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by wumeow 738 days ago
> Some vocal corners of the American right are trying to resurrect the discredited brand of prewar isolationism and deny the basic value of the alliance system that has kept the postwar peace.

By “some on the right “ you mean your presidential candidate and most of your party.
1 comments
rayiner 738 days ago
Not to mention most liberals until five minutes ago. If you had told me twenty years ago that supposed democrats were agreeing with Mitch McConnell and acting out Team America World Police, I wouldn’t have believed you. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/.
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dctoedt 738 days ago
> Not to mention most liberals until five minutes ago.

Some fringe leftists are isolationists, to be sure. Liberals? No.

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rayiner 738 days ago
The mainstream liberal position back when I was a Democrat is that America’s policing of the world was a bad thing. The movie “Team America: World Police” reflected the sentiment of Jon Stewart watching younger Democrats. Stanning for NATO and “our allies” was for evil neocons like Bush and Cheney.
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sdwr 738 days ago
"policing of the world" is already politically fraught. The classic leftist argument is that America entered unjust foreign wars for political points / foreign resources / dick waving.
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rayiner 738 days ago
Leftists don’t think we entered Vietnam or Korea for resources. And when I was a mainstream young liberal in the 1990s and early oughts, the complaint was about why we have “military bases around the world.” That wasn’t because we thought those were for extracting resources.
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dctoedt 737 days ago
> Leftists don’t think we entered Vietnam or Korea for resources.

Disagree, again: Back in the day, many leftists — especially the radical ones, who not infrequently were Communists or sympathizers — proclaimed loudly that Pax Americana and its small wars were facets of an allegedly-rapacious capitalist-colonialist imperialism, extracting resources from the poor and redistributing them upward to the wealthy, and suppressing popular revolutionary movements that professed to want to even things out.

(I recently re-read David Halberstam's magisterial The Best and the Brightest about the origins of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, including backing the French efforts to stay as the colonial power after liberation from Japanese occupation. Highly recommended.)

> And when I was a mainstream young liberal in the 1990s and early oughts

It's not your fault you missed the 1960s and 70s.

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