Written by tom kando   

The moment one dares to criticize Muslim misbehavior, the knee-jerk Left and many intellectuals go haywire: One gets labeled a McCarthyist, a racist, a xenophobe, a bigot, a trigger-happy John Wayne (all things which I have been called - in print, no less). Then, they proceed to list all the crimes committed by US imperialists over the centuries. Finally, they engage in erudite “explanations” of WHY Middle Easterners and Muslims misbehave, explanations which usually ebb over into JUSTIFICATIONS. Examples of this abound among the comments made to my two recent posts, “The Time for Pacifism has not yet Arrived,” and “For no Rhyme or Reason.”

AT THE SAME TIME, the Right also goes haywire: Two examples are Charles Krauthammer’s September 21 syndicated column and Dick Cheney’s September 20 speech in Sacramento (see Sacramento Bee for both sources). These nutty people blame President Obama and Hillary Clinton for all the Middle-Eastern violence and anti-Americanism. They cry for “flexing our muscles” again and for returning to a more bellicose stance.

Neither side can get it into its head that the US will never be able to control the Middle East, whether it lavishes it with economic aid or bombs it into smithereens. Neither side understands that the US has tried BOTH, and that both approaches have harmed not just the Middle East, but also ruined the US ITSELF. Neither side is able to see that the only intelligent course of action for America is to walk away, as soon as reasonably feasible. Neither side comprehends the limits of US power and the limits of its responsibility for conditions in the world.

Europeans learned after World War Two that the sooner they jettison their burdensome colonies, the more they will thrive. For example, only after France let Indochina and Algeria go, did it join the ranks of harmonious and prosperous countries.

But Americans persist on the ruinous path of trying to police/help (take your pick) the world. The only thing to which this leads is America’s own decline. For example, we learn on September 21 that American life expectancy among poor whites has declined by FOUR YEARS since 1990! We now rank 41st in the world in that regard. If there is a clear indication that this country is in steep decline, surely this is one!

As Yale historian Paul Kennedy wrote in The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, America is guilty of Imperial Overstretch. Its bloated military budget is ruining the country, not benefitting it. It is on a trajectory similar to that of Spain in the 17th century: attempting to control the world, it declines into poverty and weakness.

In order to play a positive role in the world, America must be a strong and healthy country itself. In order to achieve that, it must learn to cultivate its own garden. And in order to do that, it must scale back its involvement and its responsibility for the problems of the Middle East.

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