Devon, PA. We face only two feasible policies in America’s engagement with the world. We can seek to be a bomb-throwing hegemon until the money, and the credit, and the bodies, run out, and can identify American national interest with our sitting atop a unipolar world, or we can identify American national interest with the security and prosperity of the United States made possible by a stalwart defense of our borders and a guarded and cautious relationship with the other powers of the world. Americans have proven, on the whole, quite comfortable with the former path, which has been our status quo for many decades.
But Americans have also reacted with anxiety and sorrow to the consequences that path has brought upon us. The Republicans did not lose control of Congress in 2006 because of the unpopularity of Bush’s calls for minor social security reform; they did not even lose it because of out-of-control deficits, though that alone would have justified it; they lost it, because a few men like Donald Rumsfeld had become some of the most loathed beings in America, because they had led us into one arguably necessary but sloppily waged war, and then, into one whose every justification has turned out to be either the deceptive ideals of men blinded by ideology or, more often, simply lies. As Daniel Larison has reminded us, Obama would not have won in 2008, despite the terrible economy, had Bush’s wars not been so dreadfully unpopular, and I presume Americans take no comfort in the close impersonation Obama’s foreign policy does of the policies of the McCain administration that was not to be.
Despite the huge unpopularity of our foreign invasions during the last decade, there has been surprisingly little serious discussion about changing course in our foreign policy among either Democrats or Republicans; indeed, we have but reaffirmed our commitments to perpetual war making in the name of the global good. Further, the news media has impressively managed to continue covering our foreign exploits without framing their reports in such a way that might lead to the raising of such fundamental questions.
Why would they? The supposed “third way” in American foreign policy, which I did not deign to mention above, is the liberal globalist way: subordinating American interests to international organizations and trying to hit the “reset” button in our relations with foreign antagonists as if their previous policies were merely the result of a misunderstanding about the fundamental goodness and good will of the American people. But the third way is the same as the first way: hegemony with a smile or, as the case may be, with a bow. In the eyes of leftist and supposedly “rightist” policy elites and their journalistic cupbearers, there is only one acceptable foreign policy position: expansion unto death. As Walter MacDougall has observed, empires are not defeated, they commit suicide. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, we can continue to start small wars in far flung places for decades more before slouching down in our mortal corner to sleep in our own blood.
And yet, in this Advent season of hope, I still found myself surprised and disappointed to read this squib in the Wall Street Journal , praising Paul’s consistency and seriousness this election cycle,
Except on foreign policy, where Mr. Paul does himself in. In discrete areas, Mr. Paul’s “noninterventionist” approach resonates with those weary of war, or with the populist sentiment that we spend too much on foreign aid. And note that Mr. Paul has made small stabs at reassuring voters of his patriotism, as with a big national TV ad that highlighted his own military service and commitment to veterans.
But none of this has addressed voters’ big concern over a Paul philosophy that fundamentally denies American exceptionalism and refuses to allow for decisive action to protect the U.S. homeland. Perhaps nothing hurt the candidate more in 2008 than his declaration that one reason terrorists attacked us on 9/11 is because “we’ve been in the Middle East.”
Far from toning down such views, Mr. Paul has amped up the wattage, claiming this year that 9/11 prompted “glee” in a Bush administration looking for a pretext to “invade Iraq.” He’s condemned the Obama administration’s killings of terrorists Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, and he insists the U.S. is “provoking” Iran.
For foreign-policy hawks, this is a disqualifier. It explains why a Washington Post-ABC poll in late September showed that Mr. Paul drew some of his weakest numbers from his own base. Of the 25% of voters who viewed him favorably, nearly two-thirds did not identify themselves as Republicans. Among self-identified “conservative Republicans,” only 8% gave him a “strongly favorable” rating. You don’t win a GOP nomination with figures like this. Even mainstream Democrats and independents have no time for Mr. Paul’s brand of isolationism, which is why his national numbers remain stuck around 10%.
