William F. Buckley? A great thinker? Or a closet homo with penis envy over his clear intellectual superiors Jack & Booby Kenendy? Alan Greenspan a great thinker? ROFLMAO. I may be able to accept competent beauracrat at best. Barry Goldwater? Hm, ok I may be able to accept this one. Funny thing is he would NEVER include Nixon or Reagan on his list. He said that Nixon was the only man he had ever met that would tell a lie when the truth was better... or something to that effect. And he was surely no fan of Reagan or his Administration. Alan Keyes? again ROFLMAO, or did you make a typo and actually mean Keynes? John M. Keynes was a great thinker. A homo, but a great thinker nonetheless. Problem is he was a democrat. So ok, you got a maybe out of me with Goldwater. But I was actually thinking about these great thinkers you had said were all on the right NOW?
Don't forget ZZZ the Republicans OPPOSED our entry into both World Wars. As a matter of fact the predominant opinion within that minority party with regards to WWII was that we should side with the Nazi's. The "real" republican is anti-semetic and would dispute that there ever was a holocaust at all. They have shelved those opinions in recent times but a great many of them still feel that way.
Were the conflicts in Europe World Wars before the Wilson and FDR stuck their noses in? As far as Viet Nam, it was never technically a war as far as America was concerned because Congress never voted to declare war. Prior to 1964's Gulf of Tonkin resolution the U.S. had ZERO commitment to placing combat troops in the region. When JFK died we had 16,00 troops in Nam. By 1966 we had 600,000 troops there. So who's "war" was it? I didn't MENTION Truman, Ike or Korea. That was sticky a U.N. operation. A deadlier version of Kosovo........
You're a fucking idiot. FDR was an anti-semite who refused entry to the U.S. of Jewish refugees. FDR wanted to fight Hitler because Hitler was anti-Soviet and FDR wanted to fight Japan because the Japs were successfully fighting Chinese rebels who were the future communists. If one believes we should have fought Hitler then they MUST believe we should fight Iran.
Now wait a minute. Are you saying that the Soviets were in Afghanistan fighting the repressive Taliban regime in order to bring a better quality of life to the Afghani people? It kind of sounds like that's what you're saying. Tell me that's not what you're saying. Please. You call it 'fighting a war in Afghanistan against the Taliban', but really they were invading the country. It might have been a war, but it's one they started by invading the country. Carter wasn't pissed that Afghanistan was fighting the Taliban. The Cold War heavyweights at that time were simply pissed that the Soviets were being the Soviets. It had nothing to do with the Taliban.
You characterize the American involvement in the Allied war effort in Europe as 'sticking their noses in'? As in sticking their noses in where they didn't belong? As in it wasn't the right thing to do to send US troops to fight Hitler?
You seem to know little about the conflict in Afghanistan. The former Afghan government was a Marxist, Soviet style regime, secular of course. Civil war broke out. Mujahidin vs. the Communists. The Soviet's feared the Islamic revolution would spread to the surrounding Soviet states. Thus the Soviets fought against the rebels. Afghanistan was at war long before the Soviets came on the scene. And yes both the Carter and Reagan administrations took the side of the Islamic fundamentalists against those dreaded Reds.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, American public opinion was running about 4-1 against the American's joining the war in Europe. FDR in 1940, like LBJ in 1964, ran as a "peace" candidate. Should the U.S. have declared war on Germany? I see no compelling reason why. If you want to use defense of those being persecuted by the Germans as reason for America to sacrifice 500,000 men, (at a time when the population here was under 150 million) then by the same criteria we should be fighting in Iraq and perhaps twenty different places in Africa. I'm sure the hundred million or so who were sold out and eventually forced to live under Soviet dictatorship in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, and half of Germany would argue that life under the thumb of Moscow was MORE restrictive and hardly preferable to the Nazi invasion. Keep in mind that much of Eastern Europe was NOT anti-Hitler. In the west few would argue that Germany, Austria and Italy are "cavemen" societies. While I would never defend genocide, any implication that the U.S. and U.K. were fighting Hitler in support of Germany's Jews is a ridiculously perverted exploitation of facts. Most of the deaths incurred in concentration camps occurred AFTER the States entered the war and the full extent was unknown until the wars end. My father was awarded two Purple Hearts in Europe and says very little was known about the fate of those in captivity. One must remember, the whole FREAKIN COUNTRY was starving and dying. So at the time those in work camps were just another horrible atrocity. It's not like the average German on the street was living large and flashing the bling. We killed as many bombing Dresden as we killed in each of the two nuclear explosions in Japan.