Posts Tagged ‘Caroline Glick’

The liberal art of demonization and American Jews

by Mojambo ( 128 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Egypt, Elections, Gaza, Israel, Palestinians at September 8th, 2011 - 2:00 pm

Anyone who tries to portray Barack Obama as sympathetic or friendly towards Israel has got to be smoking some heavy peyote. If Republican Bob Turner wins Anthony Weiner’s old congressional seat (NY -9) covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens (my old congressional district) will the media portray it as a repudiation of Barack Obama the way they used to portray the loss of a previously safe Republican seat to a Democrat during George W. Bush’s 2nd term? I think we all know that answer. The fact is that Obama and his de facto Secretary of State Samantha Power (who will replace Hillary Clinton in January 2013 if Obama wins reelection) is a committed Third World ideologue who has as little use for the Jewish state as he does for the concept of American exceptionalism. As for Robert Gates, a man who so effortlessly moves from the Bush administration to the Obama administration is strictly a careerist.

by Caroline Glick

US election season is clearly upon us as US President Barack Obama has moved into full campaign mode. Part and parcel of that mode is a new bid to woo Jewish voters and donors upset by Obama’s hostility to Israel back in the Democratic Party’s fold.

To undertake this task, the White House turned to its reliable defender, columnist Jeffrey Goldberg. Since 2008, when then-candidate Obama was first challenged on his anti-Israel friends, pastors and positions, Goldberg has willingly used his pen to defend Obama to the American Jewish community.

Trying to portray Obama as pro-Israel is not a simple task. From the outset of his tenure in office, Obama has distinguished himself as the most anti-Israel president ever.

Obama is the first president ever to denounce Jewish property rights in Jerusalem. He is the first president to require Israel to deny Jews property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as a precondition for peace talks with the Palestinians.

He is the first US president to adopt the position that Israel must surrender its right to defensible borders in the framework of a peace treaty. He has even made Israeli acceptance of this position a precondition for negotiations.

He is the first US president to accept Hamas as a legitimate actor in Palestinian politics. Obama’s willingness to do so was exposed by his refusal to end US financial assistance to the PA in the aftermath of last spring’s unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas.

He is the first US president to make US support for Israel at the UN conditional on Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.

[…]

GIVEN OBAMA’S record – to which can be added his fervent support for Turkish Prime Minister and virulent anti-Semite Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his courtship of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and his massive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and Egypt – it is obvious that any attempt to argue that Obama is pro-Israel cannot be based on substance, or even on tone. And so Goldberg’s article, like several that preceded it, is an attempt to distort Obama’s record and deflect responsibility for that record onto Netanyahu. Netanyahu, in turn, is demonized as ungrateful and uncooperative.

Goldberg’s narrative began by recalling Netanyahu’s extraordinary statement during his photo opportunity with Obama at the Oval Office during his visit to Washington in May. At the time, Netanyahu gave an impassioned defense of Israel’s right to secure borders and explained why the 1949 armistice lines are indefensible.

Goldberg centered on then-secretary of defense Robert Gates’s angry statement to his colleagues in the wake of Netanyahu’s visit. Gates reportedly accused Israel of being ungrateful for all the things the US did for it.

After presenting Gates as an objective critic whose views were justified and shared by one and all, Goldberg went on to claim that the administration’s justified antipathy for Netanyahu was liable to harm Israel. That is, he claimed that it would be Netanyahu’s fault if Obama abandoned traditional US support for Israel.

[…]

Then there is his portrayal of Gates as an objective observer. Goldberg failed to mention that Gates’s record has been consistently anti-Israel. In his Senate approval hearings during the Bush administration, Gates became the first senior US official to state publicly that Israel had a nuclear arsenal.

Gates was a member of the 2006 Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group that recommended the US pressure Israel to surrender Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights in order to appease the Arab world and pave the way for a US withdrawal from Iraq.

Gates did everything he could at the Pentagon to deny Israel the ability to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. He was also a fervent advocate of massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia that upset the military balance in the Middle East.

[…]

Deflecting substantive criticism by seeking to demonize one’s opponents is a standard leftist play. Obama and his political supporters engage in it routinely in their demonization of their political opponents as “terrorists” and “extremists.” And now, with the American Jewish vote in play for the first time since 1936, they are doing it to Netanyahu.

It is encouraging to see that at least in New York’s Ninth Congressional District, American Jews are refusing to be taken in.