My disappointment does not arise from the obvious claim that Paul’s foreign policy positions disqualify him with foreign-policy hawks. By definition it does. Nor does it arise with the continued existence of such hawks. I think the neoconservative agenda to keep the United States as a hegemonic, unilateralist, and preemptive agent in the world is a plausible foreign policy; but it is one that has committed us to unjust, prolonged, and costly military engagements that can only be initiated if we maintain an infrastructure of military might on a global scale that is expensive, turns much of the rest of the world into a simpering protectariat, and provokes those enemies we will always have to strike us and summons the otherwise indifferent to their cause. Plausible though such a policy is, its aim is to establish a permanent American order that is also a permanent order of war making.
Paul’s generally prudential and non-interventionist policies sometimes appear as nearly purblind with ideology as the advocates of a New American Century, I confess. It was ridiculous, for instance, to introduce questions of legality and sovereignty in regard to the Osama bin Ladin assassination last fall. One thing on which Donald Rumsfeld, President Obama, Ross Perot (!), and most of America smartly agree is that small, surgical strikes will be with us regardless of the size and swagger of the rest of our foreign and military policy. Further, all claims to legality in international matters founded on positive rather than natural law are incoherent: we have not global authority capable of promulgating such a law (unless we ourselves are it, and we are not). But that comment of Paul’s is hardly representative of his long-documented views, which have firmly advocated a policy of strong American defense and a recognition that our present imperial position is a graver threat to your or my security than the barbarians and tyrants who may always hate us but are capable themselves of prudent discernment when it comes to attacking us.
And so, one should immediately dismiss claims that even “mainstream Democrats and independents have no time for Mr. Paul’s brand of isolationism.” The mainstream of America has always been just one party with one voice: the assertion of power unto death — our own death. But the mainstream need not be the majority, and I am hopeful that the majority of Americans have seen the costs of militarism without end, of ideological democracy-mongering without attention to the realities of fallen human nature or account of the particular conditions of different national cultures. They can see that establishing democracies, if sincerely undertaken, is foolish and unattractive business for all parties concerned; and, when it is not sincerley undertaken, it leads to American blood shed for someone else’s lucre.
The majority of Americans, in principle, embrace the prudence of friendship with all and entanglements with none. A foreign policy that puts America first will generate enemies of its own, but fewer than a policy of American empire; there is no escaping the need to face down our enemies and kill them, but contrary to one Bush-era apologetic, we will have to do less of that, and will do it better and as lesser cost, by guarding our own gates more staunchly and by extending the mailed fist far more selectively and precisely.
Americans have already repudiated the policy of perpetual wars abroad twice at the polls. If Ron Paul can somehow evade the prevaricating labels of the WSJ and much of the rest of the journalistic and political elites, his election would be the third, and by far the greatest, such repudiation. And, far from denying American exceptionalism, it would be the most singular affirmation of our exceptional national character the world has yet witnessed. For, we would be the first great power in history to abandon its pretensions to empire not through moral or economic inannition, not through a globalizing ideal of perpetual peace that has shown itself a recipe for continuous war, but as an expression of trust that we are a strong enough nation to defend our people at home and to protect them abroad when we must. We would underscore our difference from ancient Rome in our commitment to self-government, self-sufficiency, and ordered liberty without contorting such things into a quest for unsustainable domination, for the raw riches of exotic lands, and the doomed imposition of nominally democratic regimes abroad.
Well said, Mr. Wilson. The only other candidate in the Republican primary who shows any tendency towards a more modest and limited foreign policy is Jon Huntsman. The level of condescension shown towards Ron Paul’s foreign policy by talking heads and prominent news organizations is really quite incredible. Views that would have been unremarkable in the Republican party just twelve years ago now are labelled as some sort of anachronistic relic from the 19th century. Just as bad has been the blatant hypocrisy of the many prominent Democrats who raged at Bush’s wars and suppression of civil liberties, and yet have been silent towards Obama’s continuation of them.
The first sentence of this essay is either meaningless, or utterly preposterous. I’ll be charitable, and grant the former.
