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Poll: Isolationism soars among Americans

nerv14 said:
Very interesting. I agree in that America starts alot of problems, but I think it is kind of greedy of Americans to be willing to sacrifice the greater good of the world to just avoid the problems out there.

America should possible interfere less in the world overall but America certainly shouldn't just "mind its own business." If anything, the problem is that we only interfere in the world to get gains for our own, when we should be concerned with interfering, if it will help the world as a whole.
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I'm not so sure we have added to the 'greater good of the world' since WWII. Vietnam was a disaster, Korea is still unresolved, and Iraq and Afghanistan were made worse by our interference. I'm not an isolationist in the economic sense, but I certainly favor the non-interventionist foreign policy that we had before WWII. I suppose I would have supported stopping Hitler sooner, but not if it led to the preventative wars of the Bush Doctrine. And I don't understand why it is our duty to defend South Korea or Israel or any other nation. If they ask the UN for help like Kuwait did that is one thing, but to keep 30,000 troops in Korea for 60 years is too much.
 
nerv14 said:
America should possible interfere less in the world overall but America certainly shouldn't just "mind its own business." If anything, the problem is that we only interfere in the world to get gains for our own, when we should be concerned with interfering, if it will help the world as a whole.
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Standard leftist pablum that got us mired down in Somalia. "We should only interfere when the UN tells us to."

Yeah, that worked well. I'm more in favor of pulling back inside our own borders, letting Europe handle/pay for their own defense, letting Africa go to hell in a handbasket, letting the middle east blow themselves sky high, and paying off our debts to China so we don't have that hanging over our heads. Protect our borders, take care of our people, let the rest of the world handle their own business.
 
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chevydriver1123 said:
I would like to ask those same people polled if they know the difference between isolationism and nonintervention.
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I'm more disappointed than that. Why would anyone promote a policy of isolation when it's clearly failed and isn't reality any longer? The 20th century and the terrible events on 9-11 have offered more than one lesson, fellow Americans, none more important than......what is happening abroad will eventually lap up to our shores, it's inevitable. Our security today is increasingly dependent on pre-emptive action and non-isolationism.
 
Put you own house in order first and charity begins at home. Lots of hungry people out there now.
 
Charles Martel said:
what is happening abroad will eventually lap up to our shores, it's inevitable. Our security today is increasingly dependent on pre-emptive action and non-isolationism.
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It's entirely likely that the events of 9/11 wouldn't have lapped up to our shores if we hadn't meddled so much in the middle east.
 
donsutherland1 said:
A survey taken by the Pew Research center for the People & the Press revealed that a growing number of Americans are favor the United States' disengaging from international affairs. The Associated Press reported:



The Associated Press: Poll: Isolationism soars among Americans

The entire report can be found at: http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/569.pdf
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Awesome. While we can't engage in total isolationism, I hope this movement keeps going so we start to adopt non-interventionist policies. It's about time people got sick of ****ing with other people.
 
Catz Part Deux said:
It's entirely likely that the events of 9/11 wouldn't have lapped up to our shores if we hadn't meddled so much in the middle east.
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Better watch it there. Those sorts of comments draw out the "you're blaming America!!??" crowd, no matter how much truth is contained therein.
 
Ikari said:
Better watch it there. Those sorts of comments draw out the "you're blaming America!!??" crowd, no matter how much truth is contained therein.
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Truth is truth. Some poeple are too thick-headed to grasp it. The best possible thing we could do at this point in time is to turn our best minds towards creating alternatives to fossil fuels, and getting out of the middle east entirely. Let them wallow in their retardedness.
 
Catz Part Deux said:
Truth is truth. Some poeple are too thick-headed to grasp it. The best possible thing we could do at this point in time is to turn our best minds towards creating alternatives to fossil fuels, and getting out of the middle east entirely. Let them wallow in their retardedness.
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Ron Paul said those sorts of things during the prelims. The GOP faithful didn't take too kindly. There's lots of truth to it though. We have engaged in massive interventionist policies which have in some places fostered a strong, entrenched anti-American sentiments. The same sort of feelings preyed upon by terrorist organizations and others which do us harm. Once most of the people in a region have a friend or family member killed by the US, you're getting into some trouble. But people wanted to hide their heads in the sand and pretend that intervention wasn't a problem, that more intervention was needed. Fools.

