“In 19 months [Bush] will be a private citizen, giving speeches to insurance executives. America, however, will have to move on and restore its place in the world.”
At Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria writes on How to Restore America’s Place in the World. It’s an excellent, and I think correct, review of American foreign policy.
On the campaign trail, Giuliani plays a man exasperated by the inability of Americans to see the danger staring them in the face. “This is reality, ma’am,” he told a startled woman at Oglethorpe. “You’ve got to clear your head.”
The notion that the United States today is in grave danger of sitting back and going on the defensive is bizarre. In the last five and a half years, with bipartisan support, Washington has invaded two countries and sent troops around the world from Somalia to the Philippines to fight Islamic militants. It has ramped up defense spending by $187 billion—more than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, India and Britain. It has created a Department of Homeland Security that now spends more than $40 billion a year. It has set up secret prisons in Europe and a legal black hole in Guantánamo, to hold, interrogate and—by some definitions—torture prisoners. How would Giuliani really go on the offensive? Invade a couple of more countries?
Thanks again to Tom at Functional Ambivalent for the pointer.
The United States has troops in 135 countries. ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE, that is about 70% of the “independent states” in the world.
Meanwhile, our ports are grossly insecure and our borders are wide-open, but you cannot take a penknife on a plane. I guess that evens it out.
I reckon nobody listened to President Eisenhower.
I think a greater fear is to be so afraid of what you don’t understand as to allow incompetent, corrupt, evil men run the world.