THE
ONLY REAL CHOICE IS BETWEEN NATIONAL SELF-INTEREST
AND COLONIALISM
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Too many people insist that American foreign policy
should sacrifice our own interests for the interests
of others. That sounds too sweet to be wrong.
But there is a murderous Catch-22 that comes in when
you decide to forget your own interests and devote
your foreign policy to the interests of others.
In order to pursue the interests of other people,
you have to decide what their interests really are.
When you start deciding what the true interests of
a foreign country are, you have switched into an imperialist
mentality.
Leftist thinking does not consider this because leftism
is always colonial. Leftists talk about self-determination
and freedom but they don't mean a word of it. In fact,
they don't understand that freedom means that you
are free to go one's own way, even if leftists think
that way is bad for you.
Besides, the whole basis of American liberalism is
self-hatred on the part of Americans and especially
of white people. A foreign policy based on national
self-interest would be a complete impossibility for
our leftist foreign policy establishment even to understand.
In order to allow other nations to exist, you have
to be a nationalist yourself. The instant you go beyond
your national self-interest in actions abroad, you
begin being an imperialist.
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National self-interest is the only basis of a moral,
non-imperialistic foreign policy. It is also the one
approach that foreigners can understand and sympathize
with.
A foreign policy based on anything but national self-interest
is colonialist because you have no right to decide
what is in anybody's best interests but your own.
Your only legitimate business is literally your own
business.
More important, a foreign policy based on anything
but self-interest becomes suicidal. That is the real
lesson of Vietnam. No one could understand exactly
why we were there. So instead of deciding to either
fight a war or get out, we fought half a war in Vietnam.
I think one thing we should agree on here is that
you can be pro-war or you can be antiwar, but no rational
person can support half a war.
The only reason we should be in Afghanistan is because
they helped kill six thousand Americans. On that basis
we have to decide whether to hit back with everything
we have or to stay out.
In other words, America must either forgive and forget
or come out like a raging lion. Anything in between
leads straight to a Vietnam.
Right after the September 11 attack, the world realized
that the only remaining superpower had the right to
be a raging lion. A smaller attack at Pearl Harbor
had led to our only atomic war.
So how would President George Bush the Younger react?
Would he react like Clinton and say American history
shows we are just terrorists ourselves?
Would George Bush Junior be an unapologetic pro-American
like Reagan?
Or would George W. Bush try to be like his father
and say he was "gentler and kinder" than that awful
Reagan had been?
He came out like a lion. On September 11 President
George W. Bush told the world that you were either
with us or you were on the side of the terrorists.
The lion roared and the world went along unanimously.
Everybody wanted to get out of the line of fire. Even
Iran and Iraq were chilled to the bone at the idea
of an America with whom all bets were off.
Everybody understood it when the United States reacted
like a wounded lion. Like it or not, everybody knew
where we were coming from. We were coming out like
a superpower that had had six thousand of its people
murdered. There was no self-hatred here.
Then it became business as usual. Bush began to tell
others that they could do as much or as little as
they chose. We dithered over supporting our enemy's
enemies in Afghanistan because they might not form
the sort of government that would be good for Afghanistan.
So our new "allies" began to dither.
Finally we dropped the "what's good for Afghanistan"
nonsense and helped the Northern Alliance go ahead
and defeat our enemy.
The lesson is that you must never go to war at all
unless you are ready to be a lion.
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THE
ONLY REAL CHOICE IS PEACE OR WAR
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I think the way my readers do. The mission of Whitaker Online
is do the intellectual spadework of digging out, in depth, the
basic mistakes that America is making.
To us, our approach is simple sanity, but in our "1984" style
world, simple sanity takes a lot of explaining. This is hard and
frustrating work.
Our present situation is a good example. You understand where
I am coming from, but what I say is very confusing to most people
today.
Here I am demanding absolute militancy. Yet no one has expressed
more doubts about how we got into this situation or more fear
about where it could go than I have.
So I am clearly not with those who consider our total pro-Israeli
foreign policy a holy cause. So I don't want an all-out war in
the Middle East for Israel. I am called anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews
because I refuse to hate all of Israel's enemies blindly
No one has expressed more doubts and fears about this war than
I have. So when it comes to the hawks versus the doves, shouldn't
I be somewhere between a hawk and a dove? On the contrary, I just
wrote an article demanding that Bush be not just a hawk but a
lion!
Most of my readers have no problem with this.
Sergeant York, a Christian from Tennessee, had a long struggle
with his conscience over whether he should fight in World War
I or be a conscientious objector. But when he did decide to fight
he became the most decorated American soldier in that war. You
and I understand that, but it is very confusing for the people
who got us into Vietnam.
