Keep foreign policy on the front burner
Or so I plead to voters today in my Pajamas Media column:
"...Going into Iowa, a Dec. 19 Washington Post-ABC News poll asked likely Republican caucus-goers to name the single most important issue in their vote; foreign policy came in at less than 0.5 percent.
The poll also asked which candidate 'best understands the problems of people like you.' But the next president needs to have a firm understanding of the problems of people who aren’t like you to both keep the nation safe and to ensure the United States is a productive, proactive leader in the global community instead of an isolated sitting duck.
Foreign policy is not just the territory of snooty wonks with personal agendas to grind. Tucked away in America’s heartland, it may be easy to forget that assassinations far away, Hugo Chavez’s political shell games, extremism in the U.K., or the machinations of Iran affect the future of our country and its friends as well. It affects whether, in the future, sons and daughters in uniform will be able to fight effectively (like if enough troops had been sent into Iraq from the beginning), as well as when they might have to fight again.
Foreign policy can buoy the conscience of this nation — or, if we turn our backs on the Rwandas of the future and the like in the form of an immorally non-interventionist policy, it can decimate the conscience of our nation..."
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