Read the rest: American Jews and the liberal art of demonization

Tags: Caroline Glick
Posted in Barack Obama, Egypt, Elections, Gaza, Israel, Palestinians | 128 Comments »

The neo-Ottomanist foreign policy of Turkey is in shambles; and Ankara’s preferred scapegoat

by Mojambo ( 57 Comments › )
Filed under Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Islamists, Israel, Palestinians, Syria, Turkey at September 7th, 2011 - 11:30 am

The neo-Ottomanist foreign policy of Turkey is falling apart. Turkey now has problems with all its neighbors and former allies – Israel , Greece, Syria, Cyprus, Iraq, and even Iran. All the while Erdogan’s government wages a far more aggressive war against the Kurds then Israel ever did against the terrorist Palestinians. The United States government needs to tell Turkey to back the hell off and if Turkey does not, we will expel them from NATO and cut off all aid including military to them. Had Israel submitted to the arrogant, belligerent,and imperialsit Turkish ultimatum, she would be reaping a whirl wind of other demands upon her self.

by Ely Karmon

Israel’s decision not to abide by the Turkish ultimatum about the need to apologize for the May 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla incident brought the promised “Plan B” punishment: Turkey has decided to expel Israel’s ambassador to Ankara, downgrade its diplomatic ties to the lowest possible level, to hold on all military agreements and to halt trade between Turkey and Israel.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said his government would now provide full support to the families of those killed to pursue prosecution of any Israeli military or government members responsible for the deaths.

[……]

Davutoglu declared that “Turkey would take measures to ensure free maritime movement in the eastern Mediterranean.”

Until several months ago Turkey’s policy of “zero problems” with all its neighbors, a “bridge between East and West,” and Middle Eastern activism, devised by Davutoglu, seemed successful.

[….]
During the past few years, the AKP government improved enormously the political and economic relations with Syria. In April 2009 Turkey and Syria conducted an unprecedented, three-day joint military drill on their border and signed a letter of intent giving the green light for cooperation in the defense sector.

In the first days of the uprising in Cairo, Erdogan coordinated with the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad “efforts regarding unrest in Egypt.”

Weeks later, the bloody repression of the Syrian people’s rebellion compelled Erdogan to slam Assad’s regime, to give shelter to the Syrian opposition and warn his old friend that “those who build happiness on despotism will drown in the blood they spill.”

According to the Turkish daily Today’s Zaman, Turkey’s National Security Council lately discussed the possibility of establishing a “buffer zone” along the Syrian border, first in the “no man’s land” between the Syrian and Turkish lines of demarcation and to be extended further into Syrian territory if needed.

Ankara’s ties with Iran have also improved under the AKP. Turkey has defended Iran’s nuclearization efforts and in May 2010 brokered (with Brazil) the controversial Iran nuclear fuel swap, which led to nothing in practice.

Turkey’s UN vote against Iran sanctions raised serious objections in the United States and Europe. Iran indirectly supported a secret military drill between the Turkish and Chinese air forces that took place in Turkey in September 2010, as Chinese SU-27 warplanes that took off from bases in China refueled in Iran.

But since the Turkish moves against the Assad regime, Teheran has been influential in disrupting Syria’s confidence in Turkey by disseminating anti-Turkish propaganda, has stopped intelligence cooperation with Turkey in the fight against the Kurdish PKK in Iraq, and has even threatened it not to intervene in Syrian affairs. Iran was also unhappy about Turkey’s support to the Bahraini regime’s repression of the Shia rebellion.

Turkey opposed the rebels in Libya at the beginning of the Benghazi uprising and the NATO intervention, but in the end it had to bandwagon the alliance and these days recognizes the NTC government.

When Cyprus decided to go ahead with gas drilling off its southern coast beginning in October 2011, after it concluded a maritime boundary agreement with Israel in 2010, Turkey unalterably opposed this course. Turkey claimed that having invaded Cyprus and established a Turkish entity there, which no one else recognizes, it is entitled to forestall all activity in the Cypriot economic exclusion zone (EEZ) until the status of Cyprus is worked out through negotiation.

At the same time, Erdogan has announced to the United Nations and leaders of Cyprus that his country is no longer prepared to accept the concessions it has agreed to in order to help with the reunification of Cyprus in line with a UN plan back in 2004.

The Turkish side will accept nothing short of recognition of a two-state solution on the island.

