I could be mistaken but it seems to me this here “Dem-Porcher” redoubt is not the most reliable supporter of the scribbler Mr. Brooks.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout/print

The obvious purpose of the article is to point out that the American citizen should forget the idea that when you vote you are voting for someone to represent your interests. You are not. You are voting for a government that has already been captured for the purposes of prioritizing the representation of the financial interests of the few.

Woodrow Wilson openly admitted that WW I was “an industrial and commercial war.” J.P. Morgan convinced him that if France and Britain lost, they couldn’t repay his loans, and his bank would collapse, taking the American economy with it. All the rest was propaganda to whip up morale since we were going to get into the war.

Just about everyone from the Communist Party (after June 1941) to Robert Taft agrees that World War II had essential attributes — we absolutely had to fight that war, considering who we were facing off with.

South Korea — dubious. A unified Korea, under either a communist or noncommunist government, would have been much better than what the past fifty years have offered, although nobody in their right mind would want to be governed by the regime in Pyongyang today. In 1950, large numbers of South Koreans favored Kim Il Sung, and the division at the 38th parallel cut the industrially developed north, with the mineral resources, away from the agriculturally developed south. Getting into Korea was a tangled mess.

Vietnam was a tragic farce. If we hadn’t been so mesmerized by anti-communism, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao for that matter, would rather have dealt with us than with Joe Stalin. Even after Truman spurned that option, eighty percent of the people wanted Ho Chi Minh, and we set up a contrived government, which generally sat back and waited us to fight the war and finance their extravagant lifestyles, since after all, the war was our idea. We and the whole world would have been so much better if we stayed out of that one.

Gulf war was about oil and power, not freedom. As Ross Perot said, the first Gulf War got the Emir of Kuwait’s crystal palace back for him.

Afghanistan — initially, we went in to nail the people that launched an attack on us. Just war doesn’t get much better than that. What we did afterward, Bush never defined, and Obama is still trying to figure out.

So most, but not all, of these wars, we could have stayed out of if not for our far flung economic entanglements and imperials ambitions of certain politicians.

From my own addled and prideful view, I would be far more amenable to, at least a consideration of many of the things you seem to favor if the State that has subsumed the lapsed Republic did not place domestic concerns….or rather, a concern for the welfare of her own people and land, so far down the list of pressing interests. Parity would be a start but we are well below parity here.

Sure, we have displayed a fine history of democratic assistance and aims in the world. We also possess some very checkered history in this regard, particularly in the Cold War and Post Cold War period. However, we ride too easily on the more positive aspects of our history and now think that Democracy at gunpoint and in occupation can produce anything but failure in the long run…. with deep hatreds to boot.

I was hoping to see more of your take on “isolationsim” and how this is a two way street. While the paleo-con is tarred as an “isolationist”, the Pomo Con/ Neo-Con is championing an economic and political system which isolates the American Citizen from both their own government and the land they inhabit. The Middle Class is Exhibit One in the Course of Estrangement. A debilitated Industrial capacity is Exhibit Two. You crack that we “isolationists” want to be a “Super Switzerland” as though that is the automatic default of any opposition to your agenda. I want the United States of America to be the United States of America. Sure, we have to do this in the context of the cards we are dealt in our geo-political era but when we are forever off in search of monsters to destroy, a “Super Switzerland” becomes a pipe dream.

One could perhaps say it is a phase we must pass through in order to meet the Empyrean Fields of Global Peace but I really doubt it. This aborning Globe is gearing up to be a last ditch fight between the haves and the have-nots and the American Citizen, like the under-developed citizens of the Globe we purportedly seek to “raise-up” are being lowered down, apace. Sure, our low may not be as low as those we may come to bring to heel but rest assured, it will be decidedly lower than it is now out of necessity.

I am not an isolationist, I embrace a lot of the world and embrace it as it is, not as we would have it be in a hypothetical better incarnation as planned by a claque of bureaucrats who cannot even balance a budget, let alone plan a war and occupation of a primitive third world nation. We have history’s highest educated Military Brass at the helm of the World’s Mightiest Military and we are at war in a third World Country for eight years…whose corrupt government we inserted and now assert we will bypass to achieve a victory.

