In one of those come-around-full-circle things where the left looks like the right and the right looks like the left, this well-received speech at the 2010 CPAC, posted at Campaign for Liberty.
I would venture to say Obama would get back a lot of the base he has lost were he to hand those who elected him in order to stop the wars a speech with one-tenth the passion, by an Air Force Lt. Colonel who has also blogged for Huffington Post. "Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terror."
Tell me how a Republican sounds like this:
It is the stupidity in the strategy that I want to briefly review. And to do this, no one here needs to understand the least bit about military history, tactics and strategy. You do not need to know about the Chinese general Sun Tzu, because apparently no one leading the Pentagon is reading him.
Sun Tzu understood that understatement and deception is necessary in war.
He said, "Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate."
Instead, our approach has been to almost randomly identify countries and governments and very publicly, go after them. The only mystery of our military and foreign policy since 2001 is in the minds of the American people, who do not understand why the war isn’t won yet, and why the enemy seems to be expanding, getting smarter, and hating us more.
Lt. Col Karen Kwiatkowski poses a sharp question which should also be taken to heart by Democrats as the 2010 elections arrive:
Some in the GOP are still wondering why the Tea Party movement evolved. Didn’t people already have a conservative political party representing their interests? Well, the GOP promotion of the war on terror using big contracts and bigger government, trampling the constitution, all in the name of fear and empire -- none of this approach was conservative.
Beyond being anything but conservative, the war on terror as we have conducted it since 2001 is simply not succeeding. In many of our overseas battlefields, we are creating and growing new terrorists, and smarter terrorists.
The writer exposes a rift in the Republican party which has been glossed over by many, that between the Sarah Palin Neanderthal wing and the Ron Paul non-interventionist foreign policy and Constitutionalist wing, despite efforts to paint the direction of the entire party as toward the Glenn Beck psychotics. It is not as simple as it seems. The retired officer says:
no serious or probing questions were asked about the appropriateness of our massive military-industrial complex.
Americans do not want war, or the massive military-industrial complex. Whatever they want, and they will disagree on whether it should go toward robust healthcare reform or deficit reduction, none of it is possible as long as we are throwing a trillion a year down the MIC-war toilet.
Interestingly, Ralph Nader and Ron Paul have appeared on CNN Blitzer to in essence say, we disagree, as from the right and the left, on many things. But whatever our priorities, we all lose as long as we fund the war machine.
Both parties continue to ignore this reality, at their own peril.
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