TopHatter

Dunno, but one of my best friends is from Edison and she agrees with me

Pablo Cortez

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.

gunnut

The problem with isolationism is that the world is different that it was 100 years ago.

We were not a world power 100 years ago. The British Empire was.

The global economy was not as intertwined 100 years ago.

Communication and traveling physically from one part of the world to another were not nearly as convenient as it is today.

We could retreat to isolationist like we were 100 years ago. Would you like to withdraw our corporate interest from the world as well? Start making everything here instead of sharing specialized duties with different nations? That means our standards of living will go back down, possibly to that of 100 years ago. Are you willing to take that loss?

The world is a different place. Our policies have to change with the times. Does it make sense for us to maintain a Cold War military today?

__________________
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

Pablo Cortez

I am not an isolationist, I am a non-interventionist. No nation, not even ours has a right to determine the leadership and political system of another. Every nation has the right to defend itself and use its resources for the good of its citizens. National interest is far broader than simply doing what you wish without regard to the legitimate interests of other nations. When force is joined to irresponsible policy, "national interest" becomes intenational mugging. What thief doesn't presume it is better for him to have his victim's money than the victim?
Invading Iraq and apparently planning to occupy it for the next 59+ years smells more like colonialism than liberation, but if cheap gas has become a synonym for national interest then even Wilson must be rolling over in his grave in Hell.

One of the big themes of American interventionism ever since Wilson has been saving the world from some aggressor who alledgely planned on dominating it. Isn't it interesting that interventionist policies have actually given us that position, their authors loudly boasting of being "the only superpower" and "the indispenable nation".

dalem

Why not? What if they are poopyheads?

-dale

gunnut

What if you are attacked by that nation? Do you just repel the invader to the border and stop? So every few years they can try to attack you and not worry about retaliation. Is that what you mean by non-intervention?

Isn't that what we are doing right now? We are trying to protect ourselves by attacking potential threats instead of waiting for attacks to happen and then try to drive out invaders. Do you think Bush let 9-11 happen? If he did, do you agree with it? That's non-intervention.

So you are equating USA with a thief rather than a police or a victim?

Where did you get the 59+ years from? I'm all for expensive gas. Are you?

So you are against our involvement in WW2? You believe Germans had the right to BBQ Jews and Slavs? You believe Japan had the right to occupy half of China and most of the southeast Asia? You believe Kim Il Song had the right to march south and take over South Korea?

Do you also support the Confederates' right to suceed?

At least we have one thing in common. We both believe we shouldn't get involved in Darfur.

Pablo Cortez

A few specific answers to some identifiable questions---

1) Vichy France was neither set up by Nazi Germany nor was it an ally. Petain represented the body of Frenchmen who believed that German victory was inevitable and for that reason should surrender. Hitler postponed any settlement with France rewarding Franco and Mussolini hoping that France would join the Axis, which they never did. Depite this, Churchill ordered the bombing of the French fleet in North Africa. Vichy broke diplomatic relations (which would not have existed had they been an ally of Germany), but despite significant popular support for declaring war, Petain chose to preserve a neutrality that was friendly to Germany (much like Sweden). There were no German forces in Algeria or Morocco in 1942 until after the beginning of Torch. All the opposition to Torch came from the Vichy French who felt they were being sneak-attacked.

2) Some responders seem to have WWI and WWII confused. Wilson took the USA into war against the Kaiser, not Hitler. His reasons were not Belgium (as the British claimed for themselves), not the Lusitania (sunk in 1915, two years before the opening of hostilities between Germany and the USA), not even because of the Zimmerman Telegram. It was simply a case of "follow the money". US financial and manufacturing circles held so much British and French debt that J.P. Morgan and his friends and the armament industry demanded US intervention to save them from probable bankruptcy following a likely Central Powers victory in 1918. That piece of hypocrisy, his double standards at the Paris peace diktats, and his secretive negotiations with the British over the trial of Irish rebels in 1916 to help get himself re-elected are my reasons for adjudging him the very worst American president, and one of the most disastrous world leaders in the history of the World (his the biggest share of blame for making WWII and its aftermath inevitable.

3) Contrary to Bluesman, I specifically did not condemn or even disapprove of all the interventions I listed. I wrote then that some of them were fully warranted. It's our shame that some weren't made (like Rwanda). Further, I believe that we would be fully justified in intervening in Darfur (but China wouldn't like that) or places where there is a real crisis.

4)Isolationism is mostly a figment of the interventionists's imagination. Throughout the 20's and 30's the USA was fully engaged in international trade agreements, humanitarian assistance, and arms negotiations. Feeling they had been betrayed by the Allies and Wilson, most of the American public was convinced that it would be best to avoid another European war that was none of their business. They found it very hard to criticize Hitler for his demanding the same right to self-determination for Germans that Versailles claimed for Czechs, Romanians, Italians, etc. Austria, the Sudetenland, Memel, Danzig, Upper Silesia, South Tyrol, and West Prussia were solidly German in population had had expressed the desire to be a part of Germany long before Hitler came to power. It was Allied refusal to deal justly with this issue that gave Hitler much of his appeal to the German voters. While they might not know the details, most Americans believed in the right of self-determination---it was, after all, the basis of the American Revolution. If Hitler wanted to move all the European Jews to Madagascar, it was better than killing 20,000,000 of them the way Lenin and Stalin had done in Ukraine and other agricultural regions---and the Poles had first proposed the idea, so his views weren't unique to Nazis. Jim Crow America, widespread eugenic programs, and the system of Indian reservations were Hitler's model for many of the Nuremberg Laws.

