American Isolationism

[spot]

Right across the globe, countries which have traditionally relied on American backing are suddenly starting to wonder if they should get themselves some re-insurance.

Taiwan, which is almost daily subject to threats of invasion from China, is particularly worried. South Korea, Japan, Western Europe, and Britain are all wondering if the American commitment to them could evaporate as fast as the commitment to Afghanistan has.

That's John Simpson, World Affairs Editor of BBC News, published 30 minutes ago.


It should clearly be a question of interest to the other 29 member countries of NATO, for instance. President Trump questioned during his presidency, several times, whether America still had a legitimate place in NATO and now the actions of President Biden bring the issue into even closer focus.

If America were to be invited by the remainder of NATO to withdraw from the organization, several immediate benefits present themselves. The organization would no longer be so lop-sided, member states would all have rather more influence on decision-making. America might even be persuaded that all of its military bases in the other NATO countries could be closed and the infrastructure permanently returned to the appropriate sovereign host. I note that this was the exact consequence of the American withdrawal from Iraq and from Afghanistan, for example.

If anyone sees a Go-Fund-Me project aiming at such an outcome, please add details to the thread.

Oh - and Diego Garcia too, please.

And to balance the impression John Simpson offered, the idea that America ever felt any commitment to Afghanistan is preposterous. The American and British governments went into Afghanistan for the sole illegal purpose of regime change, and most Afghans, Brits and Americans from then until now have cursed them for doing so.

[spot]

Here we are - the British Defense Secretary on the same subject:

Ben Wallace, Britain’s defence secretary, suggested the US could no longer be considered a superpower in an interview where he also contrasted his department’s handling of the Afghanistan crisis with that of the embattled Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

The pointed comments – coming at a time of heightened transatlantic and domestic tensions over the messy retreat – feature in an interview in the Spectator magazine, given days after the final western forces evacuated from Kabul.

Asked whether the exit from Afghanistan demonstrated the limits of British power on the world stage, Wallace started by saying: “It is obvious that Britain is not a superpower,” before appearing to switch focus to the US.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... superpower

It's pleasing to see these things being said at that level rather than just me bleating in a small corner of nowhere.

I don't think it's the American political system which has led to this impression. President Trump may have helped it along, though I have no complaint at all about any policy he adopted in his four years in office, none at all. I think he was just what the planet needed, a Reality TV poseur with a mandate to govern controversially.

The overwhelming abandoners of Superpower status were the large fragment of the American population who chose liberty over death, who insisted on its God-given right to breathe fresh air and refusal to mask up. With more Americans dead from that single attitude than from every military conflict since the War of Independence, and the consequent total abandonment of CDC-designed tracking, tracing and isolating protocols which most Asian countries adopted so successfully, American influence is not the inspiring leader of world opinion that it it seemed at the start of the century. Britain wasn't that even back then, but we also screwed up our response to the pandemic by having the laziest most incompetent Civil Service since government was invented.

[LarsMac]

Here we are - the British Defense Secretary on the same subject:

Ben Wallace, Britain’s defence secretary, suggested the US could no longer be considered a superpower in an interview where he also contrasted his department’s handling of the Afghanistan crisis with that of the embattled Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

The pointed comments – coming at a time of heightened transatlantic and domestic tensions over the messy retreat – feature in an interview in the Spectator magazine, given days after the final western forces evacuated from Kabul.

Asked whether the exit from Afghanistan demonstrated the limits of British power on the world stage, Wallace started by saying: “It is obvious that Britain is not a superpower,” before appearing to switch focus to the US.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... superpower

It's pleasing to see these things being said at that level rather than just me bleating in a small corner of nowhere.

I don't think it's the American political system which has led to this impression. President Trump may have helped it along, though I have no complaint at all about any policy he adopted in his four years in office, none at all. I think he was just what the planet needed, a Reality TV poseur with a mandate to govern controversially.

