Republican Civil War

In American politics the Republican Party has historically been labeled as the bastion for supporters of a strong military. It is a label that they carry proudly. Led by neo-cons like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Republicans have always believed that the best way to protect our country’s borders is by inserting our military might into any foreign policy equation. Critics say that Republicans have never met a war that they didn’t want to fight.

Given their history, it is interesting to observe the current civil war raging within the party between the neo-cons on the far right and the isolationists on the party’s more moderate left. As conflicts rage in the Middle East and Russia flexes its muscle in the Ukraine, the conflict within the party has reached a fever pitch; fueled no doubt by the upcoming mid-terms and the prospects for 2016.

The neo-cons, led by fiction author Dick Cheney and his uniquely unqualified daughter Liz, are lobbying hard for the US to intervene in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine and the Ukraine. They ridicule the president’s foreign policy and blame his unwillingness to unleash America’s military as the root cause for the conflagration in the region.

On the other side of the argument are the Republican isolationists. Led by presidential hopeful Rand Paul they argue that America has no business entering into a regional civil war that has been raging for centuries. They argue that a war weary nation can ill afford to spend resources it doesn’t have on foreign conflicts that do not impact directly on our national interests.

This internal conflict will continue to fester through the mid-terms and into the 2016 general election. The victor will craft the Republican Party platform for 2016 and play a crucial role in determining the next occupant of the oval office. The outcome is hard to predict; what with the country weary of war yet ever fearful of another 9/11. This much however is certain.

Contrary to Mr. Cheney’s assertions, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did NOT make us safer. What they did accomplish was to create a whole new generation of Muslims, raised amid the death and destruction of innocents; they are now hell bent on bringing their revenge to our shores.