Why The Neutralist? The term Isolationist implies a narrow Fortress America outlook and is used as an epithet. The term Neutralist does not indicate someone hiding out from the world. No one calls the Swiss isolationists.
The Wilsonian world view is old, tired and wrong. Our interventions have been less and less successful and now the failure can no longer be covered up.
Showing posts with label The American Conservative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The American Conservative. Show all posts
Well, it's about time, but we at the Neutralist have not seen much "debate." Mostly just sputtering about the Russkies are not nice and Assad is a meanie.
at The American Conservative looks at the theft of oil and how it has become important. At the end of the day, it's theft, of course.
Also at the end of the day, not to mention at dawn, there is real reason for us to be in the Middle East. If anyone has a rational argument for how our intervention benefits the American people, the Neutralist would love to hear it.
So some guy does something crooked with the Hilary campaign and gets indicted for it. What's the lede at NBC:
A businessman who helped broker a meetingbetween an ally of President Donald Trump and an official of the Russian government has been indicted for allegedly funneling millions in illegal campaign contributions to support Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Every now and again Sic Semper Tyrannis posts a Russian Federation Sitrep by Russia Insider's Patrick Armstrong. At the beginning is a little bit of info on how Russia is going along well enough despite the imperial war against it:
POWER OF SIBERIA. Putin and Xi turned on the pipeline on Monday. It carries gas from Russia's Far East into China and has a carrying capacity of 61 billion M3per year. There'll be more. This has no small strategic significance: previously, for foreign sales, Russia was dependent on customers in Europe who are all, to a greater or lesser extent, subject to pressure from the war party. Added to which transport was affected by Kiev's whims. Turkstream(scheduled to start next month) and the two pipelines to Germany help with the second problem and this one with the first. Sooner or later, Russia-China pipelines would have appeared but I think Ishchenko's argument that the Western war on Russia speeded up the processis credible. (Come to think of it, now that Putin's hand is imagined everywhere, maybe it's time to consider that he's the American war party's real backer; after all, everything it's touched has turned to dust: from the forever wars, to Iran's increased influence, to the Russia-China alliance and now the furore in the USA over Ukraine – itself another disastrous project.)
There is another website that does aggregation and should not be ignored. The American Committee for East West Accord does it everyday and the Neutralist shamelessly steals from them.
As someone not completely opposed to the peasantry storming the castles, class warfare is of some interest. Class war does not always go the way one would expect. Over at American Affairs the editor, Julius Krein, looks at the subject of the tiny top class and the managers as The Real Class War.
The current presidential campaign has a lot of Dems who all kinda sound alike on the so-called debate stage except one. She might sound like the rest if it were not for what they seem to be ignoring. Doug Bandow at AmConMag gives us Tulsi Gabbard: Wake Up and Smell Our $6.4 Trillion Wars.
Notice above the word on in quotes. Our foul support of the Saudi war makes the nation and people of that land the victims of a vicious and stupid campaign that is little more than genocidal.
I suppose that some theory of American foreign policy is served by doing the Saudi's bidding. Certainly Big Oil is happy to see us do that.
Of course, if we believe that it is good policy, then all the folks who spout about "American Exceptionalism" are hypocrites. We, at the Neutralist, have long given over to that belief.
There is a moment afoot to restore at least a modicum of our national honor.
Democratic Reps. Khanna and Pocan and Republican Reps. Massie and Jones are the co-sponsors of the bill, and they deserve a lot of credit for working on this and bringing attention to a conflict and our government’s role in it. The U.S. role in supporting the war should receive much more scrutiny than it has, and this bill provides members of Congress with the opportunity to debate the indefensible policy that has implicated the U.S. in the crimes of the Saudis and their allies. One of the reasons that U.S. support for the war has gone on for so long with so little opposition is that Congress has failed to challenge the Obama and Trump administrations’ decisions to back the coalition. This bill offers the chance to do what Congress should have been doing for the last two years.
Democratic Reps. Khanna and Pocan and Republican Reps. Massie and Jones are the co-sponsors of the bill, and they deserve a lot of credit for working on this and bringing attention to a conflict and our government’s role in it. The U.S. role in supporting the war should receive much more scrutiny than it has, and this bill provides members of Congress with the opportunity to debate the indefensible policy that has implicated the U.S. in the crimes of the Saudis and their allies. One of the reasons that U.S. support for the war has gone on for so long with so little opposition is that Congress has failed to challenge the Obama and Trump administrations’ decisions to back the coalition. This bill offers the chance to do what Congress should have been doing for the last two years.
The Neutralist concurs. Though it rarely works wonders, we urge everyone to contact their reps and tell them you support this gang of four. Larsson's last paragraph emphasizes the point,
U.S. involvement in the war is not only unauthorized, but it is enabling the commission of war crimes and other violations of international law. Ending that involvement could also be the first step in forcing the coalition to halt its campaign and blockade. All House members should join their four colleagues in calling for a stop to U.S. backing for the disgraceful and atrocious war on Yemen.
I used to read William S. Linds essays on strategy that that appeared at the Free Congress Foundation. After they abruptly stopped, I read him whenever possible. It has been mostly at The American Conservative. He always makes sense, though the Neutralist is sure we can find something to disagree with if we try hard enough.
Not today, however. Mr. Lind has written a thoroughly neutralist column at TAC. The title says it all,
Islam’s Civil War
America can win it—by staying out.
