Posted on 08/09/2016 9:27:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Isolationists must not prevail in this new debate over foreign policy," warns Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "The consequences of a lasting American retreat from the world would be dire."
To make his case against the "Isolationist Temptation," Haass creates a caricature, a cartoon, of America First patriots, then thunders that we cannot become "a giant gated community."
Understandably, Haass is upset. For the CFR has lost the country.
Why? It colluded in the blunders that have bled and near bankrupted America and that cost this country its unrivaled global preeminence at the end of the Cold War.
No, it was not "isolationists" who failed America. None came near to power. The guilty parties are the CFR crowd and their neocon collaborators, and liberal interventionists who set off to play empire after the Cold War and create a New World Order with themselves as Masters of the Universe.
Consider just a few of the decisions taken in those years that most Americans wish we could take back.
After the Soviet Union withdrew the Red Army from Europe and split into 15 nations, and Russia held out its hand to us, we slapped it away and rolled NATO right up onto her front porch.
Enraged Russians turned to a man who would restore respect for their country. Did we think they would just sit there and take it?
How did bringing Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into NATO make America stronger, safer and more secure? For it has surely moved us closer to a military clash with a nuclear power.
In 2014, with John McCain and U.S. diplomats cheering them on, mobs in Independence Square overthrew a pro-Russian government in Kiev that had been democratically elected and installed a pro-NATO regime.
Putin's response: Secure Russia's naval base at Sevastopol by retaking Crimea, and support pro-Russian Ukrainians in Luhansk and Donetsk who preferred secession to submission to U.S. puppets.
Fortunately, our interventionists failed to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. Had they succeeded, we almost surely would have been in a shooting war with Russia by now.
Would that have made us stronger, safer, more secure?
After the attack on 9/11, George W. Bush, with the nation and world behind him, took us into Afghanistan to eradicate the nest of al-Qaida killers.
After having annihilated some and scattered the rest, however, Bush decided to stick around and convert this wild land of Pashtuns, Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbeks into another Iowa.
Fifteen years later, we are still there.
And the day we leave, the Taliban will return, undo all we have done, and butcher those who cooperated with the Americans.
If we had to do it over, would we have sent a U.S. army and civilian corps to make Afghanistan look more like us?
Bush then invaded Iraq, overthrew Saddam, purged the Baath Party, and disbanded the Iraqi army. Result: A ruined, sundered nation with a pro-Iranian regime in Baghdad, ISIS occupying Mosul, Kurds seceding, and endless U.S. involvement in this second-longest of American wars.
Most Americans now believe Iraq was a bloody trillion-dollar mistake, the consequences of which will be with us for decades.
With a rebel uprising against Syria's Bashar al-Assad, the U.S. aided the rebels. Now, 400,000 Syrians are dead, half the country is uprooted, millions are in exile, and the Damascus regime, backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, is holding on after five years.
Meanwhile, we cannot even decide whether we want Assad to survive or fall, since we do not know who rises when he falls.
Anyone still think it was a good idea to plunge into Syria in support of the rebels? Anyone still think it was a good idea to back Saudi Arabia in its war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which has decimated that country and threatens the survival of millions?
Anyone still think it was a good idea to attack Libya and take down Moammar Gadhafi, now that ISIS and other Islamists and rival regimes are fighting over the carcass of that tormented land?
"The Middle East is arguably the most salient example of what happens when the U.S. pulls back," writes Haass.
To the CFR, the problem is not that we plunged headlong into this maelstrom of tyranny, tribalism and terrorism, but that we have tried to extricate ourselves.
Hints that America might leave the Middle East, says Haass, have "contributed greatly to instability in the region."
So, must we stay indefinitely?
To the CFR, America's role in the world is to corral Russia, defend Europe, contain China, isolate Iran, deter North Korea, and battle al-Qaida and ISIS wherever they may be, bleeding our country's military.
Nor is that all. We are also to convert Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan into pro-Western preferably democratic countries, and embrace "free trade," accepting the imported merchandise of all mankind, even if that means endless $800 billion trade deficits, bleeding our country's economy.
Otherwise, you are just an isolationist.
Democrats and the Military Industrial Complex.
He went after Israel because we went back on our word that we wouldn’t do anything if Saddam wanted to take Kuwait.
It’s the enemy, Pat. They wrecked the British Empire with war, now it’s our turn. Overall, it’s a war of attrition.
Our foreign policies have been an absolute costly deadly disaster for decades. Enough of this America last, loser leadership.
“The Muslims started this. And the war (there really is only one) will continue until Islam is defeated.”
The West was meddling in Middle East politics long before 9/11. Don’t like muzzies? Then ban them from your country. Otherwise, “defeating” them will consign the U.S. to endless, unwinnable wars (as no one will support the equivalent of relgious “genocide”).
“To the CFR, America’s role in the world is to corral Russia, defend Europe, contain China, isolate Iran, deter North Korea, and battle al-Qaida and ISIS wherever they may be, bleeding our country’s military.”
If we undertook these things with a view to winning/achieving success in the shortest time possible, that would be one thing. But our politicians don’t do what is necessary to win/succeed quickly. They bumble along incompetently and conduct war with half measures.
I’m all for empire building in the form of a Pax Americana. As long as we recoup the costs of establishing and maintaining it. If we don’t, then let the barbarians kill themselves and when they’re at their weakest, move in and take over.
Eradicate the remainder, pave over their worthless countries, and provide free parking. Oh, and take whatever natural resources they have as payment for them being unwilling to enter the modern age.
