If by "isolationism," you meant that we will do less military adventuring, I think you're right. But not being involved in war/wars doesn't mean we've turned our backs on the world.

The world is a lot smaller than it used to be. We travel to, and do business with, just about everyone. We'll be out there regardless.

Whose an isolationist? I mean besides "blame it all on Israel" "illegal immigrants are our biggest problem" "911 was caused by the Jews" frankdialogue, of course.

Going into this war all the conservatives pushing were making fun of the UN and the IAEC and advocating the idea of a need for the US to go it alone against the moral horror of Saddam Hussein. The folks on this blog pushing the war faulted me for being the opposite of "isolationst". I'd love to see the US dedicate a tiny portion of the resources its pouring into Iraq into providing material and air support for the larger African Union peacekeeping mission slated for Darfur. Does that make me a a bad "isolationist" or bad because it its not sufficiently bellicose and imperialist enough for your armchair general-ing?

__________________
A song that says it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqITJFGyq4s

I think that you're kind of a misty thinker who's stuck on the false ideas inspired in you my the invention of the map.

Darfur is part of the same exact problem which we've been addressing.

Have you ever read about the political activities and national attitude before WWII?

Imagine if the allies had poured the same energy in the very beginning of Germany's activities as they did in the end. How many more people would be alive today.

My point is that isolationism and the unwillingness to behave with extreme aggression can further the goals of those who have the willingness to do so.

Are you suffering from Munich Syndrome, Adlerian? That's the tendency to look at all of human history and see only the events of the late 1930s when Hitler was taking over Europe. This syndrome causes its suffers to miss the far more common pattern of "leaders" (kings, presidents, dictators, prime ministers, et al) blundering into war via careless talk and careless action, based on the belief that compromise is surrender and a conviction that the other side will back down if properly intimidated.

How many people would have lived full, long lives if we didn't mistake incompetence for strength?

Seriously, how many other people on the board bring up Herodotus?

I'm just bringing up modern referrence points. What if the Eastern Europeans had invaded Mongolian to prevent the Golden Horde, isn't going to go over too well as an example. Secondly, the purpose of understanding history is to avoid repeating events by being able to extrapolate how past elements are like current elements.

I agree, but there are many precedents from which to extrapolate. Given the whole of human history, I don't believe that it would be correct to conclude that nations go to war too slowly.

Well, certainly that's true, but sometimes it's not.

In this case the people in our government didn't bother to fulling understand the culture which they attacked. I recall one official who openly stated that he knew nothing about Islam and didn't need to.

Anyway, you can't win the "hearts and minds" of people who think you're scum. Israel couldn't invade Iran and expect to do something like that could they?

Right. Arrogance, leavened by ignorance, fueled by hubris -- and with lots of firepower to bring things to a nice frothy boil.

On the whole, I believe, Iraq is more typical than atypical of how nations go to war.

Twenty-some years ago, historian Barbara Tuchman described the pattern of pursuing policy contrary to interests in her book, "March of Folly." How the British lost North America was one example. Vietnam, another. In the former case, she described official zeal to enforce the Stamp Act -- even though it inspired outrage and DEcreased tax revenue because of boycotts. Moral: Everything one has a right to do is not wise to be done.

You think that because you think of excercising power by invading and overthrowing governments. Thats a fools gambit. Backing up even a largely unsucessful AU mission with cash and air support would even at its worst save possibly tens of thousands of innocent lives and be a great PR move. Currently the US is held responsible not just for the people that we or Blackwater mows down but for all the suffering caused by every car bomb attack in Iraq in the minds of most of the Islamic world. By stepping in directly and saying "we'll take over control here" - we acepted resonsiblity for the horrors being commited against civilians by all sides in Iraq - at least according to how most of the Islamic world looks at it. Invading Iraq is the biggest PR blunder imaginable if you are trying to undermine the popularity of Islamic extremism. Every night on Al Jazeera and 6 other satelite stations people watch untold suffering in Iraq and hold the US directly resposible for that suffering.

Contributing cents on the dollar for an operation manned by African Union soldiers changes that nightly news footage to the US supporting a coalition of African soldiers stopping Arab Muslims from slitting the throats of their darker skinned also Muslim neighbors.

Which footage do you think makes more effective propaganda for the US long term in an ongoing ideological struggle against violent radical Islamicists?

The image of Arab militias pulling darker skinned Darfurian Muslims out of their evening prayers to slit their throat BTW came out of today's newspapers.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline...-govt-tro.html

I'm not a dreamy idealist. Financially supporting the odd "Well, Duh!" truly broadly supported international humanitarian intervention against heinous ethnic mass murder is sometimes the kind of good propaganda we really need to undermine the message of Al Queda and their ilk - and it doesn't require US soldiers fer chrissake.

I think you Adlerian are the one who has a naive verison real politik based on model of "empire" that is outdated for how you excercise power most effectively in today's global economy.

__________________
A song that says it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqITJFGyq4s