Political Labels and the Iraq War

The US if failing in Iraq because failure was inevitable. The neoconservatives at the time pushed the country into a war based on misleading information. They went into Iraq with little understanding or little care for how Iraqi culture would respond to their actions. At the time of this writing Americans are dying in a losing war.

The was against Iraq was not justified. It was illegal and it was immoral. The world responds to such actions by hating the US and only giving support if economic arms are twisted. America is failing in Iraq because America can't afford it. The federal government is printing money out of thin air and the value of the dollar is falling. The US has a massive budget deficit and the country is becoming insolvent. At the time of this writing it appears there is only one candidate running for president, Ron Paul who is truly against getting into foreign entanglements. It remains to be seen how the election will play out and what affect it will have on conflicts in the middle east.

Americans are waking up to the fact that the Iraq war is a farce. This is why many neoconservatives were thrown out in the last round of elections. The Iraq war is failing because the American people don't want it. The only way to stop the failure is to recognize it, learn from it, and bring the troops home.

The traditional sense of what it means to be a conservative:

There are benefits to being a traditional or paleoconservative. However, I don't see any benefits to being a neoconservative. Traditional conservatives are for small government, civil liberties, self responsibility, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. An example of a traditional conservative would be Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan.

Traditional conservatives believe in the rationality of capitalism. Centralized control of market forces have proven throughout history to be a failure. The current liberal movement appears to be tied to a socialist/communist form of radicalism. This is again a break from traditional liberals who advocated free market capitalism.

So the distinction we need to make is between classic liberals and conservatives and their new distorted movements. Classical liberals and conservatives have much in common and it is a wonder why old dying media continues to sensationalize the rift between these two ideologies. Every American should look into the classical definition of what being a conservative or liberal is. Better yet, Americans should look past labels and take up the banner of common sense.