Option 1, apparently: “…the assertion of power unto death — our own death.”
Option 2: “…[a] guarded and cautious relationship with the other powers of the world.”
Is Mr. Wilson truly asserting that our current foreign policy is entirely without caution? Surely what he means to say is that, in his judgment, it isn’t cautious enough. This would be a sensible claim, worth arguing about. But then Mr. Wilson couldn’t paint in the Manichean blacks and whites necessary to keep the FPRian woe-is-me-and-all-the-other-sensible-folks persecution complex going.
Kevin…I’m guessing Mr Wilson is using hyperbole. That doesn’t make the statement meaningless.
Thank you for the serious look at Dr. Paul’s rational foreign policy. As a supporter of the good doctor, the only minor exception I take to your article is your treatment of Paul’s criticism of the Bin Laden raid. First, in regards to small, surgical strikes, Ron Paul reintroduced Letters of Marque and Reprisal to go after those behind the 9/11 attacks back in 2001. Had his plan been followed there would have been no Afghanistan or Iraq wars – for a few million instead of four trillion dollars (and hundreds of thousands of lives lost) we would have exacted our vengeance. His particular criticism of our raid’s execution was the rejection of another nation’s sovereignty. Pakistan already had a history of working with us to deliver terrorists into our hands, why did we have to further strain our relationship by executing an unannounced raid? Not to mention that in civil society, even the greatest of monsters get their day in court (think Nazis after WWII responsible for taking hundreds of thousands of innocent lives). This is not done to protect the evildoers, but to protect ourselves from slipping into lawlessness and giving away our right of habeas corpus (oh wait, we just did so on the 220th anniversary of our bill of rights!).
Thanks again for a good read.
It’s a hyperbole that is the central theme of the essay (i.e. it’s preposterous), or it meaninglessly recommends Mr. Wilson’s position. If the only options are “bombs to death” or “some caution,” then anyone who views his position as appropriately cautious endorse the latter. (Perhaps “straw man” would have been a better description.)
Hyperbole? Ah, kind of like claiming that the US is an indispensable nation which can see into the future, and is a nation uniquely superior in virtue with respect to all others in the history of mankind.
Sure — probably it’s a bit much to ask that the US State Department hotshots make sure they’ve got the right Russian word for “reset” — or at least the right alphabet. I mean, it’s not like they get paid for that or anything.
It’s not Ron Paul’s desire to bring American troops home that bothers me; I would welcome it. It’s his insistence we never would have been attacked on 9/11 if we hadn’t been poking Muslims in their collective eyes. Anyone who’s read the Koran knows without doubt that what “Muslim extremists” are doing is simply following their holy book. Whether any of us like it or not, we are not at war with Muslim extremism but with Islam itself. The Koran demands they subdue the world or die trying. And given that many of them have been saying that repeatedly, and for centuries, it would seem Mr. Paul is more than deaf.
@Harry Beadle:
First, it is one thing to poke a collective of individuals in their eyes, it is wholly another to leave fresh memories of their non-combative children, spouses, parents, friends, and neighbors killed or maimed through carpet bombing and notoriously imprecise “high-precision munitions” campaigns, and then just label all of those hundreds of thousands of lives lost as “collateral damage”. In our sanctions against Iraq in the early 1990’s it was estimated that nearly 500,000 Iraqi civilians lost their lives as a result (so to anyone who doesn’t recognize sanctions as an act of war, they may want to think again).
As for the goal of Islam – from my (limited) reading and understanding of the Quran – it is not all that different from the great commission of Christ. Both faiths seek an ultimate goal for all men to love, fear, and to the extent possible, know the Lord (call him Yahweh, Christ, or Allah). Without complete context the Bible has plenty of prophets, as mouthpieces for God, writing visions and promises of all enemy/non-believing nations being destroyed. While that fact might explain why the citizens of [what many would call] the “Christian” nation of the United States of America are so readily whipped into a pro-war frenzy, it belies the greater truth, always present in both Old and New Testaments, that God loves peace, mercy, and justice – commending humble self-sacrifice over proud domination.