People need to understand that actions have consequences. They're going to have to know what those consequences are, acknowledge them, and if negative move in a way to not enact them.
 
Ikari said:
Ron Paul said those sorts of things during the prelims. The GOP faithful didn't take too kindly. There's lots of truth to it though. We have engaged in massive interventionist policies which have in some places fostered a strong, entrenched anti-American sentiments. The same sort of feelings preyed upon by terrorist organizations and others which do us harm. Once most of the people in a region have a friend or family member killed by the US, you're getting into some trouble. But people wanted to hide their heads in the sand and pretend that intervention wasn't a problem, that more intervention was needed. Fools.

People need to understand that actions have consequences. They're going to have to know what those consequences are, acknowledge them, and if negative move in a way to not enact them.
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I can't support an entirely libertarian position, but I agree with Ron Paul on foreign policy issues these days. I'm persuaded that we need to stop trying to dictate to other parts of the world how to live. And, we need to stop molly-coddling Israel and selling them weapons. Netanyahu's recent statements on the settlements put paid to the notion that Israel is pursuing a path of peace. Let them live in the bed they've made for themselves without American protectionism for a while. If they wish to provoke war, let them pay the price themselves. I'm now almost convinced that most of our interventionism in the past 5 decades has done more harm than good. Korea had a relatively positive outcome, but that was the 1950s. And, South Korea is now wealthy enough to defend their own damn borders, frankly. We've done our share.
 
Charles Martel said:
I'm more disappointed than that. Why would anyone promote a policy of isolation when it's clearly failed and isn't reality any longer? The 20th century and the terrible events on 9-11 have offered more than one lesson, fellow Americans, none more important than......what is happening abroad will eventually lap up to our shores, it's inevitable. Our security today is increasingly dependent on pre-emptive action and non-isolationism.
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Which preemptive actions could have prevented 9/11? If anything stronger intelligence domestically could have prevented it.
 
I don't see minding our own business as isolationism. We have lots of problems to deal with, and trying to meddle in the affairs of other nations when we are having some serious problems is like taking care of others' children when yours are starving.
If we had spent some real time and effort minding our own business over the last 15-20 years, and getting our own house in order, we probably woudn't be in the economic mess we are in.
 
Red_Dave said:
Which preemptive actions could have prevented 9/11? If anything stronger intelligence domestically could have prevented it.
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Stonger intelligence domestically could have prevented it.......meaning we would have denoted the 9-11 hijackers long before 9-11-01 like we would have arrested them closer to 1996 when they entered the US all filled with hate and rage and what not. And arresting them would have led to information about a whole nest of al-Qaeda that was busy declaring war on the US without the slightest movement from us. The Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, al-Qaeda had been trying to declare war on us for 5 years before we finally woke up.

Yes, if we had stronger domestic intelligence, we would have been led to Afghanistan where pre-emptive actions would clearly need to be taken as well.....rather than sitting over here and waiting for it.
 
Ikari said:
Better watch it there. Those sorts of comments draw out the "you're blaming America!!??" crowd, no matter how much truth is contained therein.
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The problem isn't that one's suggesting that "blowback" contributed to the terrorist attack. That is not an unreasonable suggestion. Policies can provoke favorable and unfavorable reactions. Of course, foreign policy of any state must consider tradeoffs. Foreign policy is not, and cannot be risk-free, as the world is not risk-free.

