But he also knew that the U.S. was building a first-class Navy and that we would be able to project power in 20 years; and it was both his Sec. of State (Pres. Thomas Jefferson) and fellow VA advisor, James Madison, who pursued wars against the Barbary Pirates WITHOUT a declaration of war and specifically against ALL states who threatened us, whether they declared war against us or not (this is called "preemption") and without any European help.
Further, GW didn't CARE whether other nations were "democratized" or now---he, like Bush, looked at whether or not they were threats, and while GW would not have seen it as necessary to reduce the threat by democratizing them, GWB does. In the modern world, GWB is right.
And, pray tell, just how do you think that "democratizing" other nations, makes them less of a threat? Do you consider the Nazi party, which emerged from the Weimar Republic (a democracy) less of a threat than the Hohenzollern Monarchy? How about the Democratization of Rhodesia, which turned it from a food exporting Oligarchy into absolute chaos, where people much like the Virginians of Washington's day, have been run off their land--if not murdered?
But the point of the debate is not how bad Democracy can be. The point of the debate is that the Bush policy, by insulting much of the world, and violating the even handed foreign policy which won us the world's respect--by playing favorite nations based upon the President's arrogant judgment of their internal affairs, not whether they threaten us--is a wrong-headed policy. General Washington's remarks in our little staged debate, make the points, however, better than I can.
And by the way, how do you plan to pay for this arrogance, a problem suggested by Washington paragraph O?
It would have been incredibly risky -- probably suicidal -- to be anything BUT isolationist in the Washington era.