they have an obligation to use the US government as a charity organization and 'repair the world.'
On May 21, 7:11 am, MJ <[email protected]> wrote: > Two Cheers for ‘Isolationism’How’s that ‘global leadership’ thing working out > for us?byJustin Raimondo, May 20, 2013 > A policy has to be judged by its results, and by that standard > interventionism is a complete and total failure, as a look at the day’s > headlines reveals. > We’ve heard several public officials say Al Qaeda > hasbeeneffectivelydismantled, with its top leadership – includingOsama bin > Laden– out of commission. But that doesn’t mean our open-ended “war on > terrorism” is anywhere near its end – far from it.Wiredreportsthat the > Pentagon’s special ops chief, Michael Sheehan, when asked at a congressional > hearing how much longer the war will last, answered “ten to twenty years.” > The mightiest army ever assembled on earth went to war with aragtag bunchof > Islamist nutjobs living in a cave somewhere – and it took them 30-plus > years,trillions of dollars, andtens of thousands of casualtiesto defeat them? > Is this what historians will write of our Thirty Years War on Terror?In Iraq, > hundreds are being killed in sectarian assaults as the “government” of Nouri > al Maliki presides over thedisintegrationof what had once been a country. Al > Qaeda-in-Iraq, oncepronounced dead, hasbeenresurrectedby the Syrian civil > war, and is now making a major comeback as Iraq’s low intensity civil > warheats up. Forty people were killed, and 45 wounded, in asingle dayacross > Iraq. In Baghdad, an officer in the elite anti-terrorism squad was murdered > in his home, along with his wife and two children: in Basra. a prominent > Sunni cleric was assassinated, while in Ramadi, 10 Sunni policemen were > kidnapped. > In Afghanistan, a recent wave of successfulTaliban attackson US-trained > police has resulted in at least two dozen deaths: a bomb blast in Kabul > inaugurated the fighting season, with16 dead, including 6 Americans, and > dozens wounded. Sheehan’s “ten to twenty years” easilyappliestoAfghanistan, > where – a decade after sweeping the Taliban from power, holdingelections, and > subsidizing our Afghan sock puppets to the tune ofhundreds of billionsof > taxpayer dollars – the “government” of Afghan President Hamid Karzai isless > stable,less able to defend itself, andopenly hostileto its American sugar > daddy. > The left-wing of the Obama cultreally believestheir hero is ending the > American occupation of Afghanistan: just wait until these vaunted > progressives find out he’s merely privatizing it! Yikes! There are > alreadymore than100,000 private military contractors in the employ of the US > government in Afghanistan, and the “withdrawal” means we’ll be sending in a > second wave of mercenaries to train our Afghan allies and lead the fight > against theresurgent Taliban. In any case, the “residual” force we’ll be > leaving behind, its size yet to be determined, can always be increased at the > whim of the White House. Obama’s likely successor, regardless of party, will > no doubt market this escalation as yet another glorious campaign in a war > that could theoretically go onforever– or at least as long as anessentially > bankruptnation can pretend to be a global hegemon. > In which case, contra Sheehan, we don’t have “ten to twenty years.” Yet our > elites are living in the eye of the hurricane: they don’t feel its gale force > winds. In theBeltway bubble, all is well, and the sun never sets on the > American empire. Unlike its Britishpredecessor, however, which lasted a good > 300 years, the American Raj shows every sign of decomposing just as it > reaches its zenith. > After over a decade of constant warfare, at an incalculable cost in human > lives and material resources, the Americans are everywhere in retreat.Kicked > out of Iraq, effectivelystalemated in Afghanistan, andstymied in Pakistan, > Washington is losing influence throughout the region. > The ideological rationale for the Iraq war – that we would “drain the swamp” > of Arab stagnation and therefore eliminate the sources of Islamist radicalism > – turns out to have been imported straight fromBizarro World, where > everything is stood on its head. Instead of neutralizing the factors that > made bin Laden a hero to much of the Muslim world, the conquest and > occupation of Iraqcreateda base for Al Qaeda that hadnever existedpreviously > (despite the Bush administration’s quiteeffectiveeffortto link Saddam Hussein > in the public mind to the 9/11 attacks). > The political rationale for the Iraq and Afghan wars is another example of > Bizarro World “logic” in action. All those years after we weretold“we’re > fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here,” two > terrorists succeeded inshutting downa major American city, murdering3and > injuring more than260. Will we now invadeChechnya,Dagestan, and the other > ‘stans in a futile crusade to deprive “the terrorists” of safe havens? > In the name of “humanitarianism,” and at the behest ofweepy liberalsas well > ashardcore neocons, Washington aided the Syrian “rebels” until their > allegiance to Al Qaeda becametoo obviousto be evaded any longer, but by then > it was too late – thoselung-eating fanaticshad already established themselves > as the strongest faction,financiallyas well as militarily. This disaster was > the result of the White House caving in to demands that the US exercise > “global leadership” – and, indeed, this appeal to Americans’ inborn conceit > is responsible for most of the trouble we’ve incurred since > theSpanish-American War. > The very idea of “global leadership” is a fiction: no one country can be said > to “lead” anything in a global context. It is a meaningless concept. Each and > every country has its own unique interests, which depend on its location, its > size, its history, and a number of other factors peculiar to itself. And > while a strong country can bully a number of weaker states, and subordinate > their interests to its own, there are limitations to this approach – and > isn’t thatthe lessonof the last decade or so? > If you don’t accept the idea that America must assert its “global leadership” > at every turn – that no crisis, no matter how far away and remote from our > real interests, can be allowed to go to waste – then you must be one of those > dreadful “isolationists” the Washington elite is always warning us about. > Every timesome pollshows how sick and tired Americans are of carrying the > world’s burdens on their shoulders, the “experts” descry the rise of > “isolationism,” as one would warn of an approaching plague of locusts. That > there are no real isolationists, and never really were any in this country, > is beside the point: it’s just a way of shutting down debate over America’s > proper role in the world. If you aren’t an interventionist, well then you > must be an “isolationist” – end of discussion. > “Isolationist” was coined as asmear word, and so it is: and yet there is > something to be said for the term. For if the domestic function of government > is to protect us from criminals, to isolate law-abiding citizens from those > who would do us harm, then this limns its proper function internationally. > That is what defending the country means: isolating us from dangers emanating > from abroad. In this sense, Americanswantto be isolated – from all the woes > of a dangerous world. > That our interventionist foreign policy has failed to do this – that it > has,in fact, visited those woes upon us like never before in our history – is > becoming readily apparent to the average American. In Washington, however, > they still cling to the ragged conceit of “global leadership,” deriding any > suggestion that we attend to our own affairs as the “isolationism” of > reactionary troglodytes. > Well, then, so be it. If the interventionists will own up to the abysmal > failure of their policies – if they’ll acknowledge the horrific costs of wars > that made us less safe, less prosperous, and a whole lot less able to defend > our real interests around the world – then the advocates of peace should > embrace the “i”-word, if not whole-heartedly then with the knowledge that > theother“i”-word – interventionist – is today even more of a marketing > nightmare.http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/05/19/two-cheers-for-isolationism/ -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. 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