The problem lies with the argument that "blowback" was solely or almost completely responsible for the outcome. The latter argument--Ron Paul's, the argument from the isolationist perspective, etc.--is naive and inaccurate. It ignores Al Qaeda's nature as a revolutionary movement, its ideology and its objectives. Yet, Al Qaeda's nature, ideology and objectives run well beyond avenging that terrorist organization's expressed grievances (actual or perceptual) concerning U.S. policy. Indeed, if that were not the case, then Osama Bin Laden would never have included rationalizations that ran far afield of U.S. foreign policy in his "Letter to America," much less demanded that the U.S. ultimately convert to Islam (his radical interpretation, of course).
 
Catz Part Deux said:
Standard leftist pablum that got us mired down in Somalia. "We should only interfere when the UN tells us to."

Yeah, that worked well. I'm more in favor of pulling back inside our own borders, letting Europe handle/pay for their own defense, letting Africa go to hell in a handbasket, letting the middle east blow themselves sky high, and paying off our debts to China so we don't have that hanging over our heads. Protect our borders, take care of our people, let the rest of the world handle their own business.
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Africa is Europe's problem. How come they get to go create a mess of almost an entire continent, and get to leave and act like nothing happened?
 
Tsunami said:
I'm not so sure we have added to the 'greater good of the world' since WWII. Vietnam was a disaster, Korea is still unresolved, and Iraq and Afghanistan were made worse by our interference. I'm not an isolationist in the economic sense, but I certainly favor the non-interventionist foreign policy that we had before WWII. I suppose I would have supported stopping Hitler sooner, but not if it led to the preventative wars of the Bush Doctrine. And I don't understand why it is our duty to defend South Korea or Israel or any other nation. If they ask the UN for help like Kuwait did that is one thing, but to keep 30,000 troops in Korea for 60 years is too much.
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I think we contributed to the greater good by defending many countries (such as S. Korea) from being put under a dictatorship, and not to mention we helped protect Western Europe from falling to the USSR.

Even though I disagree with the War in Iraq because I don't think its costs justified its results, I think it is fairly clear that we have made Iraq a better place. We also need to look in the long run, when Iraq is slowly but surely progressing. I think that Afganistan will be made better by our interference if we put in the effort, so the benefit is variable.

Unfortuantly, global trade normally needs a hegemony, so I think there is more good then bad from having soldiers in South Korea or other nations. I think that I have seen that extra active soldiers doesn't cost quite too much more by having them in other countries then our own. I don't like alot of our protection of Israel though, but the question if we should protect a nation should be on a case by case basis, and not a sweeping statement.

And when it comes to Hitler, the war could have been easier if we had already had a defensive pact with Europe. So today, that would mean keeping NATO, which is still a fair amount of intervention protecting other nations.
 
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donsutherland1 said:
Yet, Al Qaeda's nature, ideology and objectives run well beyond avenging that terrorist organization's expressed grievances (actual or perceptual) concerning U.S. policy. Indeed, if that were not the case, then Osama Bin Laden would never have included rationalizations that ran far afield of U.S. foreign policy in his "Letter to America," much less demanded that the U.S. ultimately convert to Islam (his radical interpretation, of course).
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On the other hand, the U.S.'s interventionism in the middle east fed local sympathies against the U.S. It's questionable how successful their recruiting would have been without our ineptitude feeding it.
 
The best defense is a defense that can crush all other offenses. It's easier to break an attack and retaliate than it is to have your attack broken and do a fighting retreat.
 
Catz Part Deux said:
Not to mention the middle east and southeast Asia.
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It's too late to blame that on them, we've already been involved in ruining **** there.


Africa is SOLELY European colonialism's problem. They purposefully drew country lines to conflict with tribal bands and caused all this upheaval. Not to mention Africa now is almost at the same stage of cultural and societal progress as Africa 2000 years ago (mainly because the White man brought it to them.)
 
EpicDude86 said:
It's too late to blame that on them, we've already been involved in ruining **** there.


Africa is SOLELY European colonialism's problem. They purposefully drew country lines to conflict with tribal bands and caused all this upheaval. Not to mention Africa now is almost at the same stage of cultural and societal progress as Africa 2000 years ago (mainly because the White man brought it to them.)
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Yes, but who ****ed up Vietnam originally? Hint, it wasn't US.
 
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