Posted on 02/05/2024 10:41:28 AM PST by Chad C. Mulligan
The tragic murder of three American soldiers by Iranian proxies in Jordan has once again laid bare a fracture within the Republican Party. This fracture once again finds those who advocate for an active American role in international relations through “power projection” locked in a debate with those who believe that the U.S. should take a more isolationist approach.
Following the strike, some Republican members of Congress reacted by demanding that the U.S. strike targets in Iran and Iranian leadership directly. The opposite perspective, summarized by Tucker Carlson: “F-cking lunatics.”
While both perspectives represent the extreme, there is a growing and very vocal component of the right who believe that the best solution to American forces being killed or put in danger overseas is a complete withdrawal from the world.
They use language that creates a false equivalency between responding to an attack on Americans and “starting a war.” Sen. Mike Lee said, “I am concerned that U.S. action, like the recent airstrikes on Houthi targets, is starting to blur the line between defense of U.S. forces in the region and unauthorized escalatory offense.”
And, of course, any firm American response is criticized as placating the apparently all-powerful American military-industrial complex — a perspective more in line with progressive journalists than Reagan’s “we will not surrender for peace” foreign policy.
These critics of a forceful U.S. response seem to have forgotten Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick Diplomacy. Instead of a powerful and decisive defense of American interests, they demand an approach akin to “taking my ball and going home,” or an absolutist Monroe Doctrine that would see America abandon the world and focus entirely on the homefront.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.
Those of us who DO study history are doomed to stand by watching helplessly while everyone else repeats it.
If we stuck to isolationism during WWI, there would have been no WWII.
Hmmm...Iran was in check a few years ago. Wonder what is different?
I’m all for isolation.
I think Biden should reinstate the Trump economic policies that worked so well to isolate and remove money for terrorism on Iran
That worked and required no new laws from Congress.
The United States should be isolationist by nature and interventionist in rare, exceptional cases. That's the only legitimate political stature for a country that is supposed to be built on the idea of limited government. A government that pisses away thousands of lives and trillions of dollars on military campaigns in Islamic sh!t-holes halfway around the world while facilitating an invasion of Third World peasants here at home has no moral claim on any loyalty from its citizens anymore.
That globalist/interventionist ship has sailed. We're bankrupt.
Studying history is pointless if you are ignorant about basic finance.
Let’s let the democrats run Iran...it’ll be in ruins in 2 years...
Did we really practice isolationism in 1940?
We allowed fighter pilots to fight in China against the Japanese, with US warplanes. They were ‘mercenaries’ but it looks provacative. (Flying Tigers)
We Escorted transport ships carrying supplies and war materials to Britian. The first US ship lost in WWII wasn’t from the Japanese, it was torpedoed by a Uboat as it did convoy escort. (USS Reuben James)
That suggest considerable amount of involvement without getting ‘involved’. The people of the US didn’t want to be in the war, it took a giant nudge of a sneak attack of Pearl Harbor to push it all the way, but it wasn’t really isolationism either.
As far as delay...take a hard look at US military expenditures after the British declaration of war in WWII ( Sept. 1939). The US basically started war footing at that time with production. We delayed combat, not production mobilization, IMHO.
History isn’t always as clean as they teach you in class. The US wasn’t ‘isolationists’ entirely, and we didn’t delay after the invasion of Poland.
We were never ‘neutral’ during both World Wars.
We needed the Royal Navy to guard the Atlantic, while we were beefing up our presence in the Pacific, after the Spanish-American War, when we got the Philippines. We knew we were on a collision course with Japan, even then.
The majority were isolationist, when the assumption was it would just be another stalemate like WWI was.
That changed once the Nazis conquered France, and that’s when people realized that s___ was getting real.
Actually, the biggest isolationists were the Communists, after Stalin and Hitler became best buddies.
Put em out of business. Bomb their oil refineries. Sanction the bastards.
Isolationists prevented assistance to Britain for most of that time. The Lend-Lease compromise wasn't passed until March of 1941.
Who taught you history?
The Flying Tigers didn't commence operation against the Japanese until two weeks after Pearl Harbor.
Better yet, send the computers that operate their refineries a virus that blows them up remotely.
The problem is that Iran can not refine enough of their own oil to supply their own economy. They have to import gasoline and diesel.
They export 90% of their oil from Kharg island in the Persian Gulf. Blow that up and their foreign currency stops.
However, if we do that, they probably activate every sleeper cell in the west. Then attack us everywhere.
So, what is best way to lower their foreign currency sales?
The sanctions that Trump imposed plus you produce so much oil in the USA that we drop the Brent Sea Crude price to $45/barrel.
Economic sanctions had Iran flat on its back. Biden let them get up off their backs and gave them sustenance. The fact that Biden refuses to re-impose Trump sanctions is proof that he is not serious, and is using the military for election-year photo-ops of him being a “wartime leader.” The evening news is giddy about showing video clips of night-time carrier takeoffs. All very impressive. Expect this tactic to continue and even escalate. That is why it may spin out of control — because there is no geopolitical merit in it, and Iranians aren’t going down without a fight.
We're not bankrupt because we projected power into the Middle East. We're bankrupt because we've been pissing away trillions of $$$ here at home on welfare programs to buy votes from political constituencies, and to guarantee campaign contributions from crony capitalists, since LBJ was in office.
Small government shouldn't mean stupid government. We didn't have a big government when President Jefferson sent the Marines to clean up Tripoli. (Our first big run-in with Islam and, as we all should know, you either defend yourselves against the followers of the pedophile prophet or they kill you or enslave you.)
The first ship lost to enemy action by a WW2 opponent was the USS Panay, sunk by the Japanese in 1937.
From the U.S. Naval Institute account of the incident:
"The isolationist mood of the United States precluded any strong and decisive action following the Panay incident. Roosevelt’s Quarantine Speech in Chicago in October of 1937 resulted in a negative reaction from the isolationists who wished a strong implementation of the Neutrality Acts of 1937; and after the Panay incident, wanted a complete withdrawal of our naval forces, Marines, businessmen, and missionaries from the Far East."
Nothing positive was done, and on December 7, 1941. . . . .
Incorrect. The AVG flying Tigers started operations in April 201941, almost a year before Pearl Harbor. You’re referring to the era when they got incorporated into the US Air Force.
That’s April 1941 when they started. That was the mercenary phase. At two weeks after Pearl Harbor is when they were made part of the US Air Force. That’s also when pappy Boyington left and came back home to rejoin the Marines.
Do you think in 1939 we should’ve charged into the war in Europe? I was not aware that we were party to a treaty with Poland or England.
And you’re full of bulls squirt, we were breaking grounds on all kinds of war production, and ramping up during that period. In late summer of 1940 we started construction on the Willow run bomber plant. We were already building liberty ships in 1940 for British contracts.
It’s dishonest to say we did nothing to help England during battle of Britain. We just didn’t join the war, and the American people did not support doing so at that point.
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