[……]

The Turkish foreign minister has threatened to become more active in pushing the Palestinian Authority’s request for the recognition of a Palestinian state at the next UN General Assembly.

It seems the Erdogan government is amnesic regarding its own main internal problem, the Kurdish issue. The most immediate impact of the UN recognition of the Palestinian state could be on the Kurds, in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The AKP government has not solved, as promised, the Kurdish problem and since it won the June 2011 elections is facing a growing terrorism and guerrilla offensive inside Turkey and from Iraq, an active political opposition by Kurdish parliamentarians and the declaration of a “democratic autonomy” by Kurdish NGOs in the in southeastern province of Diyarbakir (Turkish Kurdistan).

The Turkish air force lately bombed “60 pre-determined targets belonging to the separatist [PKK] organization” in Iraq and its artillery struck at 168 additional targets with “intense” fire from the Turkish side. The Turkish military stated that an estimated 145 to 160 PKK members were killed and scores injured.

The pro-government Turkish daily Zaman reported that Turkey was setting up “operational front garrisons” inside northern Iraq where hitherto it used to maintain a low-key intelligence presence to monitor Kurdish activities.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari denounced Turkish bombardments of Kurdish areas in northern Iraq. Human Rights Watch said in a statement that many of the targeted areas were purely civilian and most of the victims were civilians.

By threatening Israel, Turkey’s government seems to have passed from the “zero problems” policy in the Middle East to an “all azimuth hostility” strategy.

Read the rest – Turkey’s foreign policy is in shambles

Caroline Glick points out what I have mentioned – that there is nothing that Israel can do to appease Ankara. That even if Israel groveled, Turkey would come up with another grievance as confrontation with Israel is not based on any Israeli policy but on a neo-Ottomanist regional strategy. Islamists can only be either submitted to or opposed, but never appeased. Israel needs to cultivate good relations with those nations who have been historically affected by Turkish aggression – Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus, Armenia and the Kurds.

by Caroline Glick

Monday morning, Turkey took its anti-Israel campaign to a new level. Beyond downgrading diplomatic relations with Israel; beyond suspending military agreements; beyond threatening naval war; beyond threatening to foment an irredentist insurrection of Israeli Arabs; the Turks decided to terrorize Israeli tourists landing in Istanbul airport.

Forty Israeli passengers, mainly businessmen who had landed in Istanbul on a Turkish Airlines flight from Tel Aviv, were separated from the rest of the flight passengers. Their passports were confiscated.

They were placed in interrogation rooms and stripped down to their underwear. Their carry-on bags were checked. And then they were lined up against a wall, forbidden to sit down or use the washroom.

Passengers who contacted the Foreign Ministry said they felt frightened and intimidated.

[…..]

And that’s the thing of it. The Turks didn’t harass the Israeli tourists in order to send a message to Israel. They have nothing more to say to us. We are non-entities to them. We’re only good for attacking.

No, Israel wasn’t the target audience the Turks were playing to on Monday. Their target audience was the Islamic world generally and the Arab world specifically. Turkey’s influence in these arenas skyrocketed in January 2009 after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused President Shimon Peres and Israel of mass murder as the leaders shared a stage at the Davos Conference.

Similarly Erdogan’s domestic and pan-Islamic support levels increased steeply in the aftermath of the Turkish-supported pro-Hamas flotilla to Gaza in 2010. After nine Turkish government-supported IHH terrorists were killed aboard the Mavi Marmara when they tried to murder IDF naval commandos who had lawfully boarded the ship, the Arabs hailed Erdogan as a hero for bravely attacking Israel.

Given how well scapegoating Israel has served him, Erdogan clearly believes it is a no-risk strategy for raising his star from Cairo to Algiers.

[…..]

Others have argued that Israel may be able to rebuild its strategic relations with Turkey by selling Ankara more drones with which to kill Iraqi and Turkish Kurds. The Turkish military claimed it killed 100 Kurdish fighters in its attacks last month in Iraq and along the Turkish-Iraqi border. Israeli UAVs reportedly played a key role in the bombing. But Turkey needs more. If we sell them more, the argument goes, maybe they will see how useful we are and stop attacking us.

Aside from being morally reprehensible, these arguments fail to recognize the basic reality that Turkey has no interest whatsoever in rebuilding its ties with Israel. The once-important strategic alliance is over and gone, and Israel cannot do anything about it. All Turkey sees us as today is a scapegoat.

