Libertarian Foreign Policy
Gage Smythe
September 21, 2012
Filed under Opinion
Imagine a man who thinks his sole purpose in life is to clean up his neighbor’s house. He is constantly fixing up their fence, cleaning their windows and generally spending time and money on them. Seems like a pretty nice guy, right? What if I told you he spent all of his time at his neighbor’s house all the while neglecting his own family and leaving his own home in shambles? You probably would not find him very honorable or worthy of praise. Let me introduce you to the insanity of American foreign policy.
With the loss of four American lives last week we need to ask ourselves a tough question: Is our foreign policy making us more secure at home and abroad? I think the obvious answer is no. Since the Reagan administration, Republican foreign policy has been based on one simple idea; if you have a big stick no one will mess with you. They tell us as long as we have enough nukes, a big enough army and the willingness to shoot whoever we want whenever we want, we will be safe. On the other side we have Democratic apologists who say we just need to not tread on anyone’s toes, stay out of everyone’s way and hope nobody picks a fight.
What if instead of trying to police the world, making it our job to clean up other countries’ messes, we for once focused on our own country? Would it not be better if we built our nation before building up nations halfway around the globe? If our interests were focused here at home, our citizens would not be in harm’s way in foreign countries where we have little to no control. We need to stop sending our people and our money to countries with regimes not committed to our safety or our interests.
Let’s backtrack a few months; we shot hundreds of millions of dollars in missiles in order to topple the Gaddafi regime in Libya. We were successful but what benefit have we seen from our success? We are now left with a country that has not done a good job keeping our citizens safe and probably could not care less if it did. I do not sympathize with foreign dictators, but would four of our public servants be dead today if he was still in power? Probably not.
It is time to stop meddling in other countries’ affairs; we need to stop sending them billions in aid, only to have them turn around and hang us out to dry. Ungrateful regimes do not deserve our help building roads, bridges and schools when we have the need for those things here at home. It is time to tell Obama and Romney that we do not support their foreign policy that is getting Americans killed and bankrupting us at home. Since when has it worked for America?