Quran 2:190 “Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loves not transgressors.”
5:32 “[I]f anyone slew a person—unless it be for murder or spreading mischief in the land—it would be as if he slew the whole people. And if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.”
8:61 “But if the enemy incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards peace, and trust in Allah: for He is One that heareth and knoweth (all things).”
My last thought here may be seen as extreme, but I do wonder at times if Christians in America perhaps need to listen to their Savior as he teaches: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3-5)
When our nation’s foreign policy has been responsible for the deaths of so many, and yet we blindly stand beside these actions and label any alternatives “unpatriotic”, perhaps we need to start reaching for our own plank instead of seeking to remove the speck in our Muslim brother’s eye (and sadly often blowing him and his family away in the process).
I say *Doctor* Paul is not deaf, but perhaps many of us are blind.
I’m not sure why you called it a squib. Kimberly Strassel has in recent months provided some of the best columns to appear in the editorial section of the WSJ.
Given that these thoughts came came from her made this article all the more disappointing for me.
Among other things I’ve been trying to figure out what the difference is between “decisive action” and other kinds of action to protect our country. Maybe we should learn to live with the fact that not all of our actions can be decisive.
Ron Paul isn’t my number one choice for next president of the U.S., but I think his views on everything including our military policy need to be heard and discussed. It seems most of the conservatives, of which I am one, want to go out guns-a-blazing to promote our interests outside our borders while the left wants to go in with the same hubris, guns-a-blazing, to fix our health care system. A little modesty about our abilities is in order on both fronts.
I would also point out that Lord Acton’s principle that power is corrupting applies not only to the power we give our government officers to run our lives, but to the power we exercise around the globe. It applies to military power as well as to economic regulatory power.
There is an elephant in the room, isn’t there. Zionism. AIPAC. Israel.
Ron Paul is the only one of the candidates who sees this elephant and tells what he sees. No Christian can vote for a Zionist.
And the other elephant in the room, of course, is the ridiculousness of the U.S. government’s 9/11 story. On that question, one must read Paul Craig Roberts: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26174
I couldn’t agree with Alex more. And to Mr. Beadle I would submit that anyone reading the Koran may not know quite plainly what she has read, and may not know it better than actual Muslims do, such as those many prominent Muslims who issued this unprecedented affirmation of love of God and neighbor as fundamental to the message of the Koran, and a common word between Muslims and Christians.
http://www.acommonword.com/index.php?lang=en&page=option1
Perhaps these fantastic days of scapegoating Islam for the 9/11 attacks, and more broadly, religion for all the violence in the world, will soon be behind us. But then we might have to take a harder look at, for instance, America’s own foreign affairs, since we’ll no longer have the easy “evildoers” or else “religious extremists” to blame when bad things happen to us.
On a lighthearted note, the quoted article reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s essay The Fatigue of Fleet Street… 🙂
http://webliterature.net/literature/Chesterton/WL1-usurers/BK116.html
To Harry Beadle: Did it ever occur to anyone that if we want to know why the extremists hate us, perhaps we should ask them? Well the Cato Institute did ask them and they report that indeed it is America’s involvement and subversion of their own political will over many decades that has bred their hatred. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9568
Do you know anything at all about the 20th century history of Iran? Ron Paul is correct. Echoing Chalmers Johnson, 9-11 was blow-back. It would be completely irrational to think we can assert our will for our own selfish purposes for decades without any consequence. The alternative view is your own, which is pure propaganda: they hate us because we are free or they hate us because we are Christians, or some such nonsense.
“Americans have already repudiated the policy of perpetual wars abroad twice at the polls.”
No, sorry, they have not. Afghanistan wasn’t even on their radar in 2006 or 2008. If Iraq hadn’t reached an apocalyptic condition in ’06 (coinciding with a slew of bad news for the Republicans, from Katrina to Congressmen soliciting sex with pages by text-messaging), who knows what might have happened. And this year, is anyone other than the already-obsessed worrying about foreign policy? We’ll find out.