It has been argued by commentators on the Right that Turkey’s abandonment of Israel is part and parcel of its abandonment of the US. But this is a mischaracterization of Turkey’s policy toward the US.

Since 2003, Turkey has undertaken a series of actions that have harmed US strategic interests. The first, of course, was Erdogan’s decision on the eve of the Iraq War to deny the US military the right to invade northern Iraq from Turkey.

The latest action was arguably Turkey’s joint air exercises with the Chinese Air Force last September.

Chinese jets en route to Turkey refueled in Iran. The exercise was a clear signal that NATO member Turkey intends to exploit its alliance with the US to build ties with the US’s chief geostrategic competitor.

Yet at the same time that Turkey has harmed the US, it has also taken steps to assist it. Most recently, last week, Erdogan belatedly agreed to station the high-powered US X-Band radar on its territory as part of a missile defense system to protect NATO allies against the threat of Iranian long-range missiles.

Turkey’s mixed policies toward the US reveal that unlike its position on Israel, Turkey believes that it has an interest in maintaining its alliance with the US. Its hostile behavior is more a function of perceived US weakness than anything else. That is, Turkey is willing to risk angering the US by undercutting it because it does not fear US retribution.

Turkey’s aggressive behavior might end if the US made Turkey pay a price for it.

To its credit, the Netanyahu government has not accepted the advice of the Left and has refused to apologize to Turkey or pay compensation to the families of those killed aboard the Marmara. Moreover, the government has wisely used Turkey’s behavior as a means of building strong bilateral ties with other victims of Turkish aggression. Over the past two years, Israel has strongly upgraded is strategic ties with Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania. Israel should add to these accomplishments by strengthening its ties to Armenia and to the Kurds of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

With newspapers running groundless stories about prospects for reconstituting relations with Turkey, we need to recognize that what we are experiencing now is the beginning, not the end, of Turkey’s slide into the enemy camp. Erdogan is openly taking steps to transform Turkey into an Islamic state along the lines of Iran. And the further he goes down his chosen path, the more harshly and aggressively he will lash out at Israel.

Given that scapegoating Israel is not a momentary lapse of reason on Turkey’s part but a central aspect of a long-term regional strategy, it is clear that Israel needs to meet Turkish aggression with more than momentary courage in the face of intimidation and threats. Israel needs to build on its already successful policy of forming a ring of alliances around Turkey and develop a long-term military and diplomatic strategy for containing and weakening it.

Read the rest – Ankara’s chosen scapegoat

Tags: Caroline Glick, Ely Karmon
Posted in Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Islamists, Israel, Palestinians, Syria, Turkey | 57 Comments »

A foreign policy debate that is a clash between those who trust facts and those who trust clichés

by Mojambo ( 152 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Palestinians, Progressives, Syria, United Nations at September 2nd, 2011 - 2:00 pm

Navy Seal Foundation Charity… Gun Raffle Tickets!

Great prize! Great cause!

The other day someone on the blog asked me if there were any conservative female politicians I like. Well in addition to Nikki Haley, Jan Brewer, and Susana Martinez, I am very much impressed by Florida congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinin and her bills regarding the United Nations. There is no purpose whatsoever for the U.N. Human Rights Committee – a committee that has had Syria, China, Cuba, and Libya as members – to exist outside of an Orwellian universe. UNRWA has become a racket which keeps solely for political reasons Palestinians in refugee camps for 63 years – only a tiny portion of whom actually were ever even born in Israel.

by Caroline Glick

US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, kicked up a political storm this week. On Tuesday, Ros-Lehtinen introduced the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act. If passed into law it would place stringent restrictions on US funding of the UN’s budget.

The US currently funds 22 percent of the UN’s general budget. That budget is passed by the General Assembly with no oversight by the US. America’s 22% share of the budget is nonvoluntary, meaning the US may exert no influence over how its taxpayers’ funds are spent.

If Ros-Lehtinen’s act is passed into law, the UN will have two years to enact budgetary reforms that would render a minimum of 80% of its budget financing voluntary. If the UN does not make the required reforms, the US government will be enjoined to withhold 50% of its nonvoluntary UN budget allocations.

Beyond this overarching demand for UN budgetary reform, the act contains several specific actions that are directed against UN institutions that advance anti-American and anti-Israel agendas.

Ros-Lehtinen’s act would defund the UN Human Rights Committee until such time as it repeals its permanent anti-Israel resolution, and prohibits countries that support terror and are under UN Security Council sanctions from serving as its members. It would also prohibit the US from serving as a member of the UNHRC until such reforms are enacted.

