“Isolationists must not prevail in this new debate over foreign policy,”
warns Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The
consequences of a lasting American retreat from the world would be dire.”
To make his case against the “Isolationist Temptation,” Haass creates
a caricature, a cartoon, of America First patriots, then thunders that we cannot
become “a giant gated community.”
Understandably, Haass is upset. For the CFR has lost the country.
Why? It colluded in the blunders that have bled and near bankrupted America
and that cost this country its unrivaled global preeminence at the end of the
Cold War.
No, it was not “isolationists” who failed America. None came near
to power. The guilty parties are the CFR crowd and their neocon collaborators,
and liberal interventionists who set off to play empire after the Cold War and
create a New World Order with themselves as Masters of the Universe.
Consider just a few of the decisions taken in those years that most Americans
wish we could take back.
After the Soviet Union withdrew the Red Army from Europe and split into 15
nations, and Russia held out its hand to us, we slapped it away and rolled NATO
right up onto her front porch.
Enraged Russians turned to a man who would restore respect for their country.
Did we think they would just sit there and take it?
How did bringing Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into NATO make America stronger,
safer and more secure? For it has surely moved us closer to a military clash
with a nuclear power.
In 2014, with John McCain and U.S. diplomats cheering them on, mobs in Independence
Square overthrew a pro-Russian government in Kiev that had been democratically
elected and installed a pro-NATO regime.
Putin’s response: Secure Russia’s naval base at Sevastopol by retaking Crimea,
and support pro-Russian Ukrainians in Luhansk and Donetsk who preferred secession
to submission to U.S. puppets.
Fortunately, our interventionists failed to bring Georgia and Ukraine into
NATO. Had they succeeded, we almost surely would have been in a shooting war
with Russia by now.
Would that have made us stronger, safer, more secure?
After the attack on 9/11, George W. Bush, with the nation and world behind
him, took us into Afghanistan to eradicate the nest of al-Qaida killers.
After having annihilated some and scattered the rest, however, Bush decided
to stick around and convert this wild land of Pashtuns, Hazaras, Tajiks and
Uzbeks into another Iowa.
Fifteen years later, we are still there.
And the day we leave, the Taliban will return, undo all we have done, and butcher
those who cooperated with the Americans.
If we had to do it over, would we have sent a U.S. army and civilian corps
to make Afghanistan look more like us?
Bush then invaded Iraq, overthrew Saddam, purged the Baath Party, and disbanded
the Iraqi army….