Against interventionism

Politicians in both major parties who take the trouble – the enormous trouble – to run for president aspire to be “the most powerful man in the world,” to control the might of the unique hyper-puissance of our time, to command the greatest military power in the world.

Apart from Ron Paul and perhaps also Denis Kucinich, not one has run for the presidency in living memory with the intention of withdrawing the US from its global military commitments and painful, useless role as “the indispensable nation.”

Not even George McGovern or his supporters would have dared go so far.

And this is true though it is notorious that Americans overwhelmingly reject globo-meddling in favor of what is variously called “non-interventionism,” “isolationism,” or for some odd reason “neo-isolationism.”

Wilson lied shamelessly in 1916, campaigning for peace as he planned for war in 1917, driving the anti-interventionist naval secretary Bryan out of office.

FDR lied shamelessly from 1933 to 1941, promising American boys would never fight another European war while violating neutrality at every turn, eventually exploiting a pre-emptive Japanese attack in the Pacific as an excuse for the war he wanted in Europe.

LBJ lied shamelessly in the campaign of 1964, promising American boys would not die in a war Asian boys ought to fight as he planned ever-deeper intervention in Vietnam, eventually fabricating a provocation in the Gulf of Tonkin.

While Gore defended Bill Clinton’s gratuitous intervention in the Balkans, Bush the Younger campaigned in 2000 against unnecessary wars and for a “humbler” American foreign policy, betraying America utterly in Afghanistan and even more so in Iraq after 9/11 provided the completely fake casus belli the Halliburton neocons in his administration had wanted all along.

In 2004 and 2008 the candidates of both major parties promised more war, though the Democrats promised less more war.

In every case, American blood and American treasure were wasted in causes having no sufficient relation to the common good of the American people but plenty of value to ambitious politicians, greed-drive military contractors, jingoist bar-fly patriots, and foreign-born advisers abundantly willing to see Americans slaughtered for the good of the foreign peoples and nations they really cared about.

Alone among the settler nations of the New World, America has done exactly what so many of its founding generation of leaders told it not to do.

They knew full well that our distance from Europe provided a future of safety from danger no nation in Europe would ever enjoy.

But instead of taking advantage of this to choose a history of peace and pursuit of the common good America's elites have taken advantage of this almost from the beginning as an opportunity for empire-building and, eventually, ceaseless political and military meddling on a global scale.

Their arrogance and ambition, and the fatuous moralism found in that part of their propaganda that did not rely on imaginary “vital American interests” and entirely fictitious “existential threats,” have been the same, all along.

Much to the cost of the ordinary people of our country.