February 19, 2015

Jeb Bush and the Failed Neo-Con Worldview

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who is almost certainly running for President next year, made a self-styled major foreign policy speech outlining his vision. As the Washington Post pointed out in an insightful Venn diagram, most of his foreign policy team comes from the same circle that his father and brother ran in:

Jeb Bush's Foreign Policy Team is Eerily Similar

There were practically no specifics in the speech except he would increase war spending, which is the last thing the US needs. The US war budget is already incredibly bloated and can easily be slashed, but that's a subject for another column. Bush said he would be tougher and stronger than Obama in projecting US power, but what does that really mean? If one looks at his team of advisors, some names such as Paul Wolfowitz stand out. Wolfowitz is one of the prime architects and proponents of the 2003 Iraq invasion, which 12 years later can clearly be seen by any honest-minded observer as a complete disaster. That war wasted countless lives, from American soldiers to over 100,000 Iraqis. That war wasted well over $1 trillion from US taxpayers, which could have been used in so many other useful ways, or just given back to the people. That war took a relatively stable country with a dictator that posed no threat to anyone except its own people, and completely destabilized the region, helping give birth to ISIS today. How could anyone in his/her right mind want to give a team that blundered so badly another chance at the reins of foreign policy? Why is Wolfowitz given any media slots as a talking head except if it's as a lesson of abject failure? The Neo-Cons are/were a bunch of idealists who believed in their own pie-in-the-sky fantasy world, but they've been proven wrong. It is unconscionable that Bush would want to make the same mistakes that his brother made, especially when he claims to want to be his own man.