Accordingly, I would turn your slander of “isolationist” squarely back upon the Neo-Con/Paleo-con globalist-modernist whose doctrinaire sense of superiority, matched with a bureaucratic definition of “pragmatism” has evolved into a text book definition of Piracy, the original isolated extra-nationalist: The global freebooter. At least the Pirate swashbuckled with honesty. This is admittedly a reductive caricature but the paleo-con receives the same dismissive cant from the Neo-Con in the form , primarily, of Strawmen.

I too wish better things for all people but I cannot abide the idea of introducing them to our sense of “better things” from the bombay doors of a jet fighter nor can I easily swallow the culture of abandonment of our own people and land which the globalist project so defiantly displays while lecturing us all on how we must behave and get in line and let the adults make our decisions.

Simply put, have you ever questioned yourself on why the Neo-Conservative, PomoCon agenda is so warcentric? And Furthermore, how much more in debt do we have to plunge to realize it? Does the irony register at all? War is a veritable font of perversion and chaos. Perhaps a few Mauldin cartoons with a side of Pogo might help you in attempting an understanding of this . At the very least, it would be prudent to question why there are no other countries willing to embark upon the Globalist Police role that we so heartily embrace.

The United States of America was a Country established upon the principles of Checks and Balances as a counterweight to Mankind’s propensity toward mischief. We now pervert this system to perhaps defeat, across the the planet, the very notion of Checks and Balances as though a government can vanquish mankind’s manifest perversions. This is an Ideology of Isolationism.

Having seeing the nastiness of Kosovo on a trip to that part of Serbia before it blew up in early 99…. and watching it all unfold while in Slovakia safely away.. but close enough to meet victims.. my Burke that Mel (and Russell–whom I had a famous weekend trip to U Houston that was such a flop for poor organization and tom-foolery by an organizer–that the 2 UD’er I went with to be with Russell left him the half bottle of scotch we picked up the night before) taught me came to mind–with that misquote–that evil trumphs because good men do nothing…hit home.

Does not power come with responsibility? Mel always taught that. And isn’t duty something traditional conservatives hold dear? As well as honor? That these trads have gotten in bed with the radical wacky anti-war left has forced me to question the voices of what remains of the old right today… they utterly lack that good sense the old right had on such issues, that one ought to resist evil, that in this world, fallen as it is, war might be a necessary way to save what little good there is.

James, you are consistent. You want autarky, and the self-restraint (“isolationism”) that naturally goes with it. And it seems this must necessarily be W. Berry’s position from what I’ve read of him.

Now I think the position is quite Quixotic, not to mention colder than I’d like towards the well-being of the rest of the world, but let’s give it it’s due, at least in the absract. Three main points, then.

1) To be pro-autarky responsibly requires one to have a theory of how we get from here to there. How do we responsibly, democratically, etc., by and large unentangle our economy from the world’s? What are the in-between and transitional states of the economy that would have to be adopted and defended. Any by your theory that economic entanglement goes hand-in-hand with defense entanglement, what are the in-between states foreign policy wise?

2) Isn’t it possible that even if you could disentangle economically, you couldn’t do so entirely defense-wise? The question becomes, how could the U.S. be like a super-Switzerland, with that prickly and spirited ability to defend itself if push comes to shove, in the 21st century and beyond? I would argue that you’d still need, a) nukes and the missles to deliver them, b) overseas spying, c) the ability conventionally to hold even with at least the second-strongest military out there, d) the readiness to enter into coalitions of the willing, e) the ability science-wise to hold near-even with virtually any competitor nation, given the unforseeable pathways of WMD development.

