July 15, 2021
THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:
Glenn Greenwald: America First conservatives shouldn't support unrest in Cuba (Phillip Nieto, 7/15/21, The Spectator)
In an interview with The Spectator, journalist Glenn Greenwald broke down why he believes 'America First' conservatives should reevaluate their support for Cuba's protests. The Intercept co-founder argues that conservatives with nationalistic tendencies should prioritize American domestic policy without embroiling themselves in foreign conflicts.PN: Why shouldn't conservatives who describe themselves as 'America First' support protests in Cuba and abroad?GG: Well, if you go back and look at the leader of the kind of contemporary America First movement, which is obviously Donald Trump when he was outlining his foreign policy in 2016, it was very much against the idea that the United States should be involved in regime change operations to help other countries. At the time, the big debate was over Syria. That was one of the big differences between himself and Hillary Clinton on foreign policy. She argued that Bashar al-Assad is a hideous dictator, and we should go in to at least set up no-flyzones in Syria or strengthen the CIA further to overthrow Assad and bring freedom and democracy to the Syrian people. Trump's argument was, 'why do we have any interest at all in using our money and the lives of our soldiers to go and fight tyranny in Syria? How is that going to help steelworkers in Ohio, in Pennsylvania to go use our resources to go fix the government in Syria?'So that's been the core of the argument, which is we have no right to be interfering in other countries and intervening in other countries to try and quote-unquote, fix them or help them or change their government. Every time we've tried, it's been a disaster. Our resources are better spent on helping Americans and not foreign nationals. It seems very inconsistent to me for people who have been advocating that to now turn around and use the neocon liberal interventionist argument to say we need to bring freedom and democracy to Cuba and liberate the Cuban people.
The Trumpists generally exist to amuse the rest of us, but stuff like their lip-lock with Putin operative Greenwald is especially delicious.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 15, 2021 1:09 PM
