Although the 2016 election is a year-and-a-half away, the verdict is already
in on the continuation of post-World War II interventionism as the policy of
choice. After the hysteria in the media induced by ISIS’s beheading of a few
Americans in retaliation for U.S. bombing of the group in the Middle East, American
public sentiment, still exhausted by the long counterproductive wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, demanded some action against ISIS — as long as it didn’t involve another
protracted war or any US military personnel getting killed.
Thus, President Barack Obama gave the public an ineffective air war against
the group and a few thousand “non-combat” military advisers. However,
president’s restrained posture has allowed all of the Republican candidates
to posture that they would be tougher than Obama on ISIS — and on most other
foreign policy issues. And of course, Democrat Hillary Clinton — who would like
to be the first woman leader of the United States since Edith Wilson took over
for her medically incapacitated husband from late 1919 to early 1921 — has long
believed that she has to be as foolishly macho and jingoistic in foreign policy
as the men. Hillary voted for George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion and occupation
of Iraq. Also, as Secretary of States, she couldn’t resist the opportunity created
by Arab Spring unrest in Libya to advocate taking out Muammar Gaddafi, a dictator
who had actually made nice with the West. The result has been chaos, tribal
warfare, and new Islamist terrorist bases, including those of ISIS — all fueled
with the huge quantities of weapons in Gaddafi’s stores.
Even Rand Paul, a libertarianesque Republican who is supposed to be somewhat
less hawkish than the other serious candidates, was recently quoted in the American
Conservative magazine, “The enemy is Radical Islam and not only will I
name the enemy, I will do whatever it takes to defend America from these haters
of mankind.”