Are the Neocons Pushing Romney back to Bush’s Foreign Policy?
In an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s radio show on Tuesday, Buchanan, the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?,” said Romney ought to distance himself from former President George W. Bush’s hawkish record on foreign policy, which came to define neoconservative ideology. (The bigger story here is to finally see a typical conservative like Laura Ingraham–who laughed in Ron Paul’s face in 2007–finally waking up on this issue. Is it genuine?)
“I’m afraid some of the neocons are pushing [Romney] back toward this same agenda, the ‘freedom agenda,’ or ‘we’re going to end tyranny in the world’ — this Manichean view of the Middle East where the good guys are on our side and the bad guys on the other side. There are bad guys, and frankly there are probably good guys on both sides of these struggles. And the United States has no vital interests in who rules in Damascus. … Do we really want to go to war and get ourselves involved there and overthrow a regime and what we get is what we have in Egypt?”
Buchanan reminded listeners of former President Ronald Reagan’s decision to intervene in Lebanon in 1983, which resulted in the deaths of 241 American servicemen after the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was bombed. Reagan immediately withdrew the U.S. presence in Lebanon and carried the burden with him until he left office in 1989, according to Buchanan.
“He learned from that, and good heavens, we ought to have learned from these last two wars,” Buchanan said.
FLASHBACK: Laura Ingraham insulting Ron Paul in 2007
You’ve come a long way, baby!