I think we can go back to the CIA installing the Shah of Iran. We just can’t help ourselves when it comes to meddling.
The author is Patrick Buchanan. He has learned political finesse over time, but read what he wrote in 1977.
http://www.realchange.org/hitler.htm
an excerpt from there:
“Those of us in childhood during the war years were introduced to Hitler only as caricature. Either he was a ranting, raving, carpet-chewing Chaplinesque buffoon — or the anti-Christ, Satan Incarnate, a devil without human attribute who had hypnotized the German people.
Such ignorance is folly. Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him.
But Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.”
Layers and political correctness. If we were allowed to actually destroy the enemy our wars would end real quick. But no. We have snipers who have to wait on hold for 6 hours waiting for some DOJ lawyer to authorize a shot. Then. We have our soldiers being actively criminalized for killing the enemy. That’s not how you fight a war.
“The left knows what it’s doing, by weakening the military and sapping the will of the people to fight.”
Washington would have been horrified that we were roaming the world, looking for fights, and looking to spread our philosophy by the sword to savages.
There is plenty of will to fight, but very little to go unjustly invade like Libya and Syria, and intervene and nation build.
There’s a difference.
“The communists disdain to conceal their aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by a forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” …That is the kind of thinking one goes up against when confronting the left. Pseudo-Messianic materialism.
— Manifesto, Ch. 4
“(W)ith contempt I shall fling my glove in the world’s face; then shall I stride through the wreckage a creator.”
“My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.”
— Marx
I really don’t see what Buchanan said here that was wrong. He didn’t deny Hitler was an evil man. But he couldn’t have achieved what he did, if he didn’t have some brilliance to him.
And yes, he did make fools of the Statesmen who were in his path, and his Generals who didn’t think he should have even marched into The Rhineland.
Its not the war that is the problem. It is the way it is fought. By politicians who see a way to endless profits from these endless wars.
WW2 was the last time we fought a war to win. It took just four years to win it and although at great costs in tresure, we won it.
The scum suckers in DC do not want to win wars anymore. Big bucks in it.
We aren’t doing that, though. The rest of the world comes looking for a fight and we respond too little too late, actually. And we have seen what the ruling left does when they do act, and it’s all for the purpose of destabilization. I don’t buy the left’s contention that we are the aggressors; but of course they themselves are.
That kind of critical thinking isn’t tolerated!
The Iran/Iraq involvement was a legacy of the Cold War, still ongoing in 1979 when Khomeini upset the stasis that had supplied what stability the region possessed. When suddenly the Cold War alignments altered, further complicating the matter, policy makers ended up scrambling. What we have now is not any overall schema provided by the CFR, it's a patchwork of patchworks. You can make quilts that way; foreign policy, not so much.
The author, however, is correct in wondering why, two and a half decades later, we are still involved in interventionism in an area where no obvious U.S. interest is at stake, and I haven't an answer for that. Was the world economy threatened by Saddam's threat to cut the Straits of Hormuz? Yes, at the time, and since the U.S. was as vulnerable as the rest of the world, U.S. interests were at stake. Is it now? Far less so. That dynamic has changed nearly beyond recognition. Anyone who could have anticipated that in 1991 had a working crystal ball.
Hence the argument for disengagement. The trick is doing it cleanly. 0bama has failed. Whether Bush would have succeeded is purely academic - perhaps not, after all, his proposed schedule for withdrawal was some six months prior to the one 0bama ended up following, the difference being in what was planned to be left behind and how much it would have sufficed to provide stability during the disengagement process. That, unfortunately, is all speculation at this point.
But it does bolster the argument for not increasing involvement, and there it is not the Bush administration but the 0bama one, with Hillary Clinton churning at State, that is to blame. First Libya - why destabilize Gaddafi in favor of the Moslem Brotherhood? (If the answer does turn out to be Sidney Blumenthal then Hillary belongs in prison for that too). Why do so afterward to Egypt, our ally in the region? What a total mess that was, and remains. And to double down on that folly by attempting to extend this idiot Arab Spring to Syria is quite simply the mark of a State Department out of control, and the mess it is in right now was entirely predictable.
I wouldn't categorize a discreet refusal to further thrash already-muddied waters as isolationism, rather as common sense. We're not on some slide of historical determinism toward collective security involving the entire world that is an underlying premise of world government. That's a great fiction plot but resembles the actual workings of the planet less and less each passing day. Progressives and neocons alike seem so besotted with this notion that they are willing to ignore the obvious failures of attempting to effect it.
It is ironic that "America first" may be the best way out of this mess, not just for America but for the rest of the world caught up in the chaos of globalism unfettered. The people getting rich off the mess will fight it tooth and nail.
“They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by a forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” …”
Thanks for that Marx quote. That is exactly what the neocons have been doing around the world.
“The problem basically is theological, and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all the material and cultural developments of the past 2000 years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”But already, the left-wing attack on private morality and true spirituality was in full swing.
Another issue is that while Western Europe and those of Western European decent in the United States have a birthrate that puts our population in decline. The cultures that are pitted against us have a birthrate that causes their population to double every 30 years or so. What could go wrong? That issue alone means that we either build one hell of a wall and defensive system or we will be eventually overrun. It is simple demographics. Western culture is in rapid decline from a historical perspective even when compared with the plagues of the middle ages. Us old farts probably will not be around to see it all fall to pieces, but if our grandkids survive the onslaught, they are going to have one heck of a mess to clean up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.