MY COMMENT:
I agree with the article as far as it goes, but overall I disagree with isolationism, period. Leaving a power vacuum in the world endangers us, our allies, our interests, and our sovereignty. Some power(s) will rise to take our place, and that power might not be as benevolent as America (and before us, our British cousins) have been. Holding world hegemony may be costly, but ultimately not as costly as losing it. WordPress.com
WordPress.comBetween Responsible and Irresponsible Isolationism
Posted on December 22, 2011 by actforamericahouston
By Daniel Greenfield
…An irresponsible isolationist foreign policy however acts as if we have no enemies and that any talk that we have enemies is a conspiracy to bring us into a war. It accepts every bit of enemy propaganda as gospel and assumes that if we just "stop bothering them", they'll "stop bothering us". It assumes that the enemy is entirely motivated by our actions, that any conflict we are in is the result of our foreign policy and that isolationism will avert any such conflicts.
This is the version of isolationism that you hear in the Republican debates from Ron Paul. It's the version that Americans heard back in the 1930′s from Lindbergh. Rather than recognizing that a military buildup is an important deterrent to war, it attacks military buildups as provocative. It assumes that the only possible reason why we might be attacked are foreign entanglements and if we just tuck our heads in then there will be no conflict.
The absurdity of this approach when it comes to the current clash of civilizations with Islam is obvious enough. This isn't a conflict that dates back from 1991 or 1948 or even the First Barbary War in 1805. It's a war that predates the United States and modern day Europe. It is a conflict that goes back over a thousand years to the decline and fall of the eastern remains of the Roman Empire and the rise of Islam as a militant unification ideology to fill that void.
American foreign policy can't turn back the clock on that history. It can affect events in the present day, but it can't undo the roots of a conflict that it has inherited. American foreign policy had a good deal to do with the rise of Islamic states built on petrodollars, but isolationism is certainly not going to make them go away. Certainly not Ron Paul's brand of isolationism which pretends that there is nothing wrong with Islam that can't be fixed with an American isolationist foreign policy.
During the last debate, Ron Paul asked why they're bombing us and not Sweden or Switzerland. The answer is very simple. You only bomb people who resist. Stockholm is 20 percent Muslim. Muslim terrorists operate out of Sweden, including a top Al-Qaeda leader, but they don't need to attack a territory that they're already on the way to ruling through natural demographics.
44 percent of Europe's population is over 45. Under 34 percent is under 30. Meanwhile half of European Muslims are under 30. The math isn't very hard to do. The only countries that need to be targeted by Muslim terrorists are those which have a high enough birth rate that demographics alone won't do the trick.
The First World country with the highest birth rate is Israel. It's also the country most targeted by Muslim terrorists. The First World country with the second highest birth rate is the United States. It is the country second most targeted by terrorists. The next major countries on the list are France and the UK. There's a term for this sort of thing. It's demographic suppression and political intimidation.
Back in the 19th century the Kasier hoped that shelling Manhattan and seizing a few cities would bring the United States to the negotiating table. Japan thought that bombing Pearl Harbor would accomplish the same thing. But while Tojo was wrong, the House of Saud was correct. September 11 brought the United States to the negotiating table with Islam. Muslims have been granted special privileges and their immigration rate has increased. That's one path to an eventual demographic domination.
Islamic attacks against the United States may emerge from various micro-events, but the macro-event from which they originate is the shared history of the Western world and the ongoing conflict between the Muslim world and the West. Some isolationists may act as if the United States can break with European history through assertion alone. It cannot. Like it or not it shares a common history and a common culture. America derives from Europe, and whether Americans recognize it or not, the rest of the world does. To Islam, America is not an island, it is another outpost of an enemy civilization that must be subdued so that the way of Mohammed will triumph around the world.
Ron Paul type isolationists fail to distinguish between the proximate causes of war and the ultimate causes of war. A proximate cause of war may be a ship that has wandered into the wrong area which may have been caused by a trade dispute which may have been caused by debts which may have been caused by growing militarism and greed for land. But none of those are truly the ultimate cause of war. The ultimate cause of war is the incompatibility of two systems and two civilizations within the same space.
Technological development means that the old boundaries are all but gone. Immigration means that the enemy population is already here. The rise of Islam means that war is inevitable, all that remains are the details, which battle, on what terms and in what form, and the larger detail of who will win.
Rationalism isolationism accepts that war may be inevitable but chooses to meet it on our terms. Irrational isolationism, which often carries with it defeatist and treasonous overtones, accepts the enemy's justifications for the conflicts and assumes that if we modify our behavior accordingly that there will be no need for war.
"Si vis pacem, para bellum," was a rule that the old Romans knew. If you would have peace, prepare for war. The emblem of the Strategic Air Command was an olive branch and thunderbolt held in a mailed fist. Its motto was "Peace is Our Profession". The SAC kept the peace through the threat of war. Only an isolationism that understands the meaning of that motto can be successful.
