Council on Foreign Relations is it Treasonous?

It is simply paranoia that would argue that an article in Foreign Affairs constitutes marching orders for the eye-in-the-pyramid demonoids. Again, it should not be surprising that liberals predominate in an organization which seeks to analyze and understand foreign affairs.

 

Only a fellow neo-con would consider these neo-cons to be "strong conservatives"!

Only someone who practices John Birch "guilt by association" thinking would label someone a neo-con because he (I) might actually think that neo-cons are foreign policy conservatives. It is ridiculous that some who call themselves conservatives are loathe to actually calmly and rationally debate neo-conservatives rather than simply sitting on the sidelines arguing that calling someone a neo-con actually constitutes an argument.

BTW, I am not a neo-con. But you wouldn't know that because you've decided I am one because I happen to agree with them about some things.

 

The modern conservative movement (neo-conservativism) is not really conservative!

OK, ye measurer of all things conservative, who gets to really belong to the conservative movement? Let me guess, Patrick Buchanan in, and such stalwarts of Reagan administration policy as Abrams and Kirkpatrick are out?

And you wonder why others don't take you seriously?

 

Your the one that called these two neo-cons "strong conservatives". If you agree that the neo-con goal of Pax Americana and nation building is conservative foreign policy, then that is what you should have said. Most of the neo-cons that are running the GOP are former liberals who are in favor of big government, open borders, supporting the CFR, UN, WTO, FTAA, CAFTA, NAFTA, etc. I just don't consider that to be good conservative foreign policy, but I do consider it to be dangerous to our Constitutional Republic!

It's not up to me "who gets to really belong to the conservative movement". I consider the principles that makes one conservative to be if they support a smaller federal government, protecting our borders, understanding that only those rights granted by the Constitution belong to the government and that all of the unconstitutional socialist things that our current government lays claim to should be abolished, not promoted and increased. What do you consider to be "conservative" in regards to our government and it's elected officials?

I don't think I ever said I wonder or even care if others do or don't take me seriously.

 

If you agree that the neo-con goal of Pax Americana and nation building is conservative foreign policy, then that is what you should have said.

It is certainly A conservative foreign policy. In a world of conflicting centers of power, there is no Pax I would prefer like a Pax Americana. There is no other country that deserves to dominate and whom I would rather see dominate than the USA. But I suppose that viewpoint is too what--unAmerican (?). Or, , anti-American?

 

One problem with the current foreign policy of nation building is that the current neo-con leadership wants to have our troops serving around the world under UN leadership and control, this has nothing to do with the USA dominating, but increasing the UN power and moving toward a New World Order, which is very anti-American!

 

I don't recall seeing any blue helmets in Iraq or Afghanistan. Do you?

 

Not yet, but they are coming, the Bush Defense and State Departments are jointly proposing to establish, with the apparent blessing of the White House, a 75,000-strong army of international "peacekeepers." Called the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI), this astonishing scheme calls for recruiting and training primarily Third World peacekeepers, to the tune of over $600 million over the next five years.

It wasn’t until May 15, 2004, when the House Armed Services Committee released its report on H.R. 4200, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005, that a general outline of the GPOI began to emerge. There, tucked away on page 368 of the report, we find the following alarming revelations:

On April 29, 2004, administration officials briefed committee staff on the Global Peace Operations Initiative. In general, the initiative is a joint venture between the Department of Defense and the Department of State to train and equip roughly 75,000 foreign military personnel in peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations over five years. The administration further proposes legislative authority for the Department of Defense to spend up to $100 million in operations and maintenance funding on training foreign military forces, either by transferring those funds to the Department of State or conducting the training itself. Over the next five years, the administration estimated that the total cost of the initiative would be $606 million and that the Department of Defense would be responsible for roughly eighty percent of the total....

In general, the committee supports the goals of the Global Peace Operations Initiative. However, it is concerned about the process by which the administration seeks to fund the program and move it forward. Historically, the Department of State has trained and equipped foreign military forces for the United States under title 22 of the U.S. Code, which restricts the kinds of training that can be provided and the countries to which it can be provided.... In this case, however, the administration proposed exempting the Global Peace Operations Initiative from those legal constraints and requested authority to use Department of Defense funding intended to pay for the operations and maintenance of U.S. forces. As a result, any use of the authority could mean depriving U.S. forces of the resources that the administration had requested, and which Congress had authorized and appropriated, for their operations and maintenance.

