Thoughts On The December 15, 2015 Republican Debate

By D. DiFrancesco

Although I could only bare to listen to about an hour of the debates last night I came away with a very clear picture of what the republican candidates are offering the American people and that is continued war and ramped up hate and racism.

Wow, these sound like promises that just call me to vote for them...not!  Each one of the candidate is a meaner and nastier war monger than the next rival and I just don’t understand it.  As I see it the Republican Party, over the last bunch of election cycles, has run on platforms of fear and war, they have not offered any solutions nor have they justified why war will solve our problems.  Isn’t war how we got into this mess in the first place.  Clearly they have learned nothing as the perpetuation of war is their solution to everything.

Perhaps new strategies are in order instead of the same-old-same-old.  This morning while listening to the radio show “The Agenda with Ari Rabin-Hovt” on SiriusXM, Ari came up with a great point that I

ISIL in Iraq
Image: besacenter.org

wholeheartedly agree with.  He correctly stated that Congress has the authority, as granted by the United States Constitution article 1, section 8, clause 11, to declare war.  As the republicans have control of both houses of Congress, why don’t they just declare war against ISIS and all 1.6 billion Muslims, since they seem to have some general vendetta against them anyway and be done with it. This way they can stop bitching and moaning that President Obama is not doing enough to combat our perceived threats.  My guess is that this will never happen as it would put as least some responsibility on them for our actions.

Please don’t assume that this is my preferred stance on matters of national security or foreign policy, in my view war is not the answer.  I don’t believe that the American military is designed to be able to effectively wage war against unconventional, un-uniformed combatants.  How do you identify them

Senator Ted Cruz
Image: crooksandliars.com

without inflicting an untold numbers of civilian casualties, I don’t think that you can.  This however, is not what some of our Republican candidates believe.  Take Ted Cruz for example, he has been touting carpet bombing as a way of destroying ISIS.  I guess this is because he doesn’t know if “sand can glow”, his words not mine, but clearly he would like to find out.  That is all well and good if ISIS would be the only casualty of this kind of action, but unfortunately that would not be the case and would likely result in nothing more than the further recruitment of new and more dangerous terrorists.  

My firm belief is that a profound change in our foreign policy practices would do far more to stem the the long term attraction of terrorism than military solutions alone ever would.  

First, if we would stop assuming that every nation on earth is ready and willing to embrace democracy we would be so much better off.  Democracy is an alien concept to much of this world.  It is something that must be accepted gradually and called for by the people, not thrust upon them by some foreign power.  

Lastly, deposing rulers of foreign governments and / or installing American chosen puppets has got to stop. This has failed us time-and-again and circled around to bite us in the you know what.  Perhaps there are times where we just need to let things be for stability's sake.  Middle Eastern cultures are very old and very different from our own and therefore need to progress at their own pace and on their own path.

Maybe someday we will learn though I hope it is not the hard way.