3) You say, “I see our economic structure, precisely because of its far flung integration with foreign industry, foreign resources, and foreign states, as necessitating our familiar and routine projection of military force.” Did our economic structure cause
a) our joining WWI?
b) our joining WWII?
c) our defending S. Korea?
d) our defending S. Vietnam?
e) Cold War troop deployments in Europe? Cold War build-ups in many areas, including nukes?
f) Gulf War?
g) Afghan War?
h) Iraq War?
That is, wasn’t there a pretty seriously important non-structural efficient cause for each of these? I.e., reasonable worries about Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Intl. Communism, Islamist Terror, WMD Proliferation? Now maybe we could have cut a deal with the Hussein regime or Imperial Germany, but how could autarky ever keep us safe if a balance of power in the outside world fell to Nazi, communist, or Islamist forces?
If autarkists have a deep theory for why all these wars are really due to economic structure, then by all means develop it and talk about that to the Amer. people. Say, “we are not arrogant Marxists or arrogant William Lloyd Garrison Christians who think we have an immediate plan to turn everything aright or who think we can charge you with a grievously hypocritical super-sin. We know you had your reasons for these various wars, that you generally fought them in good faith towards those reasons, and that you did not fight these wars, or become at times complacent about your military establishment, out of a desire to treat the world unfairly, let alone to drive SUVs fueled by the blood of suffering innocents. We’re just saying that we see a deeper reason shaping many of these wars and that we offer a deeper solution to the ongoing need to fight wars such as this. Can we interest you in our long-term plan for autarkist and restraintist transformation?”

Not as fun, or should I say, not as morally bracing, as talking about U.S. “state terror” driven by corporate imperatives, is it?

And so, a final thought: if at bottom, the average Porcher would be made unhappy by either a) the sober, politic-ly polite, and way-way long-shot advocacy of gradually becoming super-Switzerland, or by b) not denouncing, despite not having an alternative that one is actually working for, the non-long-shot foreign policy options of the present (see above) to the skies, then what does that say? I’d say that it says more ugly things and more beautiful things about the human soul than I can begin to express here, but on the practical level, the it poses perhaps the fundamental Porch problemo.

To take last things first, I think I can safely ignore your heartfelt concerns about the likelihood of my confirmation in the Senate. Such an improbable scenario is worth speculating on only for reasons quite secondary to those of my essay — so far, at least, as I am concerned.

But your broader point expressed in that scenario suggests to me you have quite understandably misread my account of the history of American foreign policy as part of an understanding of politics in general that, more or less, I do not share. While I find certain insights of Marxist and post-Marxist critics of American policy persuasive, I would resist the attempts most of the make — and which you seem to see me making — to reduce my analysis of American foreign policy to a cabal of financiers. That said, of course, there have been no shortage of advocates of American hegemony — you are one of them. Why, when I critique this impulse, which has been so explicitly on display for so many decades, but most recently in the pages of neoconservative periodicals, am I suddenly implicated in the theorization of conspiracies?

My argument — which is not fleshed out fully in this essay, but is elsewhere so developed, above all in the essays I cited above — runs roughly thus: the expansive network of trade and the internationalism of nominally American corporations, is the cause of the cheap consumer goods,cheap energy, and the availability of credit, to which most Americans are accustomed. If they want these latter things then, at minimum, they must implicitly sign up for the kind of massive interventionist military we presently have.

In this respect, my critique is aimed more at the neo-liberals, who think that one can have global economic integration without a globalized hegemonic military making the world, as it were, predictable enough for safe investment. Rather, if you want the kind of economy we presently have, and the kind of consumer economy we presently have, then you had best pay your respects to the U.S. as the world’s policeman. Thus, when I write, “The chief difference between this second Bush administration and the Kerry administration that was not to be is that the former is unapologetic about using military power in support of American corporate interests,” one misses my emphasis if one thinks it is on “using military power” rather than on “unapologetic.” More on this anon.

In brief, I do not see a conspiracy, nor do I share Bruce Smith’s intrinsically Marxist, class-based account of history. I see our economic structure, precisely because of its far flung integration with foreign industry, foreign resources, and foreign states, as necessitating our familiar and routine projection of military force.

This leads us to two of your points. You provide an account of the paleoconservative position as incoherent: free trade without “empire-like” military intervention is impossible, and the paleos, insofar as they advocate such a thing, are issuing incoherent policy. I agree. That is why my policy is, in converse, coherent.

