Neo-Isolationism? (CM)

The New Republic’s James Kirchik writes:

By warning against future American involvement in Iraq, Democrats are consciously tapping into neo-isolationist sentiment. Their current talking points are merely the latest incantation of John F. Kerry¹s disgraceful complaint, registered in his nomination acceptance speech four years ago, that the United States was “opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America.”

This “America First” rhetoric signifies a decisive break with the Democratic Party¹s foreign policy traditions. It was a Democratic president, Harry Truman, who oversaw the initial postwar occupation of Japan. In 1950, Truman deployed American troops to Korea to stave off a communist takeover of the peninsula sponsored by China and the Soviet Union.

When the war ended three years later, the United States did not withdraw but committed tens of thousands of American troops who continue to protect South Korean democracy from a hostile North Korea. Neither did Truman abandon West Berlin to the Soviets, instead conducting a massive, months-long airlift to keep the free part of the city alive, nor did he ignore a communist insurgency in Greece.

Similarly, it was another Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, who increased economic and military aid to Latin American countries via the Alliance for Progress, a regional anti-Communist coalition. Kennedy famously said that the United States would ³pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.²Today, when it comes to the price and burdens of sustaining liberty abroad, the Democrats have buyer¹s remorse and have allowed Republicans to lay claim to the internationalist traditions of their party. In his major foreign policy address last week, McCain cited only two former presidents: Truman and Kennedy.

The purpose of the latest Democratic attack is to scare American voters away from the international responsibilities that the United States has borne since the end of World War II. It is the sort of isolationist harangue that one would expect from Pat Buchanan, not the party of Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.

More here.

Comments

[davo]

No matter your position on Iraq, no one wants to answer how we the American people pay for this war? Do we just ask the fed to print up more money? What about inflation? Do we issue bonds?