Marco Rubio’s Dangerous Misreading of History
Republicans especially ought to be judged in part on whether they understand the Bush administration’s foreign-policy mistakes. Rubio fails all of these tests. This is illustrated by stances he takes, like his 2010 declaration that America is better off for having invaded Iraq in 2003. But it’s also evidenced by his general approach to U.S. history. He seldom if ever invokes the past as something that should complicate our understanding of the present. For Rubio, the past only confirms his ideological instincts.
.. Rubio’s look back at the Barbary pirates suffers from the same flaw as his analysis of contemporary foreign policy. He looks at every problem in isolation, as if priorities, available resources, and what can be realistically accomplished are irrelevant.
What Rubio regards as “moral clarity” and consistency in ideology are far more important to him than analytic rigor, strategic flexibility, or empirical results. The last of these failings is most clearly illustrated by Rubio’s gloss on terrorism. “During what many referred to as a ‘procurement holiday’ under the Clinton administration, we both shrank the size of our armed forces and shifted away from modernizing our inventory,” he said. “This happened just as emerging technologies were revolutionizing weapons capabilities around the world. The result was that we failed to be prepared for the challenge that revealed itself on 9/11.”