Ros-Lehtinen’s bill defunds all UN activities related to the libelous Goldstone Report, and the anti- Semitic Durban process. It vastly curtails and conditions US funding of UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency permeated by members of terrorist organizations. UNRWA’s facilities are routinely used to plan, execute and incite terrorism against Israel and to indoctrinate Palestinians to seek Israel’s destruction.

The bill pays special attention to the Palestinian Authority’s plan to have the UN Security Council and General Assembly vote in favor of Palestinian statehood later this month. The bill would cut off US funding to any UN agency or organization that upgrades the Palestinian mission to the UN in any way in the aftermath of a General Assembly vote in favor of such an upgrade in representation.

Ros-Lehtinen’s bill, which has 57 co-sponsors, provides detailed explanations for how the targeted UN agencies and activities harm US interests. It notes that the US’s membership since 2009 in the UN Human Rights Council has had no impact whatsoever on the UNHRC’s anti-Israel and anti- American agenda. The US has been unable to temper in any way the UNHRC’s actions and resolutions, including its decisions to form the Goldstone Committee and to endorse the findings of the Goldstone Report, and its continued support and organization of the anti-Semitic Durban conferences in which Israel is attacked and libeled as an illegitimate, racist state.

[…]

Ignoring its fact-based assessment of UN failings, the Obama administration has rejected the Ros- Lehtinen bill out of hand. Speaking to Politico, an administration source panned the bill, claiming, “This draft legislation is dated, tired and frankly unresponsive to the positive role being played by the UN.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland attacked the bill, saying it would “seriously undermine our international standing and dangerously weaken the UN as an instrument to advance US national security goals.”

Since taking office, Barack Obama has taken concerted steps to place cooperation with the UN at the top of his foreign policy agenda. Through word and deed, Obama has shown that he believes that the US should minimize the extent to which it operates independently of the UN on the global stage.

Obama and his advisers give four arguments to support their view that the UN should effectively replace the US as the global leader. First, they say that the US cannot operate unilaterally on the global stage.

Second, they insinuate that operations undertaken outside the UN umbrella are somehow illegitimate.

[…]

States do not oppose the US at the UN because they consider it bossy. They oppose the US at the UN because they believe it serves their national interests to oppose the US and its interests.

It is due to clashing interests, not the comportment of US representatives, that the Obama administration to fail to exert any influence over the UNHRC’s agenda despite its commitment to “engagement.”

Clashing national interests are the reason the Obama administration has failed to secure Security Council support for anything approaching effective measures against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The final administration argument – that it is déclassé to demand that the UN stop advancing the causes of America’s enemies – is not simply peevish and insulting. It is indicative of the culture that motivates the administration to cling to its UN-centered agenda despite its obvious and repeated failure.

As the easy refutation of all the administration’s arguments makes clear, the agenda is not a product of rational thought. It is the product of the groupthink that is endemic at the universities whence Obama and his advisers have emerged. This groupthink is directed by unquestioned clichés that are passed off as sophisticated reasoning. These include such pearls of wisdom as “global governance,” “Twitter revolution,” “multilateralism” and “interdependence.”

These clichés have become articles of faith that are impermeable to fact and reality. As a consequence, those who adhere to them will never acknowledge their failure to deliver on their utopian promises. Instead they attack anyone who points out their failure as “dated,” and as “tired” old fogies who are too unsophisticated to understand the world.

We see this attitude at work in all aspects of Obama’s foreign policy. For instance, Obama came into office with the view that the reason all efforts to date to successfully complete a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians failed because the Palestinians didn’t trust the US to “deliver” Israel. To remedy this perceived problem, Obama has consistently sought to “put daylight” between the US and Israel. This policy has failed abysmally, as the PA’s current UN statehood bid shows. And yet the administration continues to cling to it, because acknowledging its failure would involve renouncing a cliché.

[…]

Ros-Lehtinen’s bill is expected to be blocked in the Democrat-controlled Senate before Obama has the opportunity to veto it. This is a pity not simply because the bill would advance US interests and the cause of freedom. It is a pity because it shows that the foreign policy debate in the US is now a fight between those who trust facts and those who trust clichés.

Read the rest: Cliche based foreign policy

Navy Seal Foundation Charity… Gun Raffle Tickets!

