Posted on 10/21/2010 11:04:51 PM PDT by citizenredstater9271
Whatever is best for America. Patriotism. The details of the policy will be fought out and argued. But I would say that bowing to the Saudi King, insulting the British and our traditional allies, supporting world government, and like acts and policies are out.
That’s why I said “ AMERICA FIRST “ foreign policy.....
Back in Washington’s day that was fine, but the world is more complicated now. Much more interelated. By the very act of say, selling your wheat to another country, you have an involvement with them. By the very act of buying oil from the Middle East, are you not propping up some decidedly dicey regimes? Of course, that is not your purpose, and in one sense its the responsibility of those nations as to how they choose to misgovern themselves.
I think the proper response is that whatever our foreign policy it is irrelevant unless our core economy is strong, which is a domestic issue. Let us worry about ourselves for a while and spend less time worrying about the rest of the world.
You make a good point, and back in the day we did trade with both France and Britian, in addition to other nations in Europe, and most were ruled by tyrants. There is no way to get away from that completely without complete isolation, which is not good economically by any means.
That is another issue besides what both Woodrow Wilson and FDR did, however. Woodrow Wilson participated in the divving up of lands that were defeated in WWI, what was left of the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Europe. Most of the people living in these areas were deemed inferior and unable to govern themselves and so where handed over to various tryanies in Europe to rule. When they went to the conference in Paris in 1919 to try to affect their own futures they were sent away empty handed and ended up having to bow to kings they did not want who were bolstered by the military power of the alies. And he did it all to get the League of Nations. If you read about the history of Iran, for instance, especially the last Shaw, you can get the idea of the kind of thing that I’m talking about.
The Bretton Woods currency agreements are another example, and the list goes on of just how much we’ve been involved in the molding of what is and I think the founders would have been apalled.
The thirst for global power didn’t stop there. We did it yet again with Asia, especially China, with Bretton Woods II to help them dig out of the Asian Financial crisis more than a decade ago. And of course there’s an amazing cost to our own economy and national security concerning these things, especially under very poor stewardship.
Is this kind of thing something we should be doing? I sure don’t agree with it and think we should stop.
Unless you have absolute isolationism, your interactions with the world are always going to be, or interpreted to be (which is almost the same thing), ones of "exploitation", "propping up" or "tearing down". This of course assumes that the USA even CAN be absolutely isolationist. That was just about possible in Washington's day (maybe) but certainly isn't now, because the USA is nowhere near as self-sufficient as it was. This is a trend that is set to continue.
Woodrow Wilson did indeed get involved with the settlements of the treaty of Versailles that ended the first world war. As a member of the victorious entente powers he had little choice, but the Americans didn't have a lot to do with the nation building that went on, and retreated into isolationism soon after. In fact, the main impact the Americans had was in moderating the evils you mentioned. The French were determined that Germany would never be a threat to them again and that was their major priority, not the rights of minor ethnic groupings who could not form self-sufficient countries anyway. This was a mistake of epic proportions of course, as subsequent events (WW2 and the breakup of Jugoslavia etc) proved, but at the time it made sense. No one purposed those events. Even those who forsaw problems later on believed that it was a small price to pay for European and world stability. One heck of a decision to make on someone else's behalf of course! But then, isn't that the same kind of decision the US and the UK made in Iraq a decade ago?
My point is that no-one can see into the future, and politics is the art of the possible, not neccesarily the desirable. Things that look desirable now may turn round and bite us later on. Afghanistan being a prime example. All these Mujahadeen got their arms and training from the US because at the time they were fighting the russians, and we were glad to mire the soviets in their own little vietnam. No one imagined that those weapons would eventually be turned on us.
Besides, the USA is still the world's only superpower. Even with the recent problems you are still the richest nation on earth, with by far the world's largest economy and strongest military. It is impossible for that not to make a difference to everyone else, particularly as a lot of people have a vested interest in it. A lot of this "Death to the Great Satan" rhetoric that comes out of Iran and Syria and so on is little more than an attempt by ruling elites to distract their populations from their sorry state by uniting them against a common "foe" (who hasn't actually done anything to them).
I do not fault America’s leaders with mistakes, or things that just don’t turn out as planned. I fault them for doing things with power on the mind instead of princples consistent with self-governemnt and natural rights. I’m sure Wilson did not intended for WWII. He thought he was championing the peace talks for the war to end all wars, because he was doing it with the idea of consolidating power in the hands of a few. And that’s entirely my point.
As far as I know Bush did not do that with Iraq. Yes, there were mistakes there, but they were not because the Iraqis didn’t have an opportunity for self-rule.
The difference there is miles a apart.
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