Framing the Issue – Why Republican Foreign Policy Sucks

If you ask average American citizens about the image of Republicans, they will respond that Republicans are strong on foreign policy. That is the message that’s been Wonder-Breaded into us. You remember the Wonder Bread slogan, don’t you? Builds healthy bodies 12 ways? How about the one where they claimed it made children think better? Of course, it turned out that you’d be better off eating the wrapper. Republicans and their foreign policy image is like that. Heavy on the hype - light on the thinking. First they come up with a bad plan, and then after it blows up, the right wing machine shifts into deflecting the blame and defining the debate. Rather than question the basic cleverness of the plan, we get bogged down in the legalities or the excuses. So every now and then we should remind ourselves of what is true: Some of these ideas are just plain stupid. For example, the Iran-Contra mess was a bad idea. Why? It involved giving missiles to Iran that could have been used on our own troops. Besides, the Reagan administration was counting on sworn enemies in the Middle East to keep it a secret. They didn't - the story broke in a newspaper in Beirut. Okay, that was way back during the Reagan years, but guess what? These are some of the same exact people running the show now. Iran Contra was dumb then and the Iraq War is a gigantic dumb move now. Let's be perfectly clear, as that Republican moralist Richard Nixon used to say: This wasn’t a good idea that was executed badly. That’s just more spin. This was a bad idea that was doomed precisely because it was a bad idea. Modern Republican leadership sucks because it is based on marketing, rather than results. I bet most Americans believe the Soviet Union ended because of Ronald Reagan. That is hype. They imploded economically while engaged in costly, reckless adventures abroad. See how dangerous it is to buy the hype without learning what really happened? There are things we should try and avoid. We need leadership - not an ad campaign. Somewhere along the line, we have to realize that Republicans are only the party of moral clarity and a strong foreign policy because they say they are over and over again. Have another slice of Wonder Bread. Did you know it builds healthy bodies 12 ways?