Great prize! Great cause!

Tags: Caroline Glick
Posted in Barack Obama, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Palestinians, Progressives, Syria, United Nations | 152 Comments »

A Jacksonian foreign policy option: neither neo-conservative or isolationist

by Mojambo ( 167 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Egypt, Gaza, George W. Bush, Hamas, Hezballah, Iran, Iraq, Palestinians at August 16th, 2011 - 8:30 am

What this country needs a foreign/defense policy that is neither neoconservative or isolationist. Neoconservatism (as represented by George W. Bush and going back to Woodrow Wilson) thinks that the world (basically the non Western world) really desires American style freedoms and government. Isolationism (as evidenced by Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan) feels that the world is too rotten and that America needs to disengage from it as quickly as possibly. Ronald Reagan being neither a foreign policy social worker or an isolationist saw the world for what it was. He tried (and succeeded brilliantly) to roll back the “Evil Empire” but worked with indigenous democratic forces behind the Iron Curtain such as “Solidarity” in Poland and “Charter 77” in Czechoslovakia. A vigorous United States foreign policy which does not apologize to the world, but supports our friends, vigorously opposes our foes (see Andrew Jackson) and acts in our own best interests is the way to go. It was the height of folly (in my opinion) to have our brave and highly trained soldiers and Marines building roads and school houses in Iraq and Afghanistan – instead of utterly destroying the enemy we resurrected the failed Vietnam era policies of winning our enemies hearts and minds.

by Caroline Glick

Over the past several months, a certain intolerance has crept into the rhetoric of leading neoconservative publications and writers.

This intolerance has become particularly noticeable since February’s neoconservative-supported overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and President Barack Obama’s neoconservative-supported decision to commit US forces to battle against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in March.

The basic concept being propounded by leading neoconservative writers and publications is that anyone who disagrees with neoconservative policies is an isolationist. A notable recent example of this tendency was a blog post published on Wednesday by Commentary magazine’s Executive Editor Jonathan Tobin regarding the emerging contours of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s foreign policy views.

After listing various former Bush administration officials who are advising Perry on foreign affairs, Tobin concluded, “Perry might have more in common with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party than the isolationists.” While this is may be true, it is certainly true that the neoconservatives and the isolationists are not the only foreign policy wings in the Republican Party. Indeed, most Republicans are neither isolationists nor neoconservatives.

Isolationism broadly speaking is the notion that the US is better off withdrawing to fortress America and leaving the rest of the world’s nations to fight it out among themselves. The isolationist impulse in the US is what caused the US to enter both world wars years after they began. It is what has propelled much of the antiwar sentiment on the far Left and the far Right alike since September 11. The far Left argues the US should withdraw from world leadership because the US is evil. And the far Right argues that the US should withdraw from world leadership because the world is evil.

Neoconservatism broadly speaking involves the adoption of a muscular US foreign policy in order to advance the cause of democracy and freedom worldwide. Wilsonian in its view of the universal nature of the human impulse to freedom, neoconservatives in recent years have wholeheartedly embraced the notion that if given a chance to make their sentiments known, most people will choose liberal democracy over any other form of government.

Former president George W. Bush is widely viewed as the first neoconservative president, due to his wholehearted embrace of this core concept of neoconservativism in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Aside from their belief that if given the choice people will choose to be free, neoconservatives argue the more democratic governments there are, the safer the world will be and the safer the US will be. Therefore, broadly speaking, neoconservatives argue that the US should always side with populist forces against dictatorships.

While these ideas may be correct in theory, in practice the consequence of Bush’s adoption of the neoconservative worldview was the empowerment of populist and popular jihadists and Iranian allies throughout the Middle East at the expense of US allies. Hamas won the Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. Its electoral victory paved the way for its military takeover of Gaza in 2007.

Hezbollah’s participation in Lebanon’s 2005 elections enabled the Iranian proxy army to hijack the Lebanese government in 2006, and to violently take over the Lebanese government in 2009.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s successful parliamentary run in Egypt in 2005 strengthened the radical, anti-American, jihadist group and weakened Mubarak.

And the election of Iranian-influenced Iraqi political leaders in Iraq in 2005 exacerbated the trend of Iranian predominance in post-Saddam Iraq. It also served to instigate a gradual estrangement of Saudi Arabia from the US.

