I don't agree that Paul wouldn't be for protecting our trading interests. He would be for military power as long as the threat to our national interests. Our ability to trade is absolutely in our national interests. I just don't see anything in the Paul platform that suggests what you allege. Perhaps we simply don't agree on what constitutes a real and articulable threat to national interest.
Project power is something beyond an isolationist approach which is the Libertarian platform. I love the ideal that we could say screw them and just focus on us, but with millions of illegal and legals coming in to this country, it is a reality that we have to be a world leader and the only way to do that is project power.
Tell me what counties throughout world history did not project power and still became economic powers with high standards of living? If there is one, it got there because it had entanglement with another powerful allies.
I actually think Bush I did not go far enough in Iraq and Bush II did not go far enough to take out Syria and check Iran. Because of it, I think we lost more lives than we would have if we cleaned house. I actually think we did not do our job because it would have had a huge impact on Israel and we did not want to risk it. As for Afghan, we need to get the hell out of there. Osama was a distraction we had under control. Afghan surge was a mistake as well as Bremer policies in Iraq. My Iraq friends tell me he really screwed things up when we had a great chance to change things in our favor. Same with the first Iraq War. We left them hanging. Same with the Afghan war with the Soviets, we left them hanging.
As for stabilizing the middle east, we helped that along pretty good with our Iraq move. The Arab spring stuff is slowing the progress down. Things were moving in the direction for Iran to collapse from within until Obama took office. Now the focus is back to Israel instead of destabilizing Iran. Iran and Syria are getting stronger with Russian and China support. Japan is now threaten again by China and the administration is sitting on its hands. Libya was a minor distract until our interference.
I really do not think the Libertarian understand foreign policy and how it impacts us. 43% budget cut in Military spending is not what we need. China and Russia are threats to us and any military edges we have are slowly slipping away.
Look at history and see the Romans, the Crusades, Genghis Khan, the Ottoman Empire and tell me where Libertarian isolationist worked? Reality is that history will repeat itself and we need to be prepared.
