Stupid Stuff

Academics spend their entire careers debating grand strategy. However, creating foreign policy in practice isn't difficult. Washington's elite might disagree about details, but believes with absolute certainty that Americans should do everything: Fight every war, remake every society, enter every conflict, pay every debt, defeat every adversary, solve every problem, and ignore every criticism. Unfortunately, over the last two decades this approach has proved to be an abysmal disaster.

There's an equally simple alternative. Indeed, the president came up with it: "don't do stupid" stuff. Too bad he failed to practice his own professed policy. Washington should stop doing stupid things.

But, as noted earlier, U.S. foreign policy is run by fools. Only the American people can change that. They must start electing leaders committed to not doing "stupid" stuff. Only then will Washington end the endless cycle of intervention, disaster, intervention, and disaster.

The rest of the story from Doug Bandow.


TS