It's Time to Start Minding Our Own Business (Southern Avenger)

If I had my druthers, the never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine would be but a small news brief in American newspapers. But since we police the world, we must always monitor our global police scanner, where not only Israel's conflicts, but those of North and South Korea, the nation of Georgia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, and pretty much everywhere else is the United States' business because we insist on making it so.

What many Americans bizarrely consider national "defense" is actually an aggressive and enduring offense, and yet we are always surprised when other nations get offended.

Last week, Israeli soldiers raided a Turkish flotilla seeking to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza. From Israel's perspective, the flotilla illegally broke a blockade. When the Israeli soldiers boarded the flotilla, they were attacked by those on board, something the flotilla passengers called self-defense and Israel deemed reason enough to open fire. The end result: nine passengers dead, many soldiers wounded, 700 activists arrested or "kidnapped" (depending on your perspective), an irate Turkey, and an indignant Israel. Many nations have condemned Israel for these actions. They have also condemned the U.S. for not sufficiently condemning Israel. Even though Washington, D.C. is more than 5,000 miles from Tel Aviv, somehow Israel's controversies always automatically become ours. Why?

This basic question is not simply so-called "isolationist" naiveté, something critics would no doubt charge. It's quite the opposite: It is human nature to have a blindness toward the big questions because we get so caught up in the little ones. The average idiot couple arguing on Maury gets so caught up in their own he-said-she-said, white-trash narrative they never stop to consider whether there's any real value to their obviously irreparably damaged relationship.

The same goes for America's relationship with not only Israel, but much of the globe, where our foreign policy is eternally bogged down by the same sort of well-meaning but ultimately idealistic minutia. According to foreign affairs analyst Andrew J. Bacevich, "The bedrock assumption to which all of official Washington adheres, liberal Democrats no less than conservative Republicans, is that the United States itself constitutes the axis around which history turns. We define the future. Our actions determine its course. The world needs, expects, and yearns for America to lead, thereby ensuring the ultimate triumph of liberty."

Bacevich gives a fairly accurate description of America's view of itself and its place on the world stage and also how the U.S. insists only it can play the lead role. Bacevich adds, "For the United States to shrink from its responsibility to lead is, at the very least, to put at risk the precarious stability to which humanity clings and in all likelihood would open the door to unspeakable catastrophe. Alternatives to American leadership simply do not exist."

When there was a skirmish between Russia and Georgia in 2008, then presidential candidate John McCain exclaimed, "We are all Georgians now." No, we're not. I don't know a single American who thinks that.

The Korean War ended a half century ago, and yet we still have nearly 40,000 troops stationed there, something that takes on a special significance given the recent actions by North Korea. Defenders of the foreign policy status quo maintain that North Korea's aggression only underscores the need for a U.S. presence there. Really? For how much longer? Another 50 years? Afghanistan is now the longest war in American history. When the shooting finally stops -- a highly improbable scenario -- how long will American troops remain? Fifty years? How long will they be in Iraq? During the 2008 presidential campaign, McCain famously said troops could be in Iraq for up to "a hundred years."

Consider this: Israel's recent attack or interception was on a Turkish ship in international waters. Turkey is part of NATO; Israel isn't. According to that charter, the U.S. must now go to war with Israel. No one is suggesting any such insanity, but it is worth noting that anyone who suggests NATO is a Cold War relic that should be scrapped is ridiculed or marginalized for making such a suggestion. America simply has to be everywhere and at all times.

To question any of this is to be called an "isolationist," to question our special relationship with Israel is to be called "anti-Semitic," and to ask questions, period, about one of the most expensive, damaging, and irrational foreign policies in history is politically taboo. The seemingly hopeless conflict between Israel and the Palestinians should have never been our fight, but we've made it ours, a point driven home by the events of last week. How many more such lessons must we be taught and will we ever learn them?

Just out of curiosity, would you attribute this, at least in part, to the tendency of many on the Right towards a radical, Objectivist-style libertarianism?
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I think that has to be at least a part of it. Sometimes Christians are corrupted by the Liberalism the world foists upon them thru Hollywood and the popular media. At other times, Christians are confused by what is identified as “Conservatism” even within the “New Media,” “Talk Radio,” and the internet.

Objectivism and the old line libertarian Conservatism of Ayn Rand and even William F. Buckley to a large extent is secular and based on many different principles and foundations than the Social Conservatism that is produced by a Biblical worldview. Scriptural principles inform and undergird the Soical Conservatism of Christians, and while both forms will generally agree on some issues to some extent (economics/capitalism, for instance, or peace thru strength as military/foreign policy) they will ultimately disagree on moral issues like abortion, homosexual unions/”marriage,” etc...

Christians NEED to be re-taught a basis for the BIBLICAL worldview that most of the Founders of this nation held to.

"...Christians NEED to be re-taught a basis for the BIBLICAL worldview that most of the Founders of this nation held to."

I'll ditto patriot preacher's comment and reference the Patrick Henry quote on Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus's FR profile page—along with, well, thousands of others like them from the Founding Fathers, linking American/human liberty with a Biblical worldview.

For example, one very relevant to today's social condition:

"While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation [that is, hypocrisy] towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." [John Adams to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, October 11, 1798]

Thus we see the "strongest cords" of the Constitution straining under society's unbridled morality today.

Then Benjamin Franklin said:

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." [Benjamin Franklin]

And Americans wonder why we strain under the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. There are hundreds more of these quotes; the heritage the Founder left us for such a time as today.

Which was why I originally mentioned the Truth Project. What I have seen thus far, Dr. Del Tackett is taking the whole issue deeper than the particulars of the founding of the American Republic, he is addressing the foundational ideas of true American/human liberty where they were first revealed—the Bible. As patriot preacher alluded to.

A program like the Truth Project, deployed in churches small a great nationally would be a powerful deterrence to the social/political turmoil we see today. It's wonderful. Very few, even me, are articulate enough these ideas, although Free Republic could probably field a small army of them.

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