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Go out of town for a few days and things really stack up! I was amazed at all the whining, complaining, and gnashing of teeth because I had decided to return fire. From my very first posting, my every contribution has been met with ad hominem attacks and name calling. Am I expected simply to take punches and not fight back? If you want respect, try giving some. No matter how far apart viewpoints may be, discourse about them can always be civil. If my critics are willing to be faithful to what the philosohy of the WAB professes, so am I.
In the meantime, here's a flash for you---you don't have to be a "lefty" to hold non-interventionist views. I worked on Pat Buchanan's campaign last time around, and if he isn't conservative enough for you, I don't know what your standard of measure is.
My list of US interventions was to meant to illustrate how war is a very frequent element in our foreign policy rather than the exception we like to profess. Some of those interventions were fully warranted, but many of them were not. While we've always claimed to be championing some righteous cause when invading, virtually all of our actions in Central America were simply extensions of the business practices of the United Fruit Company.
Cuba was an exception, and I'm surprised that some of you have forgotten the Bay of Pigs fiasco. It led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 45 years of blockade of the island, and the transformation of Florida into Havana North.
Our problems with Iran go back to 1953's CIA overthrow of the legitimately elected government of Mossadegh and the installation of the repressive Pahlavi dynasty. The reason was simply because BP and other oil companies thought Iran was being greedy to suggest revenues should be divided more equitably. The Shah became our man, and we turned a blind eye toward his methods of staying in power. It was inevitable that someone like the Ayatollah Khomeini would come along, overthrow the Shah, and blame the USA for foisting him on Iran.
Saddam Hussein became our man after the fall of the Shah, and after he faithfully went to war with Iran, he expected some pay back like Kuwait for his trouble. Only days before his invasion, our Ambassador told him the USA had no interest in Iraq's borders with Kuwait. He took that as an approval of his annexation of the country. Someone in Washington decided that it was a great pretext for war (Israel had already expressed its views by bombing an installation probably intended to produce atomic weapons to match their own), and soon we had gone from providing him intelligence from satellites to using those satelllites to guide our assault on his forces. With a flip-flop like that, it's no surprise that any dictator might get a little confused.
For the present I'm not going to bore you with the facts on all thse other interventions, but for now I'd like to remind you that the present shape of our foreign policy was basically set by Woodrow Wilson, a liberal Democrat. Real Republicans like Robert Taft felt a more humble foreign policy was more in keeping with American ideals.
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