As it is, for every Ron Paul there’s six candidates (Huntsman included) scrambling over each other to lead the charge into Iran.
I’m not sure how old Mr. Wilson is, but if he was hanging around in the ’70s, he’ll recall it took us no time at all to swing back to our default messianic-global-meliorist-belligerence after Vietnam.
Reagan aside, look at Ford’s popularity numbers as a result of the Mayaguez “incident”–he shot up eleven points, despite that fact that we got more men killed during the operation than we were trying to rescue in the first place (and we left three guys there to be brutally executed).
Americans want their wars short and successful, and hope springs eternal in their hearts that this next one will be just that. We are by no means out of the woods on this.
Mr Beadle,
You have a cartoonish vision of Islam. And one that ignores reality: like that fact that the US went for much of its existence without the slightest problem with Muslim nations. Apparently Muslims only discovered these “Must attack America” verses in the Qu’ran in the late 20th century?
Hegemonic lust is a seductive harlot but even more seductive is this notion that opposition to the current daft American Geo Political expression is somehow “isolationist”. There is nothing more isolated, on this globe right now, than the American government from the welfare of her citizens. Every action is couched in paranoia and a reactionary protection of fifty year old rackets. Mr. Obama, with his preaching duplicity commands the most powerful force of isolationism in the history of the planet. He is far from alone however, on both sides of the checkered aisle.
“Isolationism”….ho ho ho…what a crock.
Jack wrote: “…they report that indeed it is America’s involvement and subversion of their own political will…”
This is not unlike the reason that Americans hate the nanny state and ObamaCare.
Thank you, John Gorentz!
It’s about time someone pointed out the similarity between, say, deposing Salvador Allende, and health care.
Well done, my man!
You’re welcome, Mr. Haas. It doesn’t sound like you quite got the point, but your effort is better than nothing. You gotta learn to take baby steps before you can run a marathon!
I’m absolutely open to giving Ron Paul a hearing on foreign policy.
That aside, you guys who think that militant Islam isn’t out to destroy the West, and Christianity along with it, are delusional.
We in particular are hated for various reasons (yes, we’ve had our hands in places they perhaps shouldn’t have been – we’re also the world’s largest producer of pornography and illicit (or “blasphemous”) forms of entertainment). Importantly, the United States is also the one western power that can’t be conquered within a relatively short time frame simply by the efforts of population replacement.
Their hatred for us is not all about U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern affairs. The interests of the West (even divorced from ideas of “empire” or whatever else you want to call it) are irreconcilably opposed to those of Islam. We will be fighting them, in one form or another, forever.
Mr. Miner doesn’t know a tautology when he types one. Of course “militant Islam” is “out to destroy”–isn’t that sort of the definition of “militant” Islam?
What is being questioned is how representative “militant Islam” is of Islam as a whole?
As they should. There’s all kinds of reasons for doing so. India’s Muslim population far exceeds that of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia combined. How many Indian Muslims have attacked us? how many Afghani, Iraqi, and Saudi Muslims have attacked us?
Do I really need to spell out what the relevant differences might be among those various populations of Muslims?
Then, at some point–just for awareness-sake and all that–we should probably take a look at just how many Americans have been killed by Muslims, and how many Muslims have been killed by Americans, since 2001.
There are other considerations, of course, but we could probably tease a perspective or two from those figures, don’t you think?
Mr. Haas,
The point was obviously not whether “militant Islam” is “out to destroy,” but whether their objective is to take down the United States and, considered separately, Christianity.
Muslim persons are not the problem – the problem is Muslim theocracy, which will never be at peace with a Christian West, or the ghost of it that remains. Over-intervention in Middle Eastern affairs may very well be unjust and may aggravate their antipathy toward us, but the point I’m making is that any society founded on or sustained by Sharia law or its ilk is necessarily in direct opposition to free society. Europe should be hitting all the panic buttons because it’s culturally dead, its people aren’t reproducing, and the population vacuum is being filled by Muslims, a very large number of whom could very accurately be described as “militant,” and have no interest in perpetuating a lukewarm post-Christian liberal bourgeois society. We certainly have a strong national interest in seeing free societies survive; the trends of the last several decades indicate strong currents in the other direction.
