The problem with Iraq and Afghanistan was the same as previous wars and in fact most policies.
If you don’t have clear, measurable goals, your project will fail regardless what domain it is in.
(Wanted to put this as a reply to GP but it's currently [flagged][dead] so this seems to be the most relevant reply...)
They're opportunists, protectionists, and authoritarians. I mean, Trump himself has praised Xi for ruling with an iron fist, and extending tenure 'for life', remarking he'd like to do the same. Musk would pretend to support democratic views if they were the dominant view of the current administration, or somehow thought it would benefit him. But like I said, they're opportunists - people who exploit current circumstances to gain immediate advantage rather than being guided by consistent principles or plans. They're not really isolationists...
But Trump is absolutely wrecking every relationship we have in the world, trading or otherwise, except with Russia, where he wants to remove sanctions and increase trade.
Even if you disregard all "moral" foreign policy objectives, like deterring wars of territorial expansion, it makes zero sense in economic terms. We're abandoning >>50% of world markets in exchange for access to... Russia's market? What do they even have to offer that we want? Oil or gas? We already produce more than we consume! Trading more with Russia will only kill domestic oil and gas producers and accomplish almost nothing else.
It makes zero sense, it will never make sense, stop trying to make it make sense.
A crazy person yelling at nothing on the streets is not the same as a president with a suit and tie inside theWhiteHouse.
Trump is doing everything Putin wants.
the only plan is to abuse the power they got, oppress and plunder the people. for the 4 years. in the name of people's will.
And they say anti-Trumpers are the ones with 'Trump Derangement Syndrome'...
Navalny - multiple attempts - nerve agent and suspicious death in prison.
Prigozhin - plane crash.
Litvinenko - radiation poisoning.
Skripal - attempted via nerve agent.
There is a difference between those, as well as dozens of "accidental falls", and a lone wolf against Trump.
What? Greenwald was never a Democrat. Anti-Bush isn't the same thing as Democrat.
Greenwald is a liberal, he was kicked out of liberal circles after the Hunter Biden's laptop story, the liberal elite wanted to suppress during the elections.
Bary Weiss is also a liberal, now hated by the liberal press for blasphemy on a certain subject.
Same with Matt Taibbi, he showed up on MSNBC regularly even on Maddow, now the left calls him a right winger...
See the pattern?
Bari Weiss is not a liberal. She's a culture war grievance grifter.
Matt Taibbi got mad he got called out for his shitty sexist behavior in Russia in the 90s when MeToo happened and made a hard right turn. Now a grievance grifter.
See the pattern?
Greenwald was never a liberal and never would have described himself as such.
Anyhow you haven't really even scratched the surface of all the lefty people who went right. And it's not even a new phenomenon. Heck even woodie guthrie swerved right during the red scare. One could say that the pastures are greener on the right side of the commentariat.
Elon Musk was never a democrat. In the first book which was written a decade ago, he proudly state that he will do on media whatever necessary to push his companies forward.
Every company needs a long-term marketing strategy, and using climate change as a growth vehicle in early days was needed.
He endorsed Trump and was his advisor in his previous presidency a decade ago.
JD Vance did 180 on Trump as well.
So we are talking about people, who will say whatever they need to say to get the results they want. They don't have any principles or political values.
Comparing the war in Iraq to the war in Ukraine is ridiculous on so many levels that I will not even start.
This is the same talking point parroted by another prominent right-wing commentator here, that implies that some neocons were... so far right that they were actually left?
> Supported by former Democratic intellectuals like Glenn Greenwald.
Glenn Greenwald is not and has never been a Democrat or member of the party or anything resembling that.
Elon Musk was a "Democrat" in the sense that as long as Democrat administrations handed his businesses grants and funding and tax breaks, he didn't shit-talk them. When he saw there was an opportunity to milk these things from Republican administrations, all of a sudden he became "Republican".
I remember when I was much younger many evangelical Christians absolutely losing their mind over the Lewinsky scandal, and both in public and private going on and on for years about what a disgrace it was that a man who would break his marriage vows was leading the country and that God was going to punish the nation for it, using the most hyperbolic language you can imagine. Now turns out they are supporting this guy for whom marriage is a joke and I guess infidelity is no longer a big deal, having the highest support of any demographic. Literally every single individual I knew who spoke out about this during the 90s is now a MAGA.
There are no principles at play at all, only a lust for power, a desire to enrich themselves, and most of all unquenchable egos that they now, with most of these people nearing the ends of their lives and having little else to lose, are willing to make enormous sacrifices to stoke.
Neoconservatives were hawkish members of the old Anti-USSR Left who were disillusioned by the Post Vietnam Democratic Party and travelled away from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.
Neoconservative ideology proclaimed that America should use its power to spread democracy and advocated for regime change. Neoconservatives were most prominent during the George W Bush administration where they were the architects of the War in Iraq.
Now…why am I mentioning this on this thread?
Because I feel like we are at a moment where the same thing is happening but in an inverted direction.
The Trump administration’s foreign policy is being done by people who were once Democrats. Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, even Trump himself was once a Democrat. Supported by former Democratic intellectuals like Glenn Greenwald.
The inversion is that disillusionment with the War in Iraq has led many on the “isolationist” (some prefer the term “non-interventionist”) left to leave the Democratic Party and join the Trumpian Republican Party. These people have found common cause with the libertarian Ron Paul/Rand Paul people who were always “non-interventionist/isolationist”.
Thus this moment is a total inversion of the moment that led to the neoconservative movement.
Remember that JD Vance served in the War in Iraq. He mentions in Hillbilly Elegy that this experience provided immense disillusionment with Bush era foreign policy. Probably why he is so adamant about going in the other direction.
Some have said that the Trump administration is essentially a “third party” composed of disillusioned elements of the old Republican and Democratic Parties.
All of this leads to this event. The United States ending all military aid to Ukraine.