First of all, I want to post this for your consideration:
The Southern Avenger highlights the alternative viewpoints on foreign policy that are both reasonable and effective. While I won’t say that they would work better than what we are doing now, they certainly would be much cheaper than what we are doing now. Sometimes, you have to fight the war you have.
The fact of the matter is, our current approach to foreign policy has failed to effectively secure us against Islamic terror networks. Already in the past year we have seen at least two attacks that can be linked to Islamic terror while our Janet “Shoulder Pads” Napolitano has targeted people like me as a possible terror threat. Sadly, most conservatives were not outraged by that and instead focused on the fact that she targeted veterans. Libertarians really do have no allies on the Left or the Right.
I like Ann Coulter. I have my disagreements with her, but she is humorous and entertaining and ended up jokingly campaigning for Hilary Clinton in 2008 because John McCain won the Republican nomination. I’ve read a few of her books (the best ones are listed in my favorite books widget) and she is very intelligent and witty at the same time.
But she is wrong on foreign policy, unfortunately. What the Southern Avenger failed to address, probably because of a limited timeframe, is that most conservatives, especially the “Low-Church” conservatives, tend to view any antiwar sentiment as radical Left-wing and therefore crazy. What Ron Paul offers is not tolerance or pacifism, but a more reasonable approach to a very complex threat to the United States.
Islamic terrorism is stateless, faceless, and very difficult to uproot. When you attack as we have, any people in the Muslim who are marginally sympathetic to Islamic causes will teeter our way. This gets reinforced when we bomb civilian targets and end up killing an electronics repairman’s friends or family. It would sure motivate him to get into the bomb-making business.
The United States Constitution provides routes we can go down that will effectively deal with these monsters. We don’t have to go to war when we don’t need to and we really shouldn’t. It is costly, not only in American lives, but in taxpayer dollars both present and future. Since the economy is in a depression and the Bush methods don’t seem to be working for the long-term, maybe it’s high time we look for alternatives.
