Barack Obama, Isolationist!

Really? Says who? Says Jamie Kirchick in a piece at Standpoint. Kirchick hangs this dubious thesis upon a single shoogly nail:

If the Democrats learned a lesson from their last presidential election defeat, however, it’s that they were not isolationist enough. In a little noticed remark earlier this month, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama expressed exactly the same sentiment as Kerry four years ago, using almost exactly the same language. Outlining his economic agenda delivered at a speech delivered in Raleigh, North Carolina, Obama stated that “Instead of spending $12 billion a month to rebuild Iraq, I think it's time we invested in our roads and schools and bridges and started to rebuild America.”

It would have been one thing had Obama assailed the cost of maintaining America’s military presence in Iraq. After all, he has hardly made a secret of his opposition to the war, and has criticized nearly every aspect of its execution up to and including the successful surge in forces and counterinsurgency plan executed so masterfully by General David Petraeus. But Obama’s slight last week was not directed at the cost of stationing over 100,000 armed men in Iraq – an iteration of his oft-repeated line that there is “no military solution” to the conflict there – but specifically at reconstruction aid. That’s the money that goes to building schools, health clinics, government ministries and the like. In other words, Obama believes we should stop constructing the edifices (literal and figurative) of the sort of liberal society that was impossible under the reign of Saddam Hussein. Criticizing the continuation of an effort that he believes never should have started would at least have had the virtue of being vaguely principled, as opposed to a crude expression of isolationism.

Why stop at Iraq? There is no limit to Obama’s admonition. He happened to choose Iraq reconstruction aid as the target of his ire because anything associated with that poor country has become unpopular with the American electorate. Yet the underlying logic of Obama’s statement is that we shouldn’t spend money on projects overseas if that money could likewise be spent here at home. Why not go after the billions of dollars we spend to combat the spread of AIDS in Africa? Why not attack the programs we spend on democracy promotion in some of the world’s darkest tyrannies? Come to think of it, why is the United States offering so much aid to cyclone-ravaged Burma, when those dollars could be spent on flood relief in the Midwest?

With his call for spending money at home “instead” of abroad, Obama establishes a false choice, creating a dichotomy where none exists.

But of course Obama is not "creating a dichotomy" quite possibly because, as Kirchick admits, "none exists". Why stop at Iraq? Probably because Obama thinks the war has been a terrible blunder and American attention might be better, and more profitably, focsed elsewhere. One may disagree with this analysis but doing so does not render Obama's position "isolationist". Indeed, if Obama were the sort of (terrible!) isolationist Kirchick accuses him of being, he might indeed consider spending American tax-payer's cash on Africans an irresponsible waste of money. In fact he proposes doubling the amount of money the US spends on "foreign assistance". So it seems there is in fact a "limit to Obama's admonition".

Equally, Obama is such an "isolationist" that, last time I checked, he wanted to increase US efforts in Afghanistan, to the point that he has, sensibly or not, promised to attack - and deploy troops to - north-west Pakistan if circumstances warrant. Depending upon your perspective nvading a notional ally may be thought reckless or a necessary evil, but it's hardly the sort of thing Pat Buchanan - to whom Kirchick absurdly compares Obama - is likely to recommend.

Nor, last time I checked, has Obama suggested the US should end its presence in Colombia. Indeed he fully supports Plan Colombia and agrees that the United States must also "take on the Mexican drug cartels". In the middle east he says the US would "never distance itself from Israel", while his ambitions for Africa seem all but limitless. One could go on...

Nor does he believe that the United States should close its military bases around the world and bring the boys home. On the contrary, like everyone else who's won a major party nomination in recent decades he reserves the right to intervene in other countries where he judges it necessary. He may not express this hegemonic view as fiercely as Kirchick might like, but it's fanciful to suppose that Obama wants to "withdraw" from the rest of the world. On the contrary, he often says "We can restore America's leadership in the world." Some isolationism that!

And with regard to Iraq, it's worth noting that Obama's "plan" calls for US troops to be brought home within 16 months of his taking office. In other words, even this scandalously isolationist candidate envisages US troops being in Iraq for another two years. And there seems every possibility that Obama's policy will change and he'll find himself prepared to countenance an American military presence in Iraq for rather longer than his most devoted supporters would like. Thats why some of them are unhappy with his perceived drift to the centre...

But, none of this - nor the all but endless litany of areas for international engagement that are hidden in plain sight on his website - are enough. No, one line in a single speech cofirms that Obama is an "isolationist". Well, if so, he's an isolationist who bears some resemblance to another candidate who plpedged to end an unpopular war: Richard Milhouse Nixon. That being so, Obama is an isolationist only if the word isolationist doesn't mean what it actually means.

Comments

[Chris]

You could spend your whole life correcting that buffoon's errors.