The overwhelming abandoners of Superpower status were the large fragment of the American population who chose liberty over death, who insisted on its God-given right to breathe fresh air and refusal to mask up. With more Americans dead from that single attitude than from every military conflict since the War of Independence, and the consequent total abandonment of CDC-designed tracking, tracing and isolating protocols which most Asian countries adopted so successfully, American influence is not the inspiring leader of world opinion that it it seemed at the start of the century. Britain wasn't that even back then, but we also screwed up our response to the pandemic by having the laziest most incompetent Civil Service since government was invented.

Well said, actually. Americans have been busy-bodies even as they first left Elizabeth's realm for the "New World". No sooner than they arrived at Plymouth, they began making life difficult for the Locals. I think it was an inherited trait from the first of those called Englishmen. (You know it really was the Brits who first kicked the Hornet's Nest that is now Afghanistan, right?)

For now, it seems they have turned homeward. There are plenty of people right here in the Good Ol' US of A whose lives cry out to be meddled with, these days. (Pregnant women, Blacks, Muslims, Farmers, Unions, Gays, you name it, we can meddle away. )

[Bryn Mawr]

Well said, actually. Americans have been busy-bodies even as they first left Elizabeth's realm for the "New World". No sooner than they arrived at Plymouth, they began making life difficult for the Locals. I think it was an inherited trait from the first of those called Englishmen. (You know it really was the Brits who first kicked the Hornet's Nest that is now Afghanistan, right?)

For now, it seems they have turned homeward. There are plenty of people right here in the Good Ol' US of A whose lives cry out to be meddled with, these days. (Pregnant women, Blacks, Muslims, Farmers, Unions, Gays, you name it, we can meddle away. )

Three or four times as I recall - and we had our asses whopped each time we tried.

[spot]

Well said, actually. Americans have been busy-bodies even as they first left Elizabeth's realm for the "New World". No sooner than they arrived at Plymouth, they began making life difficult for the Locals. I think it was an inherited trait from the first of those called Englishmen. (You know it really was the Brits who first kicked the Hornet's Nest that is now Afghanistan, right?)

For now, it seems they have turned homeward. There are plenty of people right here in the Good Ol' US of A whose lives cry out to be meddled with, these days. (Pregnant women, Blacks, Muslims, Farmers, Unions, Gays, you name it, we can meddle away. )

Three or four times as I recall - and we had our asses whopped each time we tried.

The reality was lethal but the public impression was that it built character. Kipling said as much. And that poet chap from Clifton College:

And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat.
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

[LarsMac]

Well said, actually. Americans have been busy-bodies even as they first left Elizabeth's realm for the "New World". No sooner than they arrived at Plymouth, they began making life difficult for the Locals. I think it was an inherited trait from the first of those called Englishmen. (You know it really was the Brits who first kicked the Hornet's Nest that is now Afghanistan, right?)

For now, it seems they have turned homeward. There are plenty of people right here in the Good Ol' US of A whose lives cry out to be meddled with, these days. (Pregnant women, Blacks, Muslims, Farmers, Unions, Gays, you name it, we can meddle away. )

Three or four times as I recall - and we had our asses whopped each time we tried.

The reality was lethal but the public impression was that it built character. Kipling said as much. And that poet chap from Clifton College:

And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat.
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

When I first read Kipling I believed him to be serious, but some years later, during an anti-war rally in DC, I met a couple of Brits from Kent while we were camping near the Lincoln Memorial. We spent the night discussing, among other things, Kipling. One fellow claimed that Kipling was being facetious, and mocking the old British line. Reading again, I could begin to see his point. But that was a time when I enjoyed some very interesting "Natural Remedies"

IT may be time to revisit ol' Rudyard, once again.

[tude dog]

Isolationism?

An old concept.
We are a land without borders.

[spot]

Isolationism?

An old concept.
We are a land without borders.

Isolationism is the refusal to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations. Where do borders come into it?

You may, perhaps, like to offer a different definition. That would be productive.

[tude dog]

Isolationism?

An old concept.
We are a land without borders.

Isolationism is the refusal to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations. Where do borders come into it?

