by Brian Irving
Libertarian Candidate, 2nd Congressional District

Libertarian presidential candidate Gov. Gary Johnson believes, as I do, that the Bush-Obama-and-now-Romney interventionist foreign policy is getting Americans killed and contributing to the bankruptcy of our nation without clear sight of our national interests.

Writing in an op ed published in the Huffington Post, Johnson said, “Foreign policy is supposed to make us safer, not get Americans killed and bankrupt us.

“Yet, even as we mourn the loss of four Americans in Libya and watch the Middle East ignite with anti-American fervor, our leaders don’t get it,” he said.

As someone who grew up during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union vied for the allegiance of so-called Third World nations, seeing mobs attack American businesses and sack American embassies is nothing new.

It was the price the United States paid for supporting dictators and oligarchies who were supposedly “anti-communist,” no matter have much they oppressed, starved, imprisoned or murdered their people. When you support the “lesser of two evils” — either in foreign policy or at the ballot box – all you get is evil.

During the Vietnam War, and whenever American troops were sent to “restore order” or “secure democracy” in any foreign nation from Latin America to the Middle East, inevitably there were anti-American demonstrations.

Certainly, the Soviets encouraged and financed many of them, just as the State Department and CIA encouraged and supported anti-Soviet demonstrations, and helped overthrow foreign rulers who weren’t “anti-communist” enough.

But the root cause of most of these demonstrations was blowback from American interventionism, the inevitable result of the arrogance and hubris perpetrated by successive Republican and Democratic administrations.

The demonstrations now sweeping the Middle East are not about any video.