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The Best Foreign Policy is No Foreign Policy

Or, Domestic policy is the only policy.
James Matthew Wilson
October 20, 2010

Devon, PA. This article by Robert Pape documents what most of us know — whether we like it or not; and it documents it better than, say, the Bush administration documented its case for war.

Build a wall; keep within it.  Cultivate your own green fields.  That is a foreign policy our “globalized” world (redundant?) can live with.

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A stack of three Local Culture journals and the book 'Localism in the Mass Age'

James Matthew Wilson

James Matthew Wilson is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Augustinian Traditions at Villanova University.

6 comments

  • Zac
    15 years ago

    Have you read Michael Sheuer’s books?

  • Tim
    15 years ago

    The obvious flaws in this argument are:

    1. There wouldn’t be any ‘occupations’ if it weren’t for Islamic adventurism.
    2. Other countries have been ‘occupied’ without resorting to suicide terrorism.

    The only reason anyone is in Iraq or Afghanistan is because certain nutcases (who, gee, by some odd coincidence were steeped in a aggressive totalitarian ideology named ‘Islam’) were threatening other civilized nations. The time to do something about a murderer is while he’s talking trash and loading his gun, not after he’s shot you.

    ‘Suicide terrorism’ is an original creation with Muslims. Other bona-fide terrorists (the IRA, for an obvious example) don’t do that sort of stupid shit, because only Muslims believe that you can go to heaven by killing yourself in the course of killing the other guy.

    • Zac
      15 years ago

      That’s ridiculous. Even if you discount Japanese kamikaze attacks, the modern suicide attack was not an original creation of Muslims but was originally developed by the Tamil Tigers (who, incidentally, were no friends to Muslims).

      You need to study up, son. I would recommend the books of Michael Scheuer, another individual who, like Robert Pape, and unlike you, knows what he is talking about.

    • James Matthew Wilson
      15 years ago

      I don’t want to start a long thread here, but I certainly agree with you there, Tim. Were we to cease going abroad in search of monsters, there would still be monsters; I would just prefer to kill them at the gates rather than breeding them in their lairs.

  • Anonymous
    15 years ago

    I’m not sure that article says what you and the author think it says.

  • CK
    15 years ago

    There’s no need to build a wall if you don’t have some standing army itching to go outside of it.

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