If we do not wish to engage routinely in wars akin to that in Iraq, we should not allow ourselves to engage in the kind of flattened, globalized ecnomic system that we, in fact, have brought fully into being during the last half century. If we do not wish to participate in and contribute to that economic system, then we should frankly acknowledge that we are going to have to build up as much as possible a secure, self-sustaining economic system — one that aspires to, in brief, awtarky.

So, I might well agree with your historical account of the paleoconservative position (I would actually critique several points within it, but less that pass), but I would say that rendering that position coherent improves it. Corrollary to that, I reject out of hand your parenthetical dismissal of autarchy.

But that dismissal explains a lot. I agree that, if our only option were for the globalized corporate economic system we now have, then our only foreign policy practice ought to resemble very closely what we have had lo these many years. Moreover, I sympathize with the practice of W. Bush of rendering the assertion of American military force as a frank proclamation of American hegemony. I find that practice — “unapologetic” — more honest than the blood gauze of neo-liberal theory.

I do not believe this is our only option, because I see no reason that the United States as a whole, indeed the States independently, could not aspire to the kind of self-reliance and self-sustaining economic life I describe as awtarky. Why would we do this? Because I believe we would be in some respects poorer and more modest in our way of living in the world (I don’t mean modest to China, I mean to live modestly or frugally). Communal frugality and awtarky are themselves among the list of virtues constitutive of a happy life. We would be poorer in some respects, but happier over all. I believe this sense of moral self-reliance comports well with the instinctual morality of most Americans; we want to be independent of foreign entanglements, and to live within our own means (rather than what become our means, when we become the hired mercenary of the world), and so I am setting forth the propositions that necessarily follow from that. What I suspect you take me to be setting forth is a compound of neo-liberal utopian programs for perpetual peace — a program in which I have never believed and to which I have replied in the essay “Where Is Our Perpetual Peace?” on this site.

James, I really would be interested to hear your thoughts, but don’t feel obliged…I got obsessive writing that long essay-comment and I know everyone’s getting swamped right now.

Also, I’m not so quick to disparage all “conspiracy theories.” For example, Oklahoma City TV journalist Jayna Davis’s book, The Third Terrorist, provides a factual analysis, bolstered by sworn testimony, of the Murrah Federal Bldg. bombing far superior to the gummint’s amusing findings of fact and conclusions of law.

Another example would be evidence, including film evidence, that indicates the United States gummint participated in the planned massacre of over one hundred citizens at the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas.

Labeling an anti-gummint position a “conspiracy theory” is of course one method in marginalizing gummint critics and curtailing any further analysis of an event whose findings might place the gummint in an embarrassing or illegal position.

************************************************************************

I do not deny, nor does Ceaser, that the massive U.S. role overseas does not come without massive costs. Would it be in U.S. interests if there were other great nations on the world stage that would share our overall inclinations, interests at the global level, and basic trustworthiness, that we could share our burdens with? Say, down the line, India? Or, a truly Unified EU? Brazil? Maybe a politically altered France, Russia, or even China? Or, nearer in time, a rejuvenated NATO? Of course it would be.

So James, you are right that we must keep in mind the goal of withdrawing from certain “practically necessary” bases, positions, and commitments, so as to hand them over to others we can trust them with. Becoming less of the Indispensable Nation by getting other nations to strengthen themselves (while still remaining the strongest) is a much more doable long-term goal than ridding the world of tyranny or nuclear weapons.

This is one of the many reasons I so oppose proposals to put Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. They are in the Russian sphere of influence, and we cannot be the who-ya-gonna-call guy everywhere. Moreover, the Europeans need to know that we are only so reliable. International engagement is not our religion. We are not a bank. You prick us, we bleed; you continually denounce us, we may well come to hate you. Let the Europeans understand that we are not unconditionally committed to keeping them dominated by Russian power, particularly if they refuse to take actions to defend themselves, and if they hinder our efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and Islamist terrorism. That is, the now-widespread belief in Europe that civilization has entered a stage where war is unnecessary, to be replaced by nation-integrating international law, is an incorrect belief. The belief of a U.S. security-junkie. Europeans need to know: we might leave. We are not as bank-ably reliable as you might think. In a bizarre unintended way, Obama’s hopefully one-term administration is going to underline that point.