You may, perhaps, like to offer a different definition. That would be productive.

Under the new regime, we invite others to become us.

[spot]

Isolationism?

An old concept.
We are a land without borders.

Isolationism is the refusal to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations. Where do borders come into it?

You may, perhaps, like to offer a different definition. That would be productive.

Under the new regime, we invite others to become us.

Invite??

Given the extent to which your armed services are deployed, would you not agree "insist" is a better description? Invite implies choice. One does not invite at gunpoint.

And what one is "invited" to become is certainly not American. To be an adult American one must be offered a vote in the American democratic process. That's what being American means. Or have I got that wrong too?

[LarsMac]

Isolationism?

An old concept.
We are a land without borders.

Sorry, bud, but we have plenty of borders. I have crossed a number of them. I'm sure your wanderings into Tiajuana and back may have led you to believe the myth. But it ain't so.

[tude dog]

Isolationism?

An old concept.
We are a land without borders.

Sorry, bud, but we have plenty of borders. I have crossed a number of them. I'm sure your wanderings into Tiajuana and back may have led you to believe the myth. But it ain't so.

Didn't wander into TJ, went there once, and never went there again. To be fair did go to Ensenada, twice to do some fishing.

Those were legal crossings, unlike like this,

[LarsMac]

Isolationism?

An old concept.
We are a land without borders.

Sorry, bud, but we have plenty of borders. I have crossed a number of them. I'm sure your wanderings into Tiajuana and back may have led you to believe the myth. But it ain't so.

Didn't wander into TJ, went there once, and never went there again. To be fair did go to Ensenada, twice to do some fishing.

Those were legal crossings, unlike like this,

We must accept that you are correct that we are seeing a picture of people walking across the Rio Grande River toward Texas, but we have no actual proof of that.
I am curious who that blonde guy is there with the duffel.

[tude dog]

Isolationism?

An old concept.
We are a land without borders.

Sorry, bud, but we have plenty of borders. I have crossed a number of them. I'm sure your wanderings into Tiajuana and back may have led you to believe the myth. But it ain't so.

Didn't wander into TJ, went there once, and never went there again. To be fair did go to Ensenada, twice to do some fishing.

Those were legal crossings, unlike like this,

Well, I am curious who that blonde guy is there with the duffel.

In this 2019 photo, Central American migrants try to cross the Rio Bravo from Piedras Negras, in Coahuila state, Mexico, to the city of Eagle Pass. Unauthorized border crossings plunged from 945,000 in 2000 to 210,000 in 2016, according to the Center for Migration Studies.(JULIO CESAR AGUILAR / AFP/Getty Images)

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigra ... s-changed/

Now you know what I know.
Who knows about any of Biden's unconstitutional illegal aliens?

[LarsMac]

Isolationism?

An old concept.
We are a land without borders.

Sorry, bud, but we have plenty of borders. I have crossed a number of them. I'm sure your wanderings into Tiajuana and back may have led you to believe the myth. But it ain't so.

Didn't wander into TJ, went there once, and never went there again. To be fair did go to Ensenada, twice to do some fishing.

Those were legal crossings, unlike like this,

Well, I am curious who that blonde guy is there with the duffel.

In this 2019 photo, Central American migrants try to cross the Rio Bravo from Piedras Negras, in Coahuila state, Mexico, to the city of Eagle Pass. Unauthorized border crossings plunged from 945,000 in 2000 to 210,000 in 2016, according to the Center for Migration Studies.(JULIO CESAR AGUILAR / AFP/Getty Images)

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigra ... s-changed/

Now you know what I know.
Who knows about any of Biden's unconstitutional illegal aliens?

So, that has nothing to do with Biden. and the falling numbers were all in Pre-Trump years. I wonder what the numbers were during T Rump's watch.

And, of course there is this little nugget: Those who entered the nation legally but overstayed their visas make up about two-thirds of unauthorized immigrants, data shows.

Which was known by most Americans who didn't listen to Trump for a very long time.