To the people who got us into Vietnam, war is a two-dimensional
line from dove to hawk. You can be for war, you can be for peace,
or you can be somewhere in between. So in Vietnam, America fought
a respectable war, a moderate war, a war based on compromise.
This is not the way the world looks in the eyes of sanity. To
us war is not a compromise situation and soldier's lives are not
chess pieces.
There is hawk and there is dove and then there are TWO positions
between hawk and dove. A person who wants to fight half a war
is between a hawk and a dove. He is also insane.
But you can have a hard time deciding between peace and war because
you understand that being for war means going all the way. It
is hard choice not because it is such a clear choice.
The other position is one that sane people understand the way
that Sergeant York did. To a sane person the only choice is between
no action or a real war.
When you don't face that real choice, you get Vietnams.
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Respectable conservatives love to call people "Nazis" but
they are the ones who want a militarized America. When they
talk about war, you can almost see them drool. They just
love the idea of Americans getting killed.
One conservative commentator after another licks his lips
and talks about going after Iraq next.
The theory is that if Saddam Hussein stays in power he
will get atomic weapons and other means for Superterrorism.
Plenty of people have plenty of opinions on this and I can't
add much to what you already know.
What concerns me is the whole idea of an endless war against
terror.
Republicans love to call people naziswhowantotkillsixmillionjews,
but they keep adopting Hitlerian terminology. Hitler talked
about his New Order and Bush Senior talked about his New
World Order. Hitler talked about a Thousand Year Reich and
now Bush Junior is talking about an unending war against
terror.
Huey Long, who knew all about demagoguery, once pointed
out that, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-Fascism."
The best excuse for terror is to say that you are preventing
terror.
There is nothing new about this insight. Anybody who knows
political history is aware of how one horror is always justified
in the name of preventing another horror. When Communists
justify their police state, they say they are "stopping
the fascists." When fascists round up people it is
always in the name of fighting Communism.
After beating Afghanistan and Iraq, Americans would be
flushed with victory and looking for the next war.
That war is likely to be against the Palestinians. After
two major victories, no one could stop conservative bloodlust
and the Israeli lobby from going overboard. It would be
like trying to stop a train with your bare hands. A war
bandwagon like that would be a sure formula for disaster.
Let me repeat here what might happen (originally published
September 12, 2001):
WHAT MAY HAPPEN
September 12, 2001
1) Because of the attack on America, the United States
has a chance to really move into the Middle East on the
side of Israel.
2) We now have the combination of the Israeli lobby and
a state of war.
3) With support from everybody, the US goes into the Middle
East big time.
4) The US, pushed by the Israeli lobby, fundamentalist
"Christians" and Israel-hawk liberals, goes absolutely nuts
in the Middle East.
5) As in Vietnam, our "allies" desert us sometime next
year.
6) The US goes it alone, getting in deeper and deeper.
7) As the ruin mounts up from loss of oil and -- less important,
the deaths of Americans -- an anti-Semitic reaction grows.
8) In the 1960s, the media and antiwar advocates became
more and more openly pro-Communist. As our economic collapse
grows and real anti-Semitism grows in the US, swastikas
begin to go on the streets.
9) People like me begin to scream "naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews,"
because by now it's a real threat. But leftists have screamed
that "wolf" too often in the past.
10) a new Holocaust begins.
And don't buy the lie that a multiracial country cannot
be violently anti-Semitic. Multicultural countries cannot
unite on what they are FOR, but it is easy for different
groups to join in a common HATE. September 11 should convince
us of that.
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HOW
ABOUT A RUSSIAN NON-WAR?
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All the commentators are trying to out-macho each other
by being war heroes by proxy. Conservatives have gone nuts
at the prospect of lots of Americans in combat.
Now Geraldo Rivera has become a war correspondent.
Since the Afghan cities fell the big buzz is about how
"We are going to go in and get the Taliban" in their mountain
caves.
It sounds like a silly question, but I would like to ask
it: "Why?"
Our heat-seeking weapons can locate Al Queda troops when
they light a fire for warmth. They can be pinned down when
they try to move day or night. Their supplies, even if anyone
tries to bring them in, will be destroyed.
Just as I am about the only anti-liberal commentator who
does not claim to speak for God all the time, I am also
the only one who does not claim to be a military expert.
But it seems to me we might take a leaf out of the book
of the Russians who defeated Napoleon.
As you know, Russia destroyed Napoleon's army after it
reached Moscow by doing nothing. They destroyed all his
potential supplies and fell back. Time and the Russian winter
did the rest.
Can't we isolate and destroy the Taliban remnants just
by using the fact that time and air power are on our side?
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| Current Issue |
Issue: Nov. 17, 2001
Editor: Virgil H. Huston, Jr.
© 2001 WhitakerOnLine.org
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