[nadezhda]

Yes, the problem with Jamie isn't just that he's an annoying, knee-jerk little pissant. He's so regularly wrong. I take him as Exhibit A of the incestuous little world of Washington/NY "opinion journalism" because I can't imagine anyone would give him a gig if he weren't Marty's protege. It's not as if he's a reporter like his ideological companion-in-virtual-arms, Eli Lake, who goes out and digs up informative and useful stories even if one vehemently disagrees with the policy implications he draws.

Thanks, however, for the link to the new magazine venture. I enjoyed your review of Trevor-Roper's book, which confirms a bit of what I'd heard of it elsewhere. Saves me adding it to my TBR pile.

I suppose you don't like to appear to be pimping your own work, but you ought to give your blog readers a heads-up when you have an article published elsewhere. If not in a post, stick links in your sidebar.

Just curious about the mission of Standpoint -- what's this "civilisation" they think they're saving? I read: "Unashamedly highbrow in an era of relentless ‘dumbing down,’ it responds to the unfulfilled needs of the educated public." At first glance, it strikes me as relentlessly middlebrow, which is actually not a bad thing at all. But Kirchick isn't going to do much for their "not dumbing down" branding exercise.

If Standpoint want to save "civilisation", you ought to work your two excellent Wodehouse posts into a "how to" article for them. There have been more than enough Wodehouse-and-the-Nazi stories, but not enough about finding one's way into and through his enormous oeuvre or putting Fry and Laurie's efforts into perspective now we have some years' distance from their production. Your recent posts are really good stuff, whether for a novice or a confirmed Wodehouse groupie.

[John Maszka]

In the 1950s, in the wake of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” plan, Pakistan obtained a 125 megawatt heavy-water reactor from Canada. After India’s first atomic test in May 1974, Pakistan immediately sought to catch up by attempting to purchase a reprocessing plant from France. After France declined due to U.S. resistance, Pakistan began to assemble a uranium enrichment plant via materials from the black market and technology smuggled through A.Q. Khan. In 1976 and 1977, two amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act were passed, prohibiting American aid to countries pursuing either reprocessing or enrichment capabilities for nuclear weapons programs.

These two, the Symington and Glenn Amendments, were passed in response to Pakistan’s efforts to achieve nuclear weapons capability; but to little avail. Washington’s cool relations with Islamabad soon improved. During the Reagan administration, the US turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s program. In return for Pakistan’s cooperation and assistance in the mujahideen’s war against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Reagan administration awarded Pakistan with the third largest economic and military aid package after Israel and Egypt. Despite the Pressler Amendment, which made US aid contingent upon the Reagan administration’s annual confirmation that Pakistan was not pursuing nuclear weapons capability, Reagan’s “laissez-faire” approach to Pakistan’s nuclear program seriously aided the proliferation issues that we face today.

Not only did Pakistan continue to develop its own nuclear weapons program, but A.Q. Khan was instrumental in proliferating nuclear technology to other countries as well. Further, Pakistan’s progress toward nuclear capability led to India’s return to its own pursuit of nuclear weapons, an endeavor it had given up after its initial test in 1974. In 1998, both countries had tested nuclear weapons. A uranium-based nuclear device in Pakistan; and a plutonium-based device in India.

Over the years of America's on again- off again support of Pakistan, Musharraf continues to be skeptical of his American allies. In 2002 he is reported to have told a British official that his “great concern is that one day the United States is going to desert me. They always desert their friends.” Musharraf was referring to Viet Nam, Lebanon, Somalia ... etc., etc., etc.,

Taking the war to Pakistan is perhaps the most foolish thing America can do. Obama is not the first to suggest it, and we already have sufficient evidence of the potentially negative repercussions of such an action. On January 13, 2006, the United States launched a missile strike on the village of Damadola, Pakistan. Rather than kill the targeted Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, the strike instead slaughtered 17 locals. This only served to further weaken the Musharraf government and further destabilize the entire area. In a nuclear state like Pakistan, this was not only unfortunate, it was outright stupid. Pakistan has 160 million Arabs (better than half of the population of the entire Arab world). Pakistan also has the support of China and a nuclear arsenal.

I predict that America’s military action in the Middle East will enter the canons of history alongside Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Holocaust, in kind if not in degree. The Bush administration’s war on terror marks the age in which America has again crossed a line that many argue should never be crossed. Call it preemption, preventive war, the war on terror, or whatever you like; there is a sense that we have again unleashed a force that, like a boom-a-rang, at some point has to come back to us. The Bush administration argues that American military intervention in the Middle East is purely in self-defense. Others argue that it is pure aggression. The consensus is equally as torn over its impact on international terrorism. Is America truly deterring future terrorists with its actions? Or is it, in fact, aiding the recruitment of more terrorists?

The last thing the United States should do at this point and time is to violate yet another state’s sovereignty. Beyond being wrong, it just isn't very smart. We all agree that slavery in this country was wrong; as was the decimation of the Native American populations. We all agree that the Holocaust and several other acts of genocide in the twentieth century were wrong. So when will we finally admit that American military intervention in the Middle East is wrong as well?

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