Buchanan Angrily Denounces Bush’s Foreign Policy

Former television commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination transforming into a fight over the party’s ideological soul, on Tuesday issued an angry denunciation of President Bush’s foreign policy directives and suggested foreign aid be scrapped.

In a noon address to the World Affairs Council, Buchanan also sought to dampen internal GOP criticism of himself as a foreign policy “isolationist.”

“We simply do not want to fight other people’s wars,” he told more than 200 council members in Beverly Hills. “It is those who would spill the blood of American soldiers in a quest for empire, or empty our Treasury to buy the transitory friendship of distant emirs and despots, who are the true isolationists. They would isolate America from her dreams, her traditions and her true national interest.”

That reference to the Gulf War touched on a major point of separation between Bush and Buchanan. While Bush watched over the war as commander in chief, Buchanan opposed it on the grounds that it did not further American interests.

As Buchanan explained during his address, he favors a foreign policy predicated on the notion that America has for too long assisted nations equipped to defend themselves. He cited in particular Western Europe.