Following Donald Trump’s lead, the Republican presidential field’s flagrant, neoconservative foreign policy proposals and rhetoric are quickly approaching the unhinged and irrational — and moving ever closer to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 advocacy of an aggressive, potentially cataclysmic use of military force.
In calling for banning all Muslims from entering the United States and for “[bombing] the sh*t out of” the Middle East, Trump set an extremely high bar that the rest of the field has since done their best to meet. Jeb Bush has advocated the use of a full-on ground invasion in the Middle East. And even more absurd and alarming, Ted Cruz has said he’d “carpet-bomb” the region “into oblivion,” until the “sand glows in the dark” — a potential war crime that would invariably kill thousands of innocent civilians.
Rubio, Cruz, and the rest’s eager willingness to echo Donald Trump’s destructive — and objectively amateur — proposals only add to the already very serious doubts as to the GOP field’s foreign lack of foreign policy readiness. Their embrace of Trump’s inflammatory and simplistic rhetoric is proof of each candidate’s unpreparedness to serve as Commander in Chief, and only works to boost terrorist recruitment efforts by fueling anti-United States sentiments abroad.
The stakes couldn’t be any higher this election. Watch American Bridge’s latest video, “The Stakes: Daisy Revisited,” here:
Published: Dec 15, 2015