I am grateful for Mr. Miner’s clarification. It’s not, as he said in his earlier post, “militant Islam” that should concern us so much as “Muslim theocracy, which will never be at peace with a Christian West.”
Some may wish to quibble with his characterization of our corner of the West–with its individual mandate of the ACA, Snyder v Phelps, the ever-present surveillance of middle school hallways, and its avowed purpose to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property (cough) but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides–as a “free society,” but I’ll leave that to others.
Rather, at the risk of becoming a Johnny-one-note, I’ll merely point out, again, that Mr. Miner is fast becoming a Johnny of his own–in his case, the Johnny Appleseed of tautologies.
Of course “Muslim theocracy” will never be “at peace” with a “free society” (at least, by our definition of “freedom”). That comes with the definition of “theocrat,” whether Muslim, Christian, or Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I do discern a pleasingly practical application in Mr.Miner’s discussion of Europe’s demographic vulnerabilites, however: Time for you gals over there to show some patriotism, defend Christendom, and battle Shari’a all at once. How? Lie back, and think of England . . . (or France, Luxembourg, Latvia . . .)
Not really, but nice try.
A more constructive variation on your last paragraph would be to quit “lying back” before marriage, stop using contraceptives, and repeal abortion on demand.
As my good pastor once told me, we’re losing “the war in the bedroom.”
That’s awesome!
A new slogan is born: “We must out-breed them!”
Perhaps a special, gender-specific, draft is in order? If we weed out the 4-Fs, and only select those whose “characteristics” are of “a highly stimulating nature,” we can probably count on plenty of Buck Turgidsons to simply volunteer . . .
“Gentlemen! I see you’re already standing at attention! Now get in there, and do your duty!”
John I’m not sure where your sympathies lie, I reckon a significant majority pine for a polity that helps rather than attacks their families. I’m pretty new – but obviously Marion is right. Upon the male-female relationship stands every other in society – national and international. Get that right first.
I doubt Paul will win. If I am correct, the Libertarian center should explore Gary Johnson, fmr Gov. of NM. A solid executive record with none of Paul’s baggage. Either way, we are in a mess of our own making and re-electing the mainstream Rep or Dem will keep us there.
“I reckon a significant majority pine for a polity that helps rather than attacks their families.”
M., I suspect you’re right, but someone should really do a poll on this to be sure: “Hi there. Would you prefer your family to be helped, or attacked?”
“… the Libertarian center should explore Gary Johnson … ”
Why does that give me the creeps?
Wilson’s article is the best of the year. Especially his insight that Paul’s non-interventionism arises more from theory than from natural common sense. That’s the part that worries me. Paul’s economic views also come from purist Libertarian theory, not a proper regard for American interests. In fact, Paul runs counter to his allegedly beloved Constitution when he insists on “Free Trade”. The Framers believed in countering foreign mercantilism with our own mercantilism, and intended the Fed gov’t to be mainly supported by tariffs. Which it actually was until Lincoln destroyed the whole system and burned down half the country to enrich his railroad-baron bosses.
* * * * *
I followed the same misinformation about Islam as Beadle, until I read Sheikh Osama’s own writings “Messages to the World.” Osama makes it crystal clear that he is not acting as a prophet or representative of Islam, but as a paladin for the Arab people. He used Islam as a convenient fuel for his Arab warriors, nothing else. Since then I’ve been reading other things, and have come to the conclusion that we’d be a whole lot better off with a locally adapted version of Islam (as in Turkey or Indonesia) than we are with our current post-Christian secular terminal cancer.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/41746
“The Framers . . . intended the Fed gov’t to be mainly supported by tariffs . . .”
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States . . . To borrow money on the credit of the United States . . .”
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