1) My own stance can be called “justice-bound realism” that in an inherently globalized era is “non-isolationist” and “provisionally committed to hegemony.” Call it Republican Realism for shorthand, or Scoop Jackson Realism if you’re in a bipartisan mood. It is Washington and Hamilton modernized. As applied in a post 9-11 world, it is by and large the stance expressed in Bush’s sober 2002 National Security Strategy, the sobriety of which was lost in Bush’s 2nd Inaugural. Neo-conservativism of the 2nd Inaugural variety, i.e. the Wilsonian-Fukuyaman variety, exemplified by William Kristol, has been rightly criticized, and I think most deftly by my sort of justice-bound non-isolationist realists, such as Charles Kesler of the Claremont Review of Books. (And this stance, as articulated by Kesler and others, tends to be the stance of most of the Pomocon folk.)

And then of course, there is the mythical neo-con bogeyman, who wants to spread democracy by force and by lies everywhere, that so many Americans have come to so ignorantly talk of. But since the stance of this bogeyman is not one that anyone actually holds, it is useless to discuss.

What are the other possible stances in our day?

2), I’ve already mentioned, 2nd Inaugural Neoconservatism.

3) Progressivist Internationalism. This is basically Obama…and it comes in different flavors according to a) how quickly and b) how far its espousers want to get the U.S. integrated into an ever-more integrating international law system. For now, U.S. politicians have to be very coy about saying they are for this. Yes, many of the Demmi Internationalists are less Carter-esquely soft/foolish than Obama is, since they are educated enough to know what diplomacy consists of. But that’s incidental, since the aim is the same. And some say the U.S. will remain the indispensable lead nation in any construction of an intl law system, but the logic’s push is that in all but extraordinary circumstances, the rest of the world, or the EU/NGO approved portions of it, gets to de facto vote on whether we use our armed forces or not.

4) America-first restraint-ism or “Isolationism.” Isolationism in economic and cultural terms is nearly impossible, and has seldom if ever been advocated by American political leaders, not even by the more minor ones. (And James, while I’m not certain what “autarky” looks like for you, going by the dictionary def. I’d say it’s both impossible and undesirable.) The isolationist creed advocated by many of both parties of the 20s and 30s, in which we trade massively but keep our troops to our sphere, was to my mind never that coherent, and seems mainly shaped by particular concerns and miscalculations unique to those two decades.

4a) P. Buchanan and his American Conservative retrospectively gives this isolationism more coherence than I think it really had, and ties it to its brand of paleoconservatism. And, with Pat at least, this requires radically misreading and rewriting WWII. It’s worth noting that Burke wouldn’t have done that.
4b) From time to time, currents from anti-anti-communist American peace-nikism and others from old populist/Democratic Socialist domestic economy War on Poverty concerns seem to coalesce to potentially create a lefty, but pretty damn statist, America first-ism. It never flies except as rhetoric, and its statist angle cannot be welcomed by Porchers.
So, 4c) might be the Porcher version of this. Take the populist and peacenik ire without the “invest the peace-dividends in government do-good agencies” hogwash. Take Buchanan shorn of his more red-meat conservative, paleo and questionable aspects.

To my mind, a Porcher could endorse 1) or 4c). I would of course argue that 1) is best, and that 4c) appeals more to Porcher sentiment than to the necessary thinking. But either would make sense for a Porcher, right?
2 and 3 are simply too cosmopolitan in focus and spirit. Now, for the Dem-leaning Porchers, we might imagine that a position 3b) exists, wherein internationalist governance occurs on security, basic human rights, economy, trade, etc., but where a 100 flowers are left to bloom locally. As Pat’s posts on Germany illustrate, given certain Euro-rural cultural inheritances and assuming Porcher political pressures on the domestic front across the whole integratin’ super-polity, this is not inconceivable. Some way of reigning in the economistic/progressivistic EU-spirit that sees EVERYTHING as potentially effecting fair trade, and EVERYTHING as relating to human rights, animal rights, earth rights, etc., would have to be found, however. So, 3b) envisions a world where war is negociated out of existence, i.e, largely relegated to a few Kaplan-esque wastelands, while domestically, guys like Leon Krier and Prince Charles can impose Berryville-sized and Gary Snyder-spirited public entities by means of town-planning, and then let the people in these provided townships govern themselves in the policy space left to them. In this federated world integration of governance, Kentucky and even its counties might conceivably become important again in a way they never could in the U.S.A. On certain issues, the EU integration really has given certain ethnic minorities and certain towns more apparent power than they had before.