Incredible! As has been widely reported, our soldiers and Marines in Iraq are suffering from a shameful lack of body armor and shortages of food, water, ammunition and just about every other battlefield necessity. But the Bush administration wants to spend $606 million to train and equip foreign soldiers for UN peacekeeping missions. The money would come mostly from the Defense budget, despite the fact that our own troops are already under-equipped. And, like the Clinton administration’s effort to keep PDD-13 from Congress and the American public, the Bush administration is trying to sneak its subversive GPOI past Congress in stealth mode. It has been extremely stingy about releasing any details of this revolutionary program.

Source: William F. Jasper

 

From the editors of Foreign Affairs:

"The articles in Foreign Affairs do not represent any consensus of beliefs. We do not expect that readers will sympathize with all the sentiments they find here, for some of our writers will flatly disagree with others; but we hold that while keeping clear of mere vagaries Foreign Affairs can do more to inform American public opinion by a broad hospitality to divergent ideas than it can by identifying itself with one school. We do not accept responsibility for the views expressed in an article, signed or unsigned, that appears in these pages. What we do accept is the responsibility for giving them a chance to appear."

 

But, Ken, the aluminum foil hat crowd don't care about that. For them, you're either wearing a blue helmet or Reynolds wrap.

 

Come on FTR get with the program no one uses that old Reynolds wrap anymore, now it's Reflectix because it has much improved radiation reducing abilities, when used over a vacuum.

 

Plus Reynolds wrap is probably made at some overseas factory!

 

Unfortunately, JBS's and such as Buchananites are quite ready to declare themselves ideologically pure and that none others are conservative. I would recommend a column by Joseph Bottum in the current issue of First Things, titled "The New Fusionism" (linked with the title).

Conservatives with any familiarity with the history of the conservative movement are aware of the split between the traditionalists and the libertarians. Seeking to bridge that gap, Frank S. Meyer wrote a book In Defense of Freedom, defending fusionism, which was an attempt to bring the two together.

That doesn't mean I believe in a conservative "big tent" that includes Rockefeller Republicans but it does mean that if there are those with whom there are some shared conservative values and principles we should identify those commonalities rather than immediately villifying those "others" due to the differences. Abrams, Kirkpatrick, and Perle all have brilliantly argued for a strong and dominant, non-apologetic America and were at the forefront of resisting Soviet/Communist expansion and, in fact, turning the tide. To argue that this somehow makes them neo- and therefore not true conservatives is therefore not only factually dishonest, it is also unfair to those individuals who made such brilliant contributions to the success of Reagan foreign policy.

This is a good place to again recommend The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 by George H. Nash.

 

It's one thing to have a policy of ending Communism through diplomatic means as Reagan did, it's another to support pre-emptive invasions of other soverign nations that pose no threat to our country to experiment with nation building, I do consider the former to be a conservative principle, but the later is not.

What makes one a conservative has to do with so much more than their foreign policy. Most of the leaders in the neoconservative movement are not only big on their foreign policy, but also big on promoting an increase in the size and cost of the federal government, that is not conservative either.

Most of these neo-cons also support opening the borders and creating a "Union of the Americas". It was Ronald Reagan who said, "A nation without borders is no longer a nation."

I think there are both good and bad policies from every political group, but I can't support Rockefeller Republicans over one issue that I may agree with, when they have so many other issues that they promote that are dangerous to our Constitutional Republic. Just because leaders in the GOP like Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ron Silver, etc. call themselves conservative, it doesn't mean conservatives should support them.

As a Constitutionalist I will only support candidates that I belive will uphold and defend the US Constitution, regardless of their political party.

 

I think there is a gulf of difference between the list you mentioned, whom I don't support either (I do admire Guliani's leadership in New York, in reducing crime, though), in your last post and Abrams/Kirkpatrick/Perle et al. The list you named may like to throw Reagan's name around but the ones we're discussing actually implemented Reagan's foreign policy.

 

I would say they got their foot in the door during Reagan's administration and run the foreign policy of the GWB administration. Their policies of "spreading democracy" at any cost, is one of the policies that I have a problem with. That, along with increasing the power and cost of the federal government and not caring about the US Constitution.

 

That is one of the best books I have ever read.