It has become ever more common for presidential elections in America to be depicted as a battle between two personalities, each one constantly trying to win more appeal and to appear more charismatic. But this description of the presidential election, or this description of any election, completely misses the mark on what an election truly is. An election is a battle of ideas, a competition in the market of free expression, where different policies are put to the test of public opinion to see what has the largest public mandate. Today, in 2024, the public has been presented with a slew of different issues, all with different importance to different groups, and all with different causes and proposed solutions. But, out of all the different problems America as a nation faces, there is one that I believe is most important, and that I believe is best addressed by one candidate: war. Since the turn of the century (and to a lesser extent for the previous twenty years), the United States has found itself in a constant state of serious foreign military engagement around the world. We have sent troops halfway across the globe to countries many
Americans cannot even point to on a map, to little apparent benefit of the American people. In fact, American society has arguably lost more than it has gained through these foreign wars. Thousands of Americans have died protecting international interests, and untold thousands more civilians have died in countries that have been the subject of the American military might. Trillions of dollars have been allocated to these foreign entanglements, money that we either do not have or that ought to be spent on improving the lives of Americans at home and solving many of the issues that are hotly debated today.
This anti-war sentiment may not be expected from an article advocating the Republican Party, given it is the same party that nominated George Bush Sr. and Jr. to the White House, but Donald Trump is a figure that represents a different vein of the Republican Party. Trump’s Republican Party, despite its shortcomings, is one significantly different from the neoconservative movement that George W. Bush led in the 2000s. Donald Trump holds the distinct title of being the first President of the United States since Jimmy Carter to not oversee the beginning of a new foreign military involvement. Trump even laid the foundation for the end of the war in Afghanistan, a foundation that was greatly mismanaged by his successor, longtime war hawk Joe Biden.
