Baldwin vs. Barr

The big news today — Bob Barr Announces Presidential Run.

Joshua Katz asks an important question — Is Barr the New Hope for America? The author notes that "he is not a libertarian on the most important issue of our time – foreign policy." He has made no "unambiguous commitment to immediate withdrawal from Iraq" and "argues for intervention in both Iran and South America."

Could the candidate for the Libertarian Party be less libertarian that the Constitution Party candidate? Chuck Baldwin, in If I Were President, gives us a clear idea of what his foreign policy would look like:

If I were President, I would begin the process of safely extracting our troops from Iraq. In the first place, our troops are no longer fighting a war, they are an occupation force, which occupies a sovereign country. And this is being done without a Declaration of War. The Iraqi people resent our occupation as much as we would resent another nation stronger than ours invading and occupying America. If such a thing happened to our beloved country, I’m sure many of us would also become "insurgents."

[....]

On the subject of foreign policy, as President, I would end foreign aid. I would also end the current infatuation with nation-building, empire-building, and interventionism. America is not the world’s policeman. Neither are our military personnel the personal militia of the United Nations.