Isolationist in everything but non-stop war
by digby
My piece in Salon today is about the right’s allege “isolationism” and Ted Cruz, specifically about how he’s framing the war against Islamic terrorism as a Christian crusade:
What can we say about these rather startling comments from presidential candidate Ted Cruz?
It’s not our job to be social workers in Iraq and put them all on expanded Medicaid. It is our job to kill terrorists who have declared war on America and who have demonstrated the intention and capability to murder innocent Americans…ISIS right now is the face of evil. They are crucifying Christians, they are persecuting Christians, they are beheading children. They have promised to take Jihad to our shores …”
He has said that they are “right now crucifying Christians in Iraq, literally nailing Christians to trees.” Having seen no corroborating reports of Christians being crucified, Politifact checked out Cruz’s contention and found that in the city of Raqqa, ISIS headquarters, the terrorist groups had tied some dead Muslim rivals up on crosses but there was no record of nailing anyone to them — or on trees either.
What makes Cruz’s comments so interesting is that he’s also said the U.S. should “bomb ISIS back into the stone age” which means he’s for all-out holy war. As Peter Beinert observed in this piece about Cruz’s crusade, Cruz is a “militaristic pessimist” because he has no interest in the idea of helping the warring parties to find some reconciliation. In his view, they’ve been fighting for centuries and they can keep fighting for centuries more. It’s only the fact that they’re allegedly killing Christians that makes it necessary to unleash hell — which he clearly is in favor of unleashing with everything we can bring to bear
[…]
Ted Cruz is the guy who best represents what so many in the Beltway persist in seeing as a new “isolationism” in the GOP. It’s isolationist in the sense that the only American overseas involvement they countenance is military action. We should not offer foreign aid or diplomatic initiative or humanitarian help but our war machine should be used liberally and without prejudice whenever it suits our interest to use it. That’s what it’s there for.