Posted on 06/28/2011 6:11:44 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
In his ongoing mission to declare Republicans who dare question America’s foreign policy “isolationist,” Sen. John McCain asked recently concerning Libya: “I wonder what Ronald Reagan would be saying today.”
Columnist George Will answered McCain: “Wondering is speculation; we know this: When a terrorist attack that killed 241 Marines and other troops taught Reagan the folly of deploying them at Beirut airport with a vague mission and dangerous rules of engagement, he was strong enough to reverse this intervention in a civil war.”
Will added: “Would that he had heeded a freshman congressman from Arizona who opposed the House resolution endorsing the intervention. But, then, the McCain of 1983 was, by the standards of the McCain of 2011, an isolationist.”
McCain’s definition of who’s an “isolationist” seems to be anyone who believes permanent war is not in America’s interest. For McCain, any decision not to intervene militarily overseas is tantamount to erecting a brick wall around the US. The actuality of McCain’s foreign policy continues to demonstrate its absurdity—as now 72% of Americans say the U.S. is “involved in too many foreign conflicts” according to a recent Pulse Opinion Research poll.
According to McCain’s definition nearly three quarters of Americans are now isolationist. So was Ronald Reagan.
National Rifle Association President David Keene has noted the major distinction between Reagan’s foreign policy and the neoconservatives’ vision:
“Reagan resorted to military force far less often than many of those who came before him or who have since occupied the Oval Office. . . . After the [1983] assault on the Marine barracks in Lebanon, it was questioning the wisdom of U.S. involvement that led Reagan to withdraw our troops rather than dig in. He found no good strategic reason to give our regional enemies inviting U.S. targets. Can one imagine one of today’s neoconservative absolutists backing away from any fight anywhere?”
True to neocon form, McCain now chastises his own party for even daring to think about backing away from Libya or Afghanistan.
This is not to say that Reagan was a non-interventionist. He wasn’t. But it is to say that Reagan’s foreign policy represented something far more cautious and restrained than the hyper-interventionism the neoconservatives demand.
After the 2010 election, McCain said of Senator-elect Rand Paul of Kentucky: “Rand Paul, he’s already talked about withdrawals, cuts in defense… I worry a lot about rise of… isolationism in the Republican Party.”
What sort of “isolationism” does Paul propose? Something similar to Reagan’s foreign policy, or as Paul told an audience at John Hopkins University earlier this month:
“If for example, we imagine a foreign policy that is everything to everyone, that is everywhere all the time that would be one polar extreme… Likewise, if we imagine a foreign policy that is nowhere any of the time and is completely disengaged from the challenges and dangers to our security that really do exist in the world—well, that would be the other polar extreme… But what about a foreign policy of moderation? A foreign policy that argues that—maybe we could be somewhere some of the time?”
Sen. Paul added: “Reagan’s foreign policy was one in which we were somewhere, some of the time, in which the missions were clear and defined, and there was no prolonged military conflict—and this all took place during the Cold War.”
McCain now wonders what “Ronald Reagan would be saying today” because the neoconservatives have long been paraphrasing him while ignoring his actual record. Ask many conventional conservatives what a “Reagan Republican” is and you’ll likely hear something about “Peace through strength”—while they typically forget the peace part. Conservatives who admired George W. Bush’s foreign policy perceived Bush as being Reagan-esque. This is a fiction the neoconservatives have steadily encouraged—but it is still fiction. Explained former Reagan Senior Adviser Patrick J. Buchanan:
“Would Ronald Reagan have invaded Iraq? Would he have declared a doctrine of preventive war to keep any rival nation from rising to where it might challenge us? Would he have crusaded for ‘world democratic revolution’? Was Reagan the first neoconservative? This claim has been entered in the wake of his death. Yet, it seems bogus, a patent forgery, a fabricated claim to the Reagan legacy, worked up in the same shop where they made the documents proving Saddam was buying up all the yellowcake in Niger.”
Added Buchanan: “(Reagan) took the world as he inherited it. His mission was simple and clear: Defend the country he loved against the pre-eminent threat of the Soviet Empire, avoid war, for time was on our side, and accept the assistance of any friend who would stand with us. Reagan did not harbor some Wilsonian compulsion to remake the world in the image of Vermont.”
