Intervention is so good and non-intervention is so whacky - especially since Ron Paul is a non-interventionist! by Gary Wood
(conservative)
Friday, December 23, 2011
Just ask any of those who are opposed to the notion the United States should move our foreign policy from one of intervention toward one of non-intervention and you will hear the many reasons why our approach works so well. We have stayed on an interventionist path since the end of World War II and made a real case for intervention even before that, back when President Woodrow Wilson was selling U.S. Citizens on the notion we are a democracy and we should be sharing it around the world.
Michele Bachman has been bragging of her slap down of Ron Paul since the last Fox debate before the Iowa Caucus as he attempted, although not very artfully, to once again talk up the idea of non-intervention. Don’t fall into the same trap as Bachman and others who believe Paul is some sort of isolationist. Isolationism is a failed policy where a country basically attempts to hide their head in the sand and tell the world to go away. Isolationism has never been successful and the United States would never be good at isolationism, not to mention what Rep. Paul attempts to discuss is not isolation but is, in fact, non-intervention. Bachman, as well as all other opponents, the media, and talking heads everywhere support intervention over non-intervention, and most reading this will support it if you are listening to one of these people. They make it sound so appealing, so right, and so patriotic even.
To embrace intervention as so right and non-intervention as not only wrong but whacky wrong most people must know what the policy means, right? It won’t be a surprise to find that intervention means simply the act or fact of intervening. It can also mean interposition or interference of one state in the affairs of another, according to Dictionary.com. Intervening simply means we intervene with force or a threat of force; to intervene in the affairs of another country. What is wrong with that? Would we not accept others who have an intervention policy if they felt the need to intervene here?
Let’s say there is a country that democratically elects a president and the president is just coming to power after the people elected him. Now, this president has not been mean to the people and the election is deemed to be a fair election. However, the new democratically elected president does not really like another country half a world away. He has decided to not be involved with the other country even though the other country really wants to trade with his country. Since the country the newly elected president doesn’t like is bigger it sends in assassins, kills the president the people elected, and places a tyrant over the people because the tyrant will trade with this bigger country. This is OK, right? Re-read the scenario and ask yourself carefully…is this alright?
If you said ‘yes’ then you truly are a die-hard interventionist and you can save yourself the trouble of reading the rest of this article. If you said ‘no’ or hesitated because you weren’t sure you may have some non-interventionist leanings. Since the newly elected president did not come and threaten the bigger country a non-interventionist would have left the newly elected president alone and simply traded with those countries that wanted to. The bigger country, under non-intervention, would have let the president know that he should never think of attacking their country but if he ever wanted to change his mind and trade with them they would be interested in talking. Until then it is OK, the bigger country simply will work with those who want to and travel between countries that want to. Non-intervention is basically the ‘Golden Rule’ of foreign policy; one treats others the way one wants to be treated…terribly whacky, I know.
Oh, by the way, the scenario used above is right from the pages of history. Ever wonder how the Shah of Iran came to power in 1953 when Iran was democratically electing their leaders? The United States simply intervened after the election of 1953, had the president assassinated, and provided the people of Iran a tyrant to be their leader instead of who they chose. Would we want that to take place here in our country or would that upset us a little bit?
Most of you just thought ‘it would upset us a lot and we would kick their tale feathers’ so why are we surprised to find it also upset the Iranian people and, even today, many have not gotten past that episode in history. It has been easy for their leaders, since regaining control, to teach the Iranian people the U.S. is a bad country with a bad government, especially since this was not an isolated case of interventionism but a part of decades of severe intervention around the globe.
Intervention is such a sound policy, a really good one, even patriotic, right? Non-intervention as a foreign policy is not sound because, well because intervention is sound. Non-intervention is not patriotic because, well because intervention is patriotic! Non-intervention is whacky becuase; explain again why it is such a whacky proposal Michele?
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