We see the impact of war every day on the people we love who shape our lives. It starkly reminds us that the unmatched freedoms we enjoy are not free—they are bought with the blood of American patriots. And it is our solemn duty and highest responsibility to make sure that this sacred currency is spent only when absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, our decision-makers have fallen short of this standard, as they have with most standards. They demonstrate a tragic recklessness.
Of everyone in Congress, I represent the highest concentration of active-duty military. In my district, nobody is too woke to stand for our anthem—even if some stand on prosthetics. We don’t kneel except in prayer, though we do a lot of that here, too.
Under the America First banner, a new generation of Republicans must stand against endless unfocused unconstitutional wars. We are not isolationist when we call for intelligent exercise of military power. The Bush-Cheney-Clinton-Haley-Cheney desire to start three new wars before lunchtime tomorrow is the undisciplined behavior of an unserious nation in decline. My soldiers, sailors, and airmen deserve better leaders than they’ve gotten. They’ll have to make do with me while I try to do right by them.
There are times when the fight is just and necessary. But it isn’t naive—as the self-appointed experts would tell us—to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure before we rebuild Kandahar (sometimes for savages who, even when fighting on our side, rape young boys in their tents as we shrug, and then they frag us). Whereveristan should never come before Main Street, USA.
America First means nation-building at home and an admission that we are not the world’s police force or piggy bank. We should secure every inch of the U.S. border with Mexico (and maybe even Canada) before we send the first American patriot or dollar to defend Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen, Syria’s border with Turkey, or Iraq’s border with Iran. How can a nation unserious about its own border spill trillions defending borders and Bedouins oceans away and eons away from our level of civilization? It would be like your neighbor criticizing your marriage while he sleeps with the babysitter.
We have spent $6 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan—a staggering sum. That is more than the market cap of Facebook, Apple, Google, and Microsoft combined. Plus our entire nation’s credit card debt and student loan debt combined. We’ve indebted our own people while pouring money into the hands of some who have hated us for hundreds of years and will probably still hate us for hundreds more. They have long memories in the Middle East. We have long accounts receivable notes that will only convert to regrettable debt.
Despite the loss of American lives and treasure, I don’t know that we can honestly claim that our efforts have deprived terrorists of the means and the land to plan future attacks. Today, the Afghan government is divided in chaos and in corruption—just as it always was and may always be. We spent nineteen years trading the same villages back and forth with the Taliban. The Washington Post’s Afghan Papers proved that we never knew what we were doing, and we let warfighting heroes die as their clueless leaders in the Pentagon, and the Bush/Obama White Houses, continued to believe that fortitude over function could deliver victory which we couldn’t define, much less achieve.
Treasonous bullshit, if you ask me, to keep letting Americans die because armchair retired generals needed paying contracts and defense contractors needed stock dividends.
Strong borders. Energy dominance. Building a resilient homeland and bringing investment back to our country. These things do more for our national interest than ill-fated interventionist regime-change wars. As President Trump reminds us, economic security is national security. It means better trade deals, a strong manufacturing base, and capital investment returning from foreign bank accounts to invest in our people. Personnel is policy, and our policy has been to neglect training up our personnel. We have also failed to let people keep what they earn. Let them be rewarded, and allow the creativity of our great nation to lead the world. Bush’s military “coalition of the willing” wasn’t leadership. It didn’t inspire our allies. It was more like dragging people on a forced visit to your in-laws…if they lived in a cave in Afghanistan!
I’m grateful that President Trump is the first president since Ronald Reagan who has not started a new, extended war. He has functionally ended our involvement in the Syrian Civil War, and almost every time we talk he is trying to bring more home.
Securing the homeland does not require America to invade every nation where terrorists huddle, and it certainly does not require staying there and becoming the Neighborhood Watch program. President Trump knows how to deal with bullies. You punch them in the face and give them a reason to think twice before messing with you again. You don’t move into the bully’s home for twenty years in a quixotic effort to have them unlearn their wicked ways. Forty-six missiles landing on a Syrian airbase, launched from far away, sends a message—to Iran, Russia, and China. Killing Iranian military leader Soleimani with a drone guided from the homeland resets deterrence. Decades clinging to the frozen mountains of the Hindu Kush, by contrast, have been exhausting. What would winning look like if we won there anyway? An Afghanistan stable enough for multinational corporations to export our jobs to?
I am proud to stand for our troops, our flag, and our national anthem—and this son of Northwest Florida is equally proud to stand against stupid wars managed by stupid men, and Hillary.
One would think the cautionary tales of Afghanistan and Iraq would make the war lobby and so-called “national security experts” more cautious about U.S. involvement. Instead, Hillary Clinton, with the support of hawks in the Republican Party, launched a regime-change operation in Libya, removing the strongman dictator Qaddafi.
More recently, my Republican colleague Rep. Liz Cheney of
