Jonah on Ron Paul
Good, especially with regard to different problems requiring different answers. Here's a paragraph:
Ron Paul gets to luxuriate in the intellectual comfort of the Wrong Turn Ideologue. He claims all of our problems are the product of "fifty-years of bad policy." Translation: America was wrong to stand up to the Soviet Union. If you think he's right, good for you. There are some smart and serious people who think the Cold War was a giant mistake. But I'm not one of them (save for the argument that, had it been possible to muster the will, we should have toppled Stalin before he got the bomb). The gist of his fifty-year-mistake stance also suggests that America was non-interventionist before the Cold War. It was, immediately before the Cold War and World War II. But outside of those brief parentheses, it has been more interventionist than Paul & Co. would have you believe. Besides, is it really so compelling to say that American foreign policy in the 1930s was America's finest hour?
His conclusion is charitable and balanced, yet firm:
I like having Ron Paul in this race and participating in these debates. But not only is he no Robert Taft, but, when it comes to foreign policy, we couldn't use him if he were.
I tend to feel like anti-interventionism should be viewed in the wouldn't-it-be-nice category. Is it really possible for America to disengage from world affairs at this point, and would it be the right thing to do? All for the sake of avoiding the "blowback" and beating ourselves up for former foreign policy missteps?
Could we disengage from our enemies? The question is, are they remotely willing to disengage from us? The answer is an obvious no, and an attempt to disengage our enemies is dangerous because, in many respects -- Iran's nuclear ambitions, Europe's demographic slide into Eurabia, and our own rapidly diminishing will to suffer even historically low casualties to defend our interests -- time is not on our side.
ReplyDeleteThose who think our enemies can be contained, who advocate such containment, and who compare those who disagree with the Baathist regime that we defeated in Iraq, aren't helping any of us.