Foreign Policy’s Peter Beinart has noted Reagan’s comparative reluctance to commit troops: “on the ultimate test of hawkdom—the willingness to send U.S. troops into harm’s way—Reagan was no bird of prey. He launched exactly one land war, against Grenada, whose army totaled 600 men. It lasted two days. And his only air war—the 1986 bombing of Libya—was even briefer.”
Beinart has also noted Reagan’s opinion of his neoconservative critics:
“(W)hen Secretary of State Alexander Haig suggested… bombing Cuba, the suggestion ‘scared the shit out of Ronald Reagan,’ according to White House aide Michael Deaver. Haig was marginalized, then resigned, and Reagan never seriously considered sending U.S. troops south of the border, despite demands from (neo)conservative intellectuals… ‘Those sons of bitches won’t be happy until we have 25,000 troops in Managua,’ Reagan told chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein near the end of his presidency, ‘and I’m not going to do it.”
There is Reagan the myth; crafted by neocon worship and manipulation, and then there is Reagan the man, who helped end the Cold War with far less military intervention than what neoconservatives demand today.
Author Michael Schaller noted in his 1992 book Reckoning with Reagan that “When Reagan retired, 72% of Americans voiced strong approval for his handling of foreign policy.” Today, 72% of Americans now believe their country does too much around the world.
When John McCain wonders what “Reagan would be saying today” the Senator implies the late president would agree with him. But his actual record suggests that Ronald Reagan would be in sync—as usual—with the bulk of his fellow Americans.
Reagan “waited out” the Soviets?
Did you think that Reagan was going to invade them and destroy Western Civilization, perhaps all civilization?
Do you know what war meant there? One reason many of us voted for Reagan in 1980 was because we felt that the Soviets were going to move against western Europe sometime around 1984 or 1985.
Reagan pumped everything we had into Europe and new weapons and clothing and preparedness for the military, to try and prevent that apocalypse, the tension for the GIs in Europe was immense, because the deaths would have been in the many, many, millions, including the loss of vast swaths of populations and cities, those were very tense times to be a NATO soldier.
In the face of 911, with no Soviet Union to interfere, Reagan would have taken down Hussein, and created an American foothold in the the Arab/Muslim world.
We were playing the Iraqis against the Iranians and vice-versa. They were both no doubt playing us.
It's ugly and its immoral, if done by individuals, but seems to be the only way for nations to survive in a world full of lying self-serving bastards.
Congratulations for placing so many non-sequiturs in a single sentence.
Iran would not be as much of a threat if they were caught up in daily struggles with Iraq.
Playing Russia against China worked for us then. Playing the Sunnis against the Shiites could work for us now.
Of course I'm supposed to believe the cockamamie neocon drivel that there is some sort of Islam-wide conspiracy to institute a worldwide caliphate.
I choose, however, to remain in the real world.
I don’t know what you were trying to say there.
I don't know much, but I do know that supplying our allies in Europe with sufficient troops and materiel to scare off a Soviet invasion was a reasonable, commonsensical, and proportionate response to our enemy the Soviets.
Going to war with Iraq was neither reasonable, nor commonsensical, nor proportionate. Reagan wouldn't have gone there.
Here is a thing that isolationist tend to forget one thing.. When Washington was President, we had a very weak Military. Also our founders weren’t truly isolationist.. Adams almost had a war against France (Washington was willing to be the commander in chief before he died).. Jefferson sent Marines to Lybia, and of course Madison had a nice war with the Brits..
And I choose to take people at their word when they say they want to kill me. When the Supreme Leader of Iran says God has brought the Jews to Israel so they can be nuked, I think he is serious. Especially when they are actually building nukes. When their president makes his cabinet swear allegience to the 12th Immam I think he means it. As for a caliphate, again that's their words, not ours. See my tagline.
So some small fanatical groups will try to institute a Sunni caliphate while others try to establish a Shiite caliphate. What do we lose by playing one off against the other? I'd rather they be killing themselves off, then our soldiers.
