“But then, they always blame America first”
by digby
Hey, do any of you oldies remember this speech from 1984?
They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do – they didn’t blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians – they blamed the United States instead.
But then, somehow, they always blame America first.
When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the “blame America first crowd” didn’t blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first.
When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn’t blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first.
When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.
But then, they always blame America first.
The American people know better.
They know that Ronald Reagan and the United States didn’t cause Marxist dictatorship in Nicaragua, or the repression in Poland, or the brutal new offensives in Afghanistan, or the destruction of the Korean airliner, or the new attacks on religious and ethnic groups in the Soviet Union, or the jamming of western broadcasts, or the denial of Jewish emigration, or the brutal imprisonment of Anatoly Shcharansky and Ida Nudel, or the obscene treatment of Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner, or the re-Stalinization of the Soviet Union.
The American people know that it’s dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause.
They understand just as the distinguished French writer, Jean Francois Revel, understands the dangers of endless self- criticism and self-denigration.
He wrote: “Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”
With the election of Ronald Reagan, the American people declared to the world that we have the necessary energy and conviction to defend ourselves, and that we have as well a deep commitment to peace.
And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House.
That was OG Neocon Jeanne Kirkpatrick at the 1984 Republican Convention.
Here’s the Democratic National Committee today on Rand Paul:
“This week he’s blaming the Obama Administration for another nation’s civil war. That type of ‘blame America’ rhetoric may win Paul accolades at a conference of isolationists but it does nothing to improve our standing in the world,” DNC spokesman Michael Czin said in a statement. “In fact, Paul’s proposals would make America less safe and less secure.
Simply put, if Rand Paul had a foreign policy slogan, it would be — The Rand Paul Doctrine: Blame America. Retreat from the World.”
They couldn’t call him a “San Francisco” liberal since he’s from Kentucky. But they could have added something about the Aqua Buddha to make it clear that he’s really a long haired hippie freak at heart.
I get that they have to counter Paul’s rhetoric. And I happen to think he’s a hypocritical liar on these issues and spitting into the wind if he believe that Republicans are going to go back to the days of Robert Taft any time soon. They are hawks through and through. But the Democratic Party using the infamous words of Jeanne Kirkpatrick (in exactly the same way she used them)to attack Rand Paul from the right is likely to backfire if it implies that the Democratic Party believes that pacifists and a so-called “convention of isolationists” are unpatriotic. It’s not as if there are many of them in the GOP. But there are a lot of anti-war voters in the Democratic Party. Why alienate your own base by implying that their apprehension about America’s intervention abroad over the past few years is un-American?
It’s not as though “blaming America” is an unreasonable thing to do. Indeed, it’s a necessary thing to do — when America is to blame. How about this news report from 2007, in which the US Senate complied a study that showed American leadership knew that intervention in Iraq could have disastrous consequences for the region:
In a move sure to raise even more questions about the decision to go to war with Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will on Friday release selected portions of pre-war intelligence in which the CIA warned the administration of the risk and consequences of a conflict in the Middle East.
Among other things, the 40-page Senate report reveals that two intelligence assessments before the war accurately predicted that toppling Saddam could lead to a dangerous period of internal violence and provide a boost to terrorists. But those warnings were seemingly ignored.
In January 2003, two months before the invasion, the intelligence community’s think tank — the National Intelligence Council — issued an assessment warning that after Saddam was toppled, there was “a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other and that rogue Saddam loyalists would wage guerilla warfare either by themselves or in alliance with terrorists.”
It also warned that “many angry young recruits” would fuel the rank of Islamic extremists and “Iraqi political culture is so embued with mores (opposed) to the democratic experience … that it may resist the most rigorous and prolonged democratic tutorials.”
None of those warnings were reflected in the administration’s predictions about the war.
In fact, Vice President Cheney stated the day before the war, “Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”
A second assessment weeks before the invasion warned that the war also could be “exploited by terrorists and extremists outside Iraq.”
And then this:
Fighting a civil war is the way that some societies build a state, and it is hard to imagine how there could have been a smooth transition from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Still, the United States has clearly helped to create the conditions for Iraq’s descent into civil war.
Two failures are worth noting. First, a large literature on contentious politics has shown that violent opposition groups gain legitimacy and public support when the state uses indiscriminate violence or abuses civilians. This is precisely what has happened in Iraq, with recent reports of civilian abuses by the coalition.
Second, civil war studies have shown that insurgencies grow into large wars when insurgents receive external assistance. The American-led coalition simply has not had the manpower to quarantine those Iraqis who have reportedly received assistance from neighboring countries and international terrorist entities.
So yeah, Rand Paul may be a jerk but he’s right about one thing; the US is perfectly capable of creating another nation’s civil war. We did it in Iraq. And the resultant spillover of violence and radicalism is the cause of many of the problems we’re facing today.
The good news for the DNC is that some really fine people agree with them. Like yet another OG Neocon, Eliot Abrams, who’s been pushing for war in the Middle East for decades:
“Senator Paul simply has the facts wrong. He published his article in The Wall Street Journal but apparently doesn’t read it himself, or he’d have seen last Saturday’s article there detailing how the Assad regime abetted the rise of ISIS. Those who argued for intervening to strengthen nationalist Syrian rebels have been proved quite right, for as they have weakened ISIS has grown stronger. In fact we’ve done in Syria exactly what Rand Paul always wants to do–nothing–and we see the result. It’s the steady growth of a murderous, barbarous terrorist group that now threatens even the homeland.”
(Apparently it’s ok to “blame America first” when its government decides not to go to war. It’s only once it starts beating the war drums that good patriots have to zip their lips and wave the flag.)
This is going to be a tough path for the Democratic Party as it seeks to balance the various strains running through its coalition on this subject. They’ve got the peace oriented left which is a big faction in the Party, the interventionists like Hillary Clinton and the liberal pragmatists (for lack of a better term) like Obama. It’s never easy for the party as an institution to juggle all that in a coherent fashion. But for heaven’s sake, taking the position of the hard core right is a very odd way to go about it.
It’s not as if the DNC criticizing Rand Paul as an isolationist is going to cost him any Republican votes. They hate his guts. And they are much more clever about aligning him with people and ideas that will further marginalize him in their party. Here’s Jennifer Rubin on Paul’s op-ed:
At times, Paul sounds like the thought bubble over Obama’s head. Indeed, they share a common determination to avoid reality. In their world, the Iraq war was never won. The withdrawal of forces with no stay-behind troops was the right thing to do. And the real danger is the United States doing something effective.
Sometimes it is hard to tell Obama and Paul apart. Consider this: “History teaches us of the dangers of overreaching, and spreading ourselves too thin, and trying to go it alone without international support, or rushing into military adventures without thinking through the consequences.” Obama or Rand Paul?
In case you were wondering, it was Obama. Is he part of the “Blame America” crowd now too?
The only people’s minds this “he’s a Blame America first isolationist” charge might change are … young Democrats. And it will change them in favor of Rand Paul. Why in the world would the DNC want to do a thing like that?
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