Well I don't claim to be a "liberal", but I've proposed offering US citizenship and a generous stipend to all Israelis who choose to relocate to the US and renounce their Israeli nationality, and then after about a year withdrawing US support for Israel (and Egypt) and let that pitiful part of the world work things out for themselves
Didn't we try that Isolationist approach prior to WWI and WWII??
I mean.. I certainly can sympathize with the feeling because it often feels like these people are not worth bothering over and if they want to kill one anther, then so be it, right??
But then I remember that this was the very same policy we followed prior to both WWI and WWII.. neutrality..
Yet, we still got dragged into those mammoth struggles and thrust into the role of global superpower and protector of democracy.
The reality was that we really couldn't be neutral in the face of that kind of tyranny.. And 9/11 has shown us that we can't be neutral in the face of the current struggle.
Doesn't principle count for anything any longer? Even though I'm not totally thrilled with Israeli policies (related to their ultra-orthodox factions), they are still a democracy and I think the principle should be that we defend democratic nations, who have pledged to to rely upon the democratic process to hold their governments accountable to their people.
And this support obviously does not, and can not, be applied to governments where the democratic process has been hijacked by non-democratic ideologies that have taken advantage of the system as a means to destroy that democratic system (ie: Hamas and many others).
Now maybe you believe we should focus solely upon Afghanistan, which harbored the Al Qai'da organization that attacked the US. But I'm of the belief that it is the ideology itself, militant and fanatical Islam, that is the enemy. And they are not about to let us retreat from the fight because we represent everything they despise.
Which means we have to confront this this evil and violent ideology wherever we find it.
Thus, we don't have a choice.. we have to be engaged. And trying to re-focus upon competing economically with China and India is ridiculous. They are not, YET, an economic threat. In fact, their economies HEAVILY DEPEND upon the US economy.
And the US economy (as well as the rest of the world) relies upon inexpensive energy, 2/3rds of which lies in the Persian Gulf.
So isolating ourselves from the struggle over the control (and economic importance) of the Gulf's energy resources will inevitably lead to that energy resevoir being controlled by the most brutal ideology.
So I'm sorry, although I can sympathize with your isolationist views, I cannot ignore history.
We're going to be involved, one way or another. The question only is when and to what degree of effort.
There's a neglected fire igniting in the Mid-East that has been smoldering for decades. The question is whether we use a fire-extinguisher now in an attempt to control and eventually extinquish it, or wait until it puts the whole "house" ablaze wherein we are forced to use maximum effort to put it out and then rebuild it.
It may not work, but I'm for the belief that I don't think we can afford to wait.
Hawk |
