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Back in the late 1970s, I began looking at America's overseas interventions since World War II and realized that most of them had ulterior motives (despite the domestic propaganda about "saving democracy") and had unfortunate results.
Yet the interventions have continued to the present day, culminating in the worst, least justified intervention of the past thirty years, the Iraq War.
Yet when I bring this up, military apologists call me an "isolationist," and the dumber ones call me "friend of the terrorists."
I submit the following proposition: The apologists are the REAL isolationists.
They're mentally isolated on an island of chauvinism and arrogance.
They believe that America is always right, or that if it isn't, it's just fine, because after all, it's WE who are doing the dirty work, not one of those other countries.
They believe that they know what's right for every other country in the world.
They believe that "American interests" (which almost always means "corporate interests") supersede other countries' interests, even other countries' legitimate interests.
They act like some of the right-wing Japanese after World War II (who appeared to believe that the world ganged up on Japan for no reason), citing "the threat of terrorism" without asking themselves why terrorists are threatening America but not every Western country.
Until twenty years ago, they successfully scared the American public with "the threat of Communism." We had to help the Afghan fundamentalists and had to carpet bomb Vietnam to keep Communism from spreading across the globe like spilled paint. Yet no one asked why there were no Communist guerrillas in Norway or why the Communist movements in Thailand never made any headway.
Our military establishment has advised and trained torturer and dictators throughout Latin America, all in the name of anti-Communism, aka protecting the sweatshops and the cash crop plantations from the local people.
Ham-handed meddling around the world has become standard operating procedure in the U.S. government, and no one who questions this pattern will ever attract the corporate donations needed to win the presidency.
Mental isolationism has led to insane military buildups, weapons for "enemies" who don't exist, and mind-boggling deficits.
Most of us have never experienced non-isolationism. What would it look like?
It would recognize that America doesn't have all the answers. It would wean America from its control-freak ways.
It would allow other countries to experiment with economic systems that might not be favorable to American corporations.
It would go after the root causes of terrorism (for example, by requiring Pakistan and other Middle Eastern recipients of aid to set up free public school systems to counteract the militant madrassas) instead of lobbing rockets at villages or sending ignorant 18-year-olds to "reform" other countries.
No country would receive military aid from the U.S. unless it was directly under attack by an aggressive neighbor. If it was facing a threat from a guerrilla movement--well, suffice it to say that most such countries DESERVE to be rebelled against. The blood of the millions of victims of pointless power struggles in the Third World would not be on our hands.
Non-isolationism would recognize the advantages of a multi-polar world, in which local alliances and trading partnerships handled political and economic matters, freeing the U.S. to concentrate on its pressing domestic concerns.
Non-isolationism would encourage the study of foreign languages and cultures and would make it easy for American youth, especially those interested in politics, to live overseas on the local economy to gain an understanding of the world outside our borders.
Non-isolationism would cut military spending back to strictly defensive needs and use the considerable savings to take care of our multitude of pressing domestic problems.
Non-isolationism would win friends. Anti-American riots would be a thing of the past. Having concentrated on building up our own society, we would lead by example.
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