America First

[Gipper]

From Pat Buchanan...he is so right...if only the fools in Washington would listen.

We cannot afford any more neo-imperial nonsense. With trillion-dollar deficits, a soaring national debt, and 10,000 baby boomers reaching eligibility for Social Security and Medicare every day, the US is beginning to break under the strain of its commitments.
We must roll up the empire and put America first again. We should swiftly complete Barack Obama’s work, end the war in Afghanistan and close US bases in central Asia. We should tell Ukraine and Georgia that Nato membership is closed. No US interest there justifies risking a clash with Russia. Let us tell Vladimir Putin that if he stays out of our yard, we will stay out of his.
Half a century ago, Dwight Eisenhower told John F. Kennedy to start pulling troops out of Europe, or else the continent would end up permanently dependent on the US. Was Ike not right? Europeans should take full responsibility for their own defence. The near debacle in Libya, where Britain and France might have been fought to exhaustion by Muammer Gaddafi had not the US intervened, exposed the atrophied state of Nato’s European members.
South Korea has a population twice that of North Korea and an economy 40 times as large. What are US soldiers still doing in the demilitarised zone? The frontier that will determine the fate of the US is not the 38th parallel, but the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
Elsewhere in Asia, it is Russia’s land that China covets but India’s that China holds. Vietnam and the Philippines are defying Beijing’s claims to the Spratly Islands. Japan is showing a resolve to hold the Senkaku Islands. Let the neighbours do the containment.
In the Islamic world, Victor Hugo’s dictum applies: stronger than all the armies of earth is the power of an idea whose time has come. Islamic fundamentalism and ethno-nationalism, the two forces tearing countries apart from central Africa to south Asia, are not problems that can be solved by Seal Team Six.
Let us cease our interventions and call a halt to our endless hectoring. How other nations rule themselves is not really the US’s business. If there is nation-building to be done, let it begin here. The watchword of the Romney campaign and presidency should be enlightened nationalism. Time, again, to put America first.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e52c592a-d4ad-11e1-bb88-00144feabdc0.html