Kakki, I would say that's a legitimate reason not to go to war - the
isolationist position. I'm not sure I agree that America often gets
pulled into conflicts it didn't initiate (or in some way sustain). To
give two examples: it's because of the support for Israel of American
Jews that no American administration will cut the aid given to
Israel. Without that aid (Laurent, tell me if I'm wrong here),
Israel could not sustain itself economically. And it's America that
keeps vetoing attempts to get Israel to stick to UN resolutions, and
this is something that really upsets the Arab world - why sanctions
are imposed aganst them (or even invasion) for ignoring UN
resolutions, yet nothing happens to Israel for doing the same. So it
really is America that is keeping that conflict bubbling over. I'm
not saying they shouldn't give aid to Israel - I'm just saying that,
in so doing and without exerting much political pressure to reach a
settlement - they're fueling the fire, and causing the Arabs to hate
them. (This is to simplify things of course - there's the
anti-Semitism issue and the need to protect Israelis from that, and
the question of whether the Arabs really want a political settlement.
. . but you take my point, I hope.)
And a second example: it was Irish Americans giving money and
political support to Sinn Fein/IRA that, in part, kept the violence
in Northern Ireland going.
In neither of these cases, did America get pulled into anything -
they pulled themselves in and arguably caused the conflicts to deepen
and/or last longer than they otherwise would have.
The thing is that Americans want to be powerful in the world - want
to have influence - and the price of that is you end up involved in
issues that lead to America being seen as the villain of the piece,
which it sometimes is, but not always.
Sarah
t 9:32 PM -0800 02/20/2003, kakki wrote:
The other option is my wish that the US pull out of all foreign
involvements completely tomorrow . . . at some point we should look
after the security of our own country and allow others to look after
the security of their own. Not saying my country right or wrong,
but historically, the US was pulled into these conflicts which they
did not initiate to begin with.
