The Republicans and Foreign Policy: Speak Loudly and Carry No Stick

When it comes to foreign policy, Republicans are good at bragging and blustering, but not very good at achieving.  

George W. Bush once promised to get Bin Laden "dead or alive".   Instead, Bush pulled troops out of the hunt for Bin Laden, diverting them to a counter-productive, misconceived war in Iraq.  Rightwingers Richard Perle and Bill Kristol confidently predicted of the war in Iraq, respectively, that it was likely  "a grand square in Baghdad" would be named after Bush and that "history and reality" would reveal how wrong the Democrats, the U.N. and the French were about weapons of mass destruction and the argument for invading Iraq.

Kristol sure sounded like he was ready to gloat about how right he and the right wing were on Iraq, but nobody’s gloating now.  The Republicans and rightwingers talked a big game about Bin Laden and Iraq, but it was all just pretty words.

I don’t remember Bill Clinton or Democrats bragging about how tough they were.  Instead, they got things done, as we were reminded Sunday when Albanians unveiled a huge statue of Clinton to thank him for acting to save them from Serbian ethnic cleansing in the 1990s.  As Clinton spoke to accept the honor, he was "interrupted several times by Kosovo Albanians wildly cheering his name and U.S.A., waving U.S., Albanian and Kosovo flags."  The Albanians also named a boulevard after Clinton.

It’s time to put to rest the old myth that Republicans are tough on national defense and foreign policy and Democrats are lily-livered weaklings.  Republicans and rightwingers have done a great PR job, but the facts tell a different story.  It’s worth taking the contrasting records of Democrats and Republicans into account when assessing right-wing bluster about Afghanistan.  Dick Cheney is giving us more tough talk, boldly denouncing President Obama’s "dithering".  Given the gap between right wing rhetoric and reality when it comes to foreign policy, the best thing we can do is block out Cheney and the rest of the right wing noise and hope that Obama does the same.