Is “the expansion of freedom in all the world” the right course for America?
(Program Note: I actually composed this post several days ago, but I wrote it late at night and wanted to take the time to edit it.)
The Boileryard has been something something of a one-issue blog lately. It’s founder, Boileryard Clarke, has been beating the drum for an anti-interventionist foreign policy; specifically, he’s become an opponent of the war in Iraq, and against any similar preemptive attacks. A recent post analyzes the President’s inaugural address. Allow me to quote a representative sample:
When he said; “At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For a half century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical - and then there came a day of fire.
We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat…” what he is telling us is that he visualizes the War On Terror to be the equivalent to the Cold War, and that we will need another 50-year effort to overcome this threat just as we overcame the Communist one. A permanent state of emergency in the government that allows power to form around the Executive and takes power away from the Legislative.
Just as we watched happen from 1946 to 1991. Congress, once the only body that was allowed to declare War, now exists in a position where War no longer exists. If we don’t call it “War” - that is, declare it emphatically and commit the resources of the whole nation to the effort - the President can use a simple up-and-down roll call to bolster the legality of using American force for as long as he can get away with it. Congress’ ability to actually declare war was lost sometime around Viet Nam. We can thank the Democrats for it.
As you can tell from his final sentence above, Clarke is not some liberal Michael Moore worshipper. He isn’t among those who mindlessly repeat the arguments of the far left. His posts lately have carried the title “The Betrayal of the American Right.”
And his point definitely has merit. I agree that the President’s stated position, as follows, is troubling:
So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. [My Emphasis]
It’s hard to oppose this position. No decent human being wants to stand beside tyrants or appear to be against freedom.
But I do have to oppose it, primarily on the grounds of feasibility. According to a link I found on Google News, the war in Iraq has cost approximately $130 billion dollars. That’s for one country with little more than a pushover defense force.
We cannot afford to free every nation on earth. We cannot afford to take out Rice’s Outposts of Tyranny. And frankly it’s not our job to free every nation on earth. It’s not our job to sacrifice billions of dollars and thousands of lives for every little third-world dictatorship.
Of course tyranny is wrong; ruling without the consent of the people is wrong. But if the oppressed people are not willing to stand up and fight for their own freedom, as we did, then they’ve granted their consent, have they not?
We can offer aid; we can send guns and supplies to freedom-loving revolutionaries in Cuba, Belarus, and Zimbabwe, to name some of the “Outposts.” But we ought not be in the business of undeclared wars against an unknown number of opponents.
We ought to be in the business of self-defense. If a foreign nation is supporting terrorism against the United States, and especially if that nation has threatened us with WMD’s, then by all means, go to war! Stop terrorism at its source! But mere oppression of native populations cannot be sufficient cause for us to step in, however heartless that may sound.
Netpilot, in the next post, quotes John Quincy Adams; I reproduce the quote in full below, my emphasis:
“Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been unfurled, there will America’s heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own….She well knows that, by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the color and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlets upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished luster the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.”