the Trump Department of Justice portfolio. Offering Justice to Cruz allows Trump to both put Ted in his place as unsuited to the presidency; while simultaneously making him part of Team Trump and repairing that relationship.

Ted is too soft to be US president in these troubled times. But he’d make a spectacular attorney general in charge of DOJ.

There’s a reason George W. Bush hates Ted Cruz. In 2008, Cruz gave America reason to cue the mariachi band and celebrate the death of detritus José Medellín.

As part of a gangbanger initiation rite, Medellín had raped (in every way possible), strangled, slashed, and stomped two young Texan girls to death.

“In Texas,” to quote another Ron from the Lone Star State, “we have the death penalty and we use it. If you come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back.”

Bush 43 would wrestle a crocodile for a criminal alien. Backed by Bush—and on behalf of Medellín and other killer compadres awaiting a similar fate—Mexico promptly sued the US over procedural technicalities in the International Court of Justice. The president ordered Texas to halt the execution of murderer and rapist Medellín.

Texas’ heroic solicitor general said no.

Cruz took the case to the Supreme Court. There, he bested Bush and his lickspittles. As the Conservative Review gloated, Cruz “won the case, 6-to-3.” He had sought justice for Americans against a president who subjugated them to international courts. Ted, moreover, was forever gracious about Bush; Bush and his bambino bro routinely slime Ted. (In trashing Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Trump is in bad company.) …

…Read the rest.“The Winning Trump Ticket & Cabinet” (Part I) is the current column, now on WND.

Iran Prisoner Swap Likely B/C Of Loss Of Face/Shaming Stateside

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Iran, Military, Politics, The State

It would appear that the prisoner swap with Iran had not been written into the nuclear agreement with Iran, as the Obama administration is trying mightily to imply. “We’ve been engaged in tortuous negotiations” for 14 months,” say surrogates for the Obama team, all too eager to depict cabinet members and special envoy doing the impossible for their countrymen.

Not for one minute is this believable. The bastards were going to let those Americans rot. Obama thought he’d get away with touting the diplomatic accomplishment of the nuclear deal above all else. Like all politicking, the Iran deal would be a legacy for the political class involved; a loss for the people whose betterment the pols are supposed to strive.

It’s hard to tell from the veiled language used in reports. Journalist can’t think clearly and therefore are unable to ask a clear, pointed question like this:

Was the release of the American prisoners stipulated in the nuclear deal? Provide the text, please.

As I asked yesterday:

As for the implication on Twitter that Obama, his stellar bureaucrats and their predecessors have been busy for years in negotiations, because, well, that’s the way things are done (faith in government runs eternal). Not quite. Mother of decapitated hostage James Foley attested to being threatened with legal action by the benevolent functionaries if she attempted to independently retrieve her son. (DIANE FOLEY spoke to Anderson Cooper about that haunting regret in her life.) So the bureaucrat (Bush’s or Obama’s) is forever frenetic, but because he’s saving American lives.

RELATED “AFTER THEIR HEADS ROLL, AMERICA’S DEAD REMAIN FACELESS” (9/30/2004)

Another dynamic in operation is the humiliating specter of the American sailors being toyed with by the Iranians. Obama didn’t so much mind what befell those young men and woman; but he couldn’t tolerate his pride and vanity being further damaged in the US.