Mr. Speaker, the week before last, the greatly respected conservative columnist
Thomas Sowell wrote:
“What lessons might we learn from the whole experience of the Iraq war?
If nothing else, we should never again imagine that we can engage in nation
building in the sweeping sense that term acquired in Iraq — least of all, building
a democratic Arab nation in a region of the world that has never had such a
thing in a history that goes back thousands of years.”
The week before last, the longtime conservative leader David
Keene wrote in the Washington Times about our Middle East wars:
“The concept of U.S. national interests was stretched beyond any rational
meaning with the argument that ‘democracies don’t go to war with democracies,’
so rebuilding the world in our own image was seen as our ultimate national interest.”
Mr. Keene went on and said:
“America took on more than we could possibly handle. The result is a generation
of young Americans who have never known peace, a decade in which thousands of
our best have died or been maimed with little to show for their sacrifices,
our enemies have multiplied, and the national debt has skyrocketed.”
The week before last, the publisher of The American Conservative magazine,
Jon Utley, wrote an article entitled: “12
Reasons America Doesn’t Win Its Wars.” The Magazine said:
“Too many parties now benefit from perpetual warmongering for the US to
ever conclude its military conflicts.”
Mr. Utley quoted conservative columnist Peggy Noonan, who wrote:
“We spend too much on the military, which not only adds to our debt, but
guarantees that our weapons will be used.”
She quoted one expert, who said:
“Policymakers will find uses for them to justify their expense, which
will implicate us in crises that are none of our business.”