Yup, as we've said before, they ain't jumping in their carrier fleets to invade our east coast.
some have decried Mr. Lind's attitude as gloating. I hope it is not. I take no pleasure that Shia and Sunni will fight and kill each other. May they find peace. Still, facts are facts, and we, and they are better off without our attempts at managing it.
The Southern Avenger, Mr. Jack Hunter, is accomplished in the art of the youtube video. Actually, I can’t say that the youtube video is art. Merely can I say that he goes farther with it than I could, which is not into the realm of overachieving.
Still, I generally agree with his thoughts even if he only hits a single. In his February 6, 2010 offering, he blasted it out of the park with just one tiny particle,
Comparing Paul’s foreign policy stance to that of the congressman’s fellow non-interventionist Pat Buchanan, Coulter added “Whenever I listen to Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan I always think ‘I can’t listen too long or they might convince me.”
Bingo. What Ann really said, once parsed is, I know they are right, but pretend they are wrong. I like to think she is not merely a shill, but if she abandoned neoconnery, to come over to the less financially lush side of non-interventionism, well maybe she would not be so fashionable. Ann doesn't really, really believe and the rest don't either.
Even if you hate the muzzies and think they all should be extirpated, you have to see, we are losing. It matters not how many of them we kill if we bankrupt ourselves. Granted, we are trying manfully and womanfully to ruin ourselves on many other non military fronts, but so what. Why waste the flower of our youth on a losing strategy.
Somehow, I think everyone with some modicum of intelligence, knows this. I’ll let others work out why they can’t say it. For now.
Also, the sensible policy of how to deal with Bin Laden was given us by Rep. Paul with a further comment by Mr. Hunter.
Despite what his critics portray, Paul’s approach to Islamic terrorism is not to ignore it, but to examine motive and develop a sound strategy by pinpointing our defense. Just one month after 9/11, Paul introduced the “Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001,” legislation that would have allowed Congress and the President to specifically target Bin Laden and his associates by placing a bounty on Al-Qaeda leaders. Paul said the Act “allows Congress to narrowly target terrorist enemies, lessening the likelihood of a full-scale war with any Middle Eastern nations. The Act also threatens terrorist cells worldwide by making it more difficult for our enemies to simply slip back into civilian populations or hide in remote locations… Once letters of marque and reprisal are issued, every terrorist is essentially a marked man.”
In hindsight, what would have been the more conservative, productive approach after 9/11—spending three trillion dollars in Iraq or placing a $1billion bounty on Bin Laden and every other Al-Qaeda member’s head?
Mr. Daniel Larison has a December 3rd post at The Amercian Conservative blog about how our countrymen will claim to be for minding our own biz while still favoring intervention.
He starts, The new Pew survey (via RCP) that purports to show a record-high level of “isolationist sentiment” is fairly misleading. No doubt, there was a higher percentage that answered that the U.S. should “mind its own business and let other countries get along the best they can on their own,” but the alternative was to answer that the U.S. “is the most powerful nation in the world, we should go our own way in international matters, not worrying about whether other countries agree with us or not.” Given that choice between something that sounds reasonable and something that sounds idiotic, a great many non-”isolationists” would prefer the former response. Essentially, the survey offered two choices. On the one hand, the respondent can choose arrogant hegemonism and disregard the interests of all other nations, or he can choose something less obviously obnoxious. One depressing thing about the survey results is that hegemonism still gets 44%. The other depressing thing is that the 49% don’t really mean what they claim to believe.
Disheartening as the above paragraph is, the one that really shocks is,
Among the public, 63% approve of the use of U.S. military force against Iran if it were certain that Iran had produced a nuclear weapon; just 33% of CFR members agree.
The freaking CFR members are less warmongering than my lumpen fellow countrymen!
The title of the post is "The Bogey Of Isolationism" Mr. Larison nicely puts the whole Pew thing in perspective.
The commenters know something is wrong because if you are not for all war all the time overseas, you become an "isolationist." Not exactly a Nazi, but as goofy as a Moonie. They have come up with alternative terms such as Realist, Eunomic, George Washingtonism and others. I am saddened they have not realized the obvious. Neutralism is the term.
Of course, I have not been doing any heavy lifting of late to make Neutalist and Neutralism household words, but that does not take away from the fact that the term that they are searching for is within their grasp.
Richard Morchoe is chairman and chief executive and only member of the Neutralist Association of The US. It is a lonely job, but, literally, no one else will do it if he doesn't.
The United States should move to a neutral foreign policy. Troops, fleet and air forces should be withdrawn from foreign countries and only our own border secured.
The term Isolationist implies a narrow Fortress America outlook and is used as an epithet. The term Neutralist does not indicate someone hiding out from the world. No one calls the Swiss isolationists. The Wilsonian world view is old, tired and wrong. Our interventions have been less and less successful and now the failure can no longer be covered up
What is to be expected
What is to be expected from the Neutralist? Unfortunately, not much. There are think tanks galore in this country for all shades of thought, but, so far, neutralism is an orphan with only one known supporter. The concept is tied up with the I word, Isolationism. To get noticed and be taken seriously will be next to impossible.
What is hoped? That the idea of neutralism will be noticed and that the concept of Wilsonian Internationalism will be seen as the failure it is. That at least a core group will form that will support the idea and spread it in blogs, articles and conversation. To get even that far would be near miraculous.
Links Policy
Any link to any site does not imply that the linkee approves of the Neutralist or its policy.
The Neutralist will try to link to sites it deems to be generally sympathetic to non interventionism.
We reserve the right to link because someone had one article or even a part of an article or post we liked.
We also reserve the right to link to sights we completely disagree with.