BTW, Reagan didn’t beleive in “proportionate response”. LBJ did, and it was a disaster in Vietnam. Reagan believed in disproportionate response. In fact, he coined the term “bomb them back into the stone age” when asked what he would do about the North Vietnam.
I am right about this, Reagan was no Clinton.
In the face of 911, with no Soviet Union to interfere, Reagan would have taken down Hussein, and created an American foothold in the the Arab/Muslim world.
One foot on Shiite territory, another foot on Sunni territory, and presumably a third foot on Kurdish territory.
Not much of a foothold if you ask me.
If we wanted to establish a foothold in the Arab/Muslim world it would have "made more sense" to invade Iran, but since I believe that invading Iraq was complete and utter nonsense, it wouldn't take much to make more sense than that.
Even one of Lady Gaga's performances makes more sense to me than the invasion of Iraq.
IMHO...
There is no comparing today to President Washington’s times; then America was not a major world power and was much more physically isoloated than today. Isolationism was generally a good starting point for policy in that case. Today, we are the dominant power in the world and a force for good and a force for stability. Also, today’s weaponry can reach across oceans in minutes and is incredibly more lethal than colonial weaponry. Obviously being too adamantly isolationist, i.e., having a policy of zero military action or presence anywhere unless we have been hit with a physical attack is not only unwise but impractical. Given the stealth invasion of muslim terrorists via the commercial air transport system, perhaps that is where isolationism should start, by plugging that hole in the armor.
All that being said, policy needs to be refined on an ongoing basis to respond to changes in the world. Also, policy should have a direction or an end, so as to not simply change with the wind, though it may be advantageous to change from time to time. Policies can be very detailed and the President, of course, does not write all these details themselves. Most often they communicate their ideology enough to create a starting point and manage others who develop and implement in more detail. While they certainly can get into details and in certain situations that may be called for and optimal, micro-managing is often a terrible mistake for an executive to make. Ultimately then it is principles and vision that a President needs, that guide their policymaking. In the case of foreign relations, they then they need the ability to lead and manage the Secretaries of State and Defense so their vision comes to fruition. Perhaps that is why so many hearken back to the glory days of both Washington and Reagan: those two men each had a vision which was optimal for America in their times,espoused principles at once timeless and righteous, and articulated and effected them with great success.
Agreed
Nobody asked you, and I get the impression that you never spent much of your life interested in such things, except in this narrow political sense.
It's interesting that, in her book "A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide," Samantha Powers—who famously pushed Obama into this Libyan misadventure over "responsibility to protect"—criticized Reagan for not doing more when Saddam gassed the Kurds in early '88 during the Iraq-Iran war.
While his administration condemned the use of chemical weapons—Reagan had called for and negotiated towards an int'l ban—we continued an active trade policy because Iraq was a large importer of agricultural goods and seen as a counter to Iran.
In light of the Cold War overshadowing the choices he options he had, it's difficult to say how he'd have reacted post 9/11.
I do believe, however, he wouldn't have wasted precious time on war college fantasies about reduced troop levels and would've opted for a larger force, avoiding the need for any surges later. I think he'd have stayed focused on Afghanistan and kept a close eye on Iraq.
We may have been pulled into engaging Iraq but I don't believe the time table would've been the same.
We’ll put it this way. I don’t believe the Iraqi war would have been necessary under Reagan. No way would Saddam have risked crossing Reagan and incurring Old Testament retribution. If he had, he’d have been dead back in ‘91. Game over.
I also don’t think 9/11 happens under Reagan. Bin Laden would have been taken out cleanly and surgically long before then. If by some freak, Bin Laden weren’t taken out and 9/11 had still happened, Afghanistan would have been bombed from the bronze age back into the stone age, and the conflict would have been over in a matter of 2-3 years. I also believe the UAE would have suffered some serious repercussions for their role in the affair.
JMO of course, but Reagan would not have pussyfooted around the way his successors have.
I believe that Afghanistan is currently in the stone age.
Bombing the heck out of them would have generated enough shrapnel that enterprising Afghanis could have used to advance their civilization into a bronze, or even iron age.
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