Is Isolationism on the Rise?
By Jack Hunter
In the 1980's the United States funded Iraq's Saddam Hussein yet
considered Palestine's Yasser Arafat and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi
terrorists. And they were. But so was Saddam, who at that time was
terrorizing his own people, gassing Iraqi Kurds while receiving
America's financial and political support. In the 1990's, the US
declared Hussein a menace and we apparently changed our mind about
Arafat, who was even invited to the White House to shake hands with Bill
Clinton. In the 2000's George W. Bush went back to calling Arafat a
terrorist, went to war with Saddam, who we also began calling a
terrorist, but made amends with Gaddafi by taking Libya off our official
list of state sponsors of terror and sending Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice to shake Gaddafi's hand. Mind you, this is the same
Libyan dictator that Ronald Reagan once called the "mad dog of the
Middle East" and who was responsible for blowing up an airplane full of
American school kids over Lockerbie Scotland in 1988.
If the above history of the US's overseas alliances and antagonisms
sounds nonsensical or perhaps even immoral, that's because, well, it is.
Welcome to American foreign policy.
Like Egypt before it a few weeks ago, as Libya descends into chaos the
eyes of the world now look to America to see what we will do. Why?
Because the rest of the world is accustomed to the US always doing
something. In fact, no matter how much our constant involvement becomes
obviously counterproductive or our actions come back to haunt us in the
most damaging ways imaginable, the so called "experts" in Washington, DC
continue to tell us we must still be involved heavily in the Middle East
and around the globe, funding dictators and supporting terrorists, while
also toppling the same dictators and fighting the same terrorists, as
determined by which decade we find ourselves in or which president sits
in the White House. For example, in the 1980's it was the official
policy of the State Department to encourage radical jihad in Afghanistan
to undermine the Soviets. Today, we find ourselves in a decade long war
in Afghanistan fighting against the same radical jihadists we once
encouraged and helped fund. Such insanity is what our leaders continue
to advocate as a reasonable and necessary foreign policy. To suggest
that we should just give up these ever-changing entanglements as a
practical matter is disparaged as "isolationist" and therefore
unfathomable, the experts tell us.
The term "isolationism" is much like the word "racism," in that it is an
accusatory term designed specifically to shut down debate before it
begins. As the Tea Party is well aware, if you question Obama you are
"racist." Likewise, if you question US foreign policy you are an
"isolationist." Nobody wants to attempt to reason with a racist or an
isolationist, and indeed to criticize our insane foreign policy is the
quickest way to invite this discussion-ending disparagement. Luckily, at
least at the moment, a majority of Americans don't appear to be as
insane as their rulers. According to pollster Scott Rasmussen, his most
recent data reveals that "most Americans (67%) say the United States
should leave the situation in the Arab countries alone. Just 17% say the
United States should get more directly involved in the political
situation there, but another 17% are not sure." A Reuters poll in
January produced similar results, showing that 73% of Americans support
eliminating all foreign aid.
So are Americans now "isolationist?" Or in being somewhat isolated from
the special interests and entrenched, status quo politics that dominates
Washington, do Americans see our involvement in foreign affairs in more
clear and common-sense terms than our political class is even capable of?
The very notion that it is somehow "isolationist" to not endlessly
support dictators and terrorists throughout the Middle East with
financial, political and even military aid is to say that virtually
every other nation on earth is also "isolationist." It also ignores the
fact that America is not a normal nation, or at least hasn't been for a
long time. In fact, in terms of its scope alone, US foreign policy is
arguably the most abnormal in history. Not even the empires of Rome and
Great Britain assumed that virtually any conflict around the globe
necessarily affected the interests of Romans or Brits. The second
edition of the "Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy" (2001)
described this new, almost perverse concept of America's "national
interest" as the definition was being expanded even during the Vietnam era:
"By the 1960s the American national interest was being defined so
globally that hardly a sparrow could fall anywhere on earth without the
U.S. government wanting to know why, to know whether the sparrow had
jumped or been pushed, and, if pushed, to know whether the pusher wore
scarlet plumage. Somewhere or other, sooner or later, the United States
was bound to find itself defending a regime so weak, corrupt, or
unpopular... as to be indefensible at any reasonable cost."
The world wondered how the US would approach the uprising in Egypt
because we had historically supported the dictator Egyptians were rising
against. The world now wonders how the US might approach the uprising in
Libya because we were supporting the dictator Libyans now rise against
as late as last week. This constant support of highly questionable
governments for even more highly questionable reasons has, and will
continue to do us more harm than good no matter how much the "experts"
say otherwise. And the longer the political class continues to isolate
itself from common sense---the longer America will suffer for it.
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2011/02/25/is-isolationism-on-the-rise/
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