5)France is France whether it is royal; revolutionary; Napoleonic; republican; or Vichy. It was gratitude to France and recognition for its decisive role in winning American independence that gave created the romance behind the declaration of WWI "Layfayette, we are here!"
The GIs didn't go to support royal France nor republican France, they went to support France in its supposed hour of need as France had supported America in its own. France is difficult for America because in many ways it is so like America. Both nations tend to place themselves in the center of the world (can you spell c-h-a-u-v-i-n-i-s-m?), both enjoy what they consider their dominant role in culture (hence the food fight between Anglophones and Francophones in everything from Disneyland to sparkling wines), both are idealistic and simultaneously cynical, and both are willing to go it alone. There is one significant difference, there is no such thing as a processed product called French Cheese.
Skeptics of French importance in the Revolution need to read up on DeGrasse's fleet, Rochanbeau's army, and Franklin's diplomatic mission.

6)Plain speakers used to say that the purpose of NATO was
"---to keep the Germans down,
---the French up,
---the Russians out,
---and the Americans in".
With the Germans dying out, the French and Americans doing their own thing, and the USSR dead, what is the role of NATO?

7)The 50+ years of Iraqi occupation is a time-line being posed by many of the neocons and members of the Bush administration using the German and Korean occupations as a frame of reference. The huge bases now under construction there are also obviously intended to last beyond 2009. Before planning such an extended colonial era, we ought to ask the British how they enjoyed the 1919-1932 period when they created Iraq, occupied it, and fought a long insurgency capped by history's first heavy duty aerial bombardment of cities like Baghdad(the piddling efforts of the Zeppelins in WWI were miniscule by comparison). Oh, by the way, after all that nation-building and establishing of democratic institutions, Iraq first sought alliance with Hitler, then turned to various kings and dictators before settling down with Saddam. So why do we expect to be more succesful? We have an even greater disadvantage than the British, our uncritical support of every anti-Arab Israeli policy.

8)What I am proposing as a policy is what most of the world has always done---if you have differences with somebody, talk with them. If Bush doesn't like Iran's or Syria's policies, don't just fire rhetorical bombast at them, try finding out if there are any common interests. Diplomacy is not demanding unconditional surrender of everyone, friend (France and Germany) or foe (Hamas and Iran) alike.

9)Some aske, "What would you have the military do?". Here's my answer.
Since the Federal Government has been clearly unwilling to deal with the greatest invasion in American history (20,000,000+illegal immigrants), I would like to see a president willing to use some of our military might and expertise in closing the frontiers. The Border Patrol is a joke. If the Chinese were ever to decide to do some serious damage to the USA they will simply start subsidizing groups seeking a reversal of the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War. Some crazies along that line already exist---they seek the "liberation" of what they call "Atzlan", the Aztec name for what is today the southwestern USA. The Chinese wouldn't need intercontinental ballistic missiles when terrorism can be so destabilizing.

dalem

Kindof an odd way to characterize the Vichy government. They existed only at the sufferance of the Nazis, so describing them as neutral is weaselly, same as describing Sweden, a big source of raw ore for the Nazis, as neutral. Neither one was neutral.

And as far as the Vichy feeling they were being "sneak-attacked", that ignores the political maneuvering that went on behind the scenes to try and convince them to NOT RESIST THE COMING INVASION.

-dale

JAD_333

A little fact. a little fiction and a strong dose of naivite. And it all boils down to your proposal that we should discuss our differences with other counties. Where have you been. A 30-day stint in State or on the NSC would cure you of the belief that all we do is shoot first and ask questions later. Talk is good, but there are limits. Talk is a tactic. Want a country to postpone acting decisively to protect its vital interests, why, just delay it with talk, a carrot here, a bone there, and pretty soon it's too late. In principle you are right: talk is better than bullets, but not always.

I take your point about immigration. But the problem is not as easy to solve as you may think. Our military does not have the manpower to close off all our borders and points of entry. We have more than 100,000 miles to cover... This is one case where talk abroad and ciminal justice at home are the keys to solving the problem.

__________________
To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education. (Plato)

Pablo Cortez

If our military is not up to the task (something I don't think many of the contributors to WAB would hold), there are plenty of unemployed former Soviet and East Germans who know how to seal a border---maybe we could hire a few as consultants.

gunnut

And if Mexico calls us racist for sealing our border what is your response? A big middle finger?

dalem

Dammit! Another chew toy taken away from me!

-dale

Polybius

The French President is acting with more courage than our president,

He is enforcing the inmigration laws in France despite of the political cost, he is calling like Reagan did, fact by their proper name
Assimilate be like a French or do not come to France

Our president Bush , far to enforce our laws, he is on campaign for continue open border, Mexico, and the Foreign goverments have the best advocate for their interest in our president, G. Bush ,
President Bush administration after all these years unable to control the cargo which enter our nation. Who is responsible? Who has been president for the last two terms, G.W.B.
Our president approved to give up the control of our ports to foreign nations ? Makes sense for security, ?
Oh yes Patriotic Act, sounds very very pro security?
But I wonder the nut and bolts
What is better and safer to prevent the thief to enter our home than to later battle the thief inside our homes.?
Common sense block the entrance? That is how security start?
However, such common sense seems absent from our Republican President Bush team.
Does the Patriotic Act prevent the influx of potential terrorist among the hundred of thousands of ilegal aliens who enter our nation.
No
Does Videos CAmeras were effective in London , Madrid and other places to prevent terrorist act ?
Not

And we should remember than before 9/11,
The accepted wisdom was the electronic survelliance with satellites which could cover all the surface of the planet and listen to all conversation create a practically fool proof detection system

Such trust, reliance in electronic surveillance to prevent attacks was proof weak , feeble and false not only due to September 11 but the ability of the terrorist to keep destroying even in places full of cameras and electronic surveillance.

Does Bush gives himself a pat in the back?
or the adoring crowd does too?