Rare News Desk
“We do need an intelligent debate,” said New York Rep. Peter King, “and I don’t think Rand Paul is capable of having that debate.”
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King is referring to the Republican foreign policy debate. That would be the same Peter King who once said 80 percent of mosques in the United States “are controlled by radical Imams.” Or who once defended the Irish Republican Army, saying things like, “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.”
King also defended NSA spying on members of Congress, saying that such surveillance is necessary in case the lawmakers are “talking to an Al Qaeda leader in Iraq or Afghanistan.” During the nadir of the Iraq war, King blamed the media for much of the bad news emanating from the country.
By all means, let’s make him the arbiter of intelligent foreign policy debate.
The point here isn’t to pick on King, who is far from alone. No Republican gets quoted on foreign policy as much as John McCain, a ubiquitous presence on the Sunday morning talk shows.
McCain also sang a song about bombing Iran, to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann.” He spoke casually of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq for “100 years.” McCain described Republicans who disagree with him on foreign policy and civil liberties as “wacko birds.”
Asked who he was talking about specifically, McCain answered, “Rand Paul, Cruz, Amash, whoever.”
Sounds like another great Republican foreign policy debater.
Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson doesn’t just sing about bombing Iran. He has suggested it without musical accompaniment. “Then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So we mean business. You want to be wiped out?’” he said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“It’s the only thing they understand,” Adelson said of Iran and American military might.
When he’s not leading a Baptists and bootleggers coalition against online gaming, Adelson is getting top-tier GOP presidential candidates—including Chris Christie and Jeb Bush—to regale him with tales of foreign policy hawkishness.
Then there is the senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham—McCain’s friend and Adelson’s point man on both foreign policy and Internet gambling. Graham is to war as the 1980s singer Pat Benatar is to love: where Benatar sang that love is a battlefield, Graham says the American homeland is a battlefield.
In a battlefield, you don’t get Bill of Rights protections. “Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war,” Graham said. You don’t get a lawyer either. “And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer,” he said.
Graham was going to vote against John Brennan, Barack Obama’s nominee for CIA director. He decided to vote for Brennan to protest Rand Paul’s drones filibuster, when even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus decided to “Stand with Rand.”
When the country debated a possible war with Syria, Graham predicted the “world is literally about to blow up.” Apparently he defines “literally” as loosely as Alanis Morrisette defines “ironic”—or a liberal Supreme Court justice defines “constitutional.”
FreedomWorks’ Julie Borowski produced a top ten list of Graham’s most absurd quotes. The list was hardly exhaustive.
Perhaps this senator, who apparently believes due process rights are a confession of guilt, is capable of having the intelligent debate the Republican Party needs.
These pols aren’t all bad. John McCain admirably resisted his captors during the Vietnam war, even in the face of torture. Peter King helped negotiate with Sinn Fein, aiding the success of the 1990s Northern Ireland peace talks.
Similarly, not every pronouncement made by an antiwar or libertarian-leaning Republican is wise.
But how is it that people who speak casually of violence get to define respectable Republican opinion? Why are the people whose plans failed repeatedly and whose views are in the minority in most polls considered “mainstream?”
Why is it so often that the people who were wrong on Iraq, wrong on Libya, and wrong about how long we needed to stay in Afghanistan are the people whose counsel the GOP seeks on Syria and Iran?
The truth is that many of these people don’t want a Republican foreign policy debate. They want a foreign policy monologue, even if it means more wars.
For now, at least, the monologue is over.