I’d be curious to hear which foreign-policy position appeals most to y’all.

***********************************************************************

Now for the rant. The leftist M. Walzer once excoriated his fellow lefties post-9/11 for not being able to even talk as if they could govern and defend the nation if they ever were put in power over it.

In his essay James says he understands the practical value of those overseas bases, but he also says things like this:

“President Bush declared that the United States’ sorry legacy of manipulating weak and semi-sovereign states for benefit of its power and business interests would end. The deaths and coups his father had either overseen or ignored while head of the CIA would cease.” [by James’ telling, this implicit promise is of course broken]

“The chief difference between this second Bush administration and the Kerry administration that was not to be is that the former is unapologetic about using military power in support of American corporate interests.”

“It allows, moreover, Americans at home to believe that their daily lives—the products they import, the gas they burn, the debt they accumulate or allow their government to accumulate almost beyond measure—do not implicate them in state terror abroad.”

Well, if U.S. for policy is REALLY all decided and dominated by Spirit-of-1954-CIA cabals and by the imposition of American corporate interests, and basically just results in “state terror” that all Americans and their lifestyles are secretly implicated in, then, well, it’s time to break open the Immanuel Wallerstein and the other hoary old Marxisant theorists and chuck out all of the above stances, because no remotely just foreign policy could be chosen by we ignorant/compromised cogs-with-a-vote in this System.

I hesitate to say the following, but here goes: if I heard tomorrow, James, that Obama had appointed you to be on some foreign policy consulting team, I’d join in with all the inevitable talk-radio conservatives opposing your appointment and say, “here’s a guy who seems to hate America-as-it-is, who misjudges America-as-it-is, who thinks the American system will remain hopeless without a change so radical as to be revolutionary. WHERE is his evidence whereby to paint so many Americans and their leaders by such dark colors? That’s right, it’s only found and validated in conspiratorial theories A, B, C, and D. The man is out of touch with reality.”

Sorry James, that’s what I’d say. Until evidence emerges of your sobriety in foreign affairs and of your willingness to restrain your critiques of your fellow citizens’ and public servants’ choices, that’s where I’d have to stand. American foreign policy of the last 50 years cannot be fairly characterized as “using military power in support of American corporate interests.”

I heard Michael Savage a couple nights ago (hey, cut me some slack, I have a long commute!) say Obama’s support for the Afghan war is determined by his being in bed with the military-industrial complex. You agree with that James? If not, do you agree with me about how destructive the spirit behind such conspiracy theorizing is? How it totally shuts down the possibility of civic discourse?

To depart exit stage left, however, I’d say, just as M. Walzer lamented about his fellow democratic socialists, that a lot of you Porchers seem incapable of talking about American foreign policy in a manner that would give its citizens confidence in your trustworthiness in actually running it.

http://www.robert-h-frank.com/PDFs/EV.07.12.09.pdf

As Robert Frank says “Ideas have Consequences” and for America to waste lives and huge amounts of money in places like Afghanistan and Iraq for half-baked ideas about democracy is something that ought to be openly debated but ruling elite mind-sets such as Obama’s deny. If Obama is the democrat he pretends to be why would he not have opened out the debate on extra military expenditure and troop commitments to Afghanistan? If the Swiss can have a referendum on minarets for goodness sake why can’t the American people have a referendum on military adventurism in a situation where imminent attack on the United States is not an issue. Change you can believe in has very rapidly turned into arrogance you should believe in!