To many people it may seem desirable for the US to reduce its role around the world. That we need reevaluate the level of our imperial engagement in many corners of the globe is an obvious and truthful fact. We need not have troops stationed in Western Europe as our massive German deployment no longer dissuades a non-existent USSR from sending communist tanks into the Fulda gap. What is untrue and scurrilous, is a notion in vogue in a certain segment of the Right, that we can role back our empire into some sort of ahistorical vision of Fortress America.
I am writing of course of Ron Paul and his historical luddites who maintain the antediluvian fantasy that if America only acted as it once did we could be prosperous and unbothered by events round the world. Yet, the period these ignorant Paulites hearken back to was nothing less than the America of its day – Great Britain – enforcing order on a chaotic world. Pax Britannica, lasting from after the War of 1812 to the First World War, ensured a neutrality of the seas guaranteed by Royal Navy ships in the same way our navy does today. It allowed the independent development of the Western Hemisphere, for both North and South America were protected not by the quill written ink of the Monroe Doctrine but by Britain’s willingness to enforce it. How different our history may have been had Britain been disinterested in laboriously enforcing American writ, we will never know.
True, Britain had an economic interested in a free trade system with South America and desired to stymie a revived mercantile Spanish Empire but A. this too benefited the nascent United States by allowing our goods to markets and B. allowed us the luxury of the Manifest Destiny expansion west with little worry of European intervention. That this shows how interconnected even the wide pre-Facebook and flight world was, is lost on Paulites. They would have the world Britain’s once Royal Navy bought us but without paying for it.
Their counterfactuals do not end there for they, like the Left, also celebrate our evacuation of Iraq and our impending retreat from Afghanistan. That had we ended Saddam in 1991, when we were greeted by cheering crowds as liberators, we could have had peaceful and stable relations with a prosperous Iraq in 03 is too confusing a notion. Its inverse, that we had a moral obligation to the Iraqi people after then President HW Bush admonished them to rise up and shake off their dictator and then looked away as hundreds of thousands were mowed down by Saddam’s regime has no affect on them. Honor and virtue have no place in the Paulite vision of an America by itself and a world that functions largely without America.
Rep. Paul himself goes even further to the extreme on matters Afghan and ventures into classical anti-American revisionism. He claims the Taliban merely wants foreign fighters off their sacred mountainous soil and that our occupation is what drives them into the arms of Al Qaida and its affiliate organizations. Yet a Taliban ruled Afghanistan, free from American and Coalition boots on the ground, invited Al Qaida in years before we invaded. Paul and his band of chronologically challenged followers are worse than the pre-WW2 America Firsters who after we were attacked at least stated:
“Our principles were right. Had they been followed, war could have been avoided. No good purpose can now be served by considering what might have been, had our objectives been attained.
We are at war. Today, though there may be many important subsidiary considerations, the primary objective is not difficult to state. It can be completely defined in one word: Victory”.
Whereas the America Firsters posited had America taken an isolationist foreign policy it would have kept us from being attacked, Paulites argue that since we were attacked and have been continuously in the crosshairs of Islamic extremists we should adopt isolationism. That our non-intervention in Afghanistan did not prevent the Taliban from giving aid and succor to Al Qaida is a truth lost in their fanciful utopian “foreign policy”.
While we obviously need to redefine our national security goals, remove US forced from Germany, stop using our military as a tripwire between North andSouth Korea, and close bases all overEurope, we can not disengage from the world. Pax Americana, our ability to project military power around the world, is the only fact preventing a major war possibly involving a nuclear exchange from breaking out in the several hot spots around the world, it is the only force ensuring the neutrality of the seas, and it is the best ambassador not merely for our trade interests but for our values because it shows that nations need not be ruled by despots to be strong.
Ron Paul is right, declare war and kick butt. If the transgression does not rise to a declaration of war and said war with the goal of unconditional surrender, the Constitution does not authorize it.
Either you stand for and by constitutional law, warts and wrinkles too, or you don't. Not standing by the law for some abitrary "justification," opens the door to all the other assaults on liberties the "Newt types" have installed.
Patriot Act, the subsequent legislation and exec orders that followed, culminating a few weeks ago w/NDAA, now with Leiberman's bill being debated that would authorize gov't the power to recind citizenship, right down to that of the Mayflower's decdendents, WHAT DOES IT TAKE to start questioning the methods, the motives and the goals of this machine who FORCES "DEMONCRACY" (Ha! how can ANYONE believe that oxymoron), all over the world.
And then, consider in your calculatioons that insist these foreign occupations are for "our" national security, even as our southern border remains unguarded, the invaders in the country with impunity.
I confess, I don't get how Americans can miss this OBVIOUS threat to national security which has severely damaged our economy, our personal safety, from roads to houses, our ability to find work, etc.
How can you justify our military "protecting" other countries, both enemy and ally AND NOT OUR OWN BORDERS?
I assert, it ain't Ron Paul who has foreign policy screwed up. He advocates a strong defense, for our sovereign nation.
Please stop with the "he said, he saids," and start quoting Ron Paul. RP is not an isolationist. He is for a stong defense and against intervention, invading and occupying other sovereign nations. THINK ABOUT THAT, please.
How arrogant of us to decide the governing of other foreign nations, inserting ourselves unasked and unwelcome?
How long would it take YOU to pick up a gun or a bomb if China landed in your home state? Why should it be any different if it's us, occupying another nation. Does it stand to reason that they would see us as their champions?
Common law, by consent of the governed, all the back to the Magna Carter and inherent in constitutional law insists that the citizens of a nation decide. NOT a foreign nation.
In these pursuits we really are no diffenent than the Roman Empire or even Nazi Germany who attacked other countries based on false flags and accusations of what they "might" do.
Ladies and gentlemen it's called chronology and history. If you ever want your Paulite fantasies to gain more followers you need to get both straight.
Joshua,
You did a grand job and using that massive vocabulary of yours to say relatively nothing. So you want to stay the interventionalist Super Power that America has been known as for the last 100 years, running over anyone that stands in our way to secure what is in our national interests, great, I think everyone likes where we stand. However, how are we going to continue to do that WITHOUT ANY MONEY? This country is dangerously close to losing our standard and thw worlds reserve currency and because our dollar is not backed by anything but that, it would mean that all the pennies you have saved up in your bank account would be worthless. So regardless of how our nation looks as a super power with all of our foreign interests, if our currency loses all of its value, then it does not really matter, does it? That is the one Main Point that Ron Paul has that now other Presidential candidate seems to understand. You cant spend money that is not worth anything, and you can't maintain value of a currency if you continue to print like we are, and you can't have this expansive foreign based military without printing more money. So if your post was intended to be a history lesson to us, awesome job, I learned a few things. But if your post was intended to make Ron Paul look bad, all you did was look uniformed on the PRESENT. Great History lesson though