THE NEOCONSERVATIVE preference for populist forces over authoritarian ones propelled leading neoconservative thinkers and former Bush administration officials to enthusiastically support the anti-Mubarak protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo in January. And their criticism of Obama for not immediately joining the protesters and calling for Mubarak’s removal from power was instrumental in convincing Obama to abandon Mubarak.

[…]

In a similar fashion, the neoconservatives were quick to support Obama’s decision to use military force to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from power in March. The fact that unlike Syria’s Bashar Assad and Iran’s ayatollahs, Gaddafi gave up his nuclear proliferation program in 2004 was of no importance. The fact that from the outset there was evidence that al-Qaida terrorists are members of the US-supported Libyan opposition, similarly made little impact on the neoconservatives who supported Obama’s decision to set conditions that would enable “democracy” to take root in Libya. The fact that the US has no clear national interest at stake in Libya was brushed aside. The fact that Obama lacked congressional sanction for committing US troops to battle was also largely ignored.

Neoconservative writers have castigated opponents of US military involvement in Libya as isolationists.

In so doing, they placed Republican politicians like presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin in the same pile as presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan.

The very notion that robust internationalists such as Bachmann and Palin could be thrown in with ardent isolationists like Paul and Buchanan is appalling. But it is of a piece with the prevailing, false notion being argued by dominant voices in neoconservative circles that “you’re either with us or you’re with the Buchananites.” In truth, the dominant foreign policy in the Republican Party, and to a degree, in American society as a whole, is neither neoconservativism nor isolationism. For lack of a better name, it is what historian Walter Russell Mead has referred to as Jacksonianism, after Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the US. As Mead noted in a 1999 article in The National Interest titled “The Jacksonian Tradition,” the most popular and enduring US model for foreign policy is far more flexible than either the isolationist or the neoconservative model.

According to Mead, the Jacksonian foreign policy model involves a few basic ideas. The US is different from the rest of the world, and therefore the US should not try to remake the world in its own image by claiming that everyone is basically the same. The US must ensure its honor abroad by abiding by its commitments and maintaining its standing with its allies. The US must take action to defend its interests. The US must fight to win or not fight at all. The US should only respect those foes that fight by the same rules as the US does.

THE US president that hewed closest to these basic guidelines in recent times was Ronald Reagan.

Popular perception that Reagan was acting in accordance with Jacksonian foreign policy principles is what kept the public support for Reagan high even as the liberal media depicted his foreign policy as simplistic and dangerous.

For instance, Reagan fought Soviet influence in Central America everywhere he could and with whomever he could find. Regan exploited every opportunity to weaken the Soviet Union in Europe. He worked with the Vatican in Poland.

He deployed Pershing short-range nuclear warheads in Western Europe. He called the Soviet Union an evil empire. He began developing the Strategic Defense Initiative. And he walked away from an arms control agreement when he decided it was a bad deal for the US.

[…]

If a Jacksonian president were in charge of US foreign policy, he or she would understand that supporting elections that are likely to bring a terror group like Hamas or Hezbollah to power is not an American interest.

He or she would understand that toppling a pro-American dictator like Mubarak in favor of a mob is not sound policy if the move is likely to bring an anti-American authoritarian successor regime to power.

A Jacksonian president would understand that using US power to overthrow a largely neutered US foe like Gaddafi in favor of a suspect opposition movement is not a judicious use of US power.

Indeed, a Jacksonian president would recognize that it would be far better to expend the US’s power to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad – an open and active foe of the US – and so influence the nature of a post-Assad government.

For all the deficiencies of the neoconservative worldview, at least the neoconservatives act out of a deep-seated belief that the US is a force for good in the world and out of concern for maintaining America’s role as the leader of the free world. In stark contrast, Obama’s foreign policy is based on a fundamental anti-American view of the US and a desire to end the US’s role as the leading world power. And the impact of Obama’s foreign policy on US and global security has been devastating.

From Europe to Asia to Russia to Latin America to the Middle East and Africa, Obama has weakened the US and turned on its allies. He has purposely strengthened US adversaries worldwide, as part of an overall strategy of divesting an unworthy America from its role as world leader.

[…]

With all the failings of the neoconservative foreign policy model, it is clear that Obama’s foreign policy has been far more devastating for US and global security.

Still, it would be a real tragedy if at the end of the primary season, due to neoconservative intellectual bullying, the Republican presidential nominee were forced to choose between neoconservativism and isolationism. A rich, successful and popular American foreign policy tradition of Jacksonianism awaits the right candidate.