Posted by
Dawnsblood on Sunday, July 09, 2006 2:57:39 AM
Patrick J. Buchanan is talking crazy again . Fair use makes it really hard to cover, but I am going to try. Please read the article at the link first, because I am going to have to be sparse with the quotes.
America drew a red line across Europe and told Moscow not to cross it. And how was this good? We abandoned the Hungarian people in 1956 and the Czechs in 1968 . In 1981, however we did not abandon the Poles as Pat would have you believe. President Reagan stood with them. As Lech Walesa would put it :
When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.
Or this:
Walesa received secret aid from Pope John Paul II, the Reagan administration, and the AFL-CIO in the United States led by Lane Kirkland. The printing press proved to be a more powerful weapon than the sword, as Poland was deluged with books, magazines, newspapers, video documentaries, and radio broadcasts.
Or his famous speech. We finally had a President with the courage to say:
The Polish military leaders and their Soviet backers have shown that they will continue to trample upon the hopes and aspirations of the majority of the Polish people. America cannot stand idly by in the face of these latest threats of repression and acts of repression by the Polish Government.
No Pat, we did not sit idle while Solidarity was smashed on Moscow's orders in 1981.
If that were the only problem I had with your article I still would have called you on it, but you continue:
the non-interventionist policy of Eisenhower and Reagan -- of peace through strength, of staying out of wars where U.S. interests are not imperiled, of keeping one's powder dry unless the United States were attacked
We fought in the War of 1812 , The Korean War , Grenada and Kosovo. You can argue various interests, but not national imperatives. We fought each of these wars on principles. 1812 was because the British were kidnapping Americans, Korea was because the Norks thought they could impose a slave goverment on the whole peninsula, Grenada was about a Cuban backed slave government and a couple hundred American students trapped there and Kosovo was about ethnic cleansing. We certainly weren't attacked and God knows we didn't profit from any of them.
He continues:
Alliances are transmission belts of war. Temporary ones, like the French alliance of 1778 and the NATO alliance of 1949, may be necessary, but a wise republic terminates those entanglements when the crisis is ended.
No Pat, one should not abandon friends and allies just because a threat appears to be gone. Just say "Thanks for the help when the going was tough, but now that things are cool here I'm gonna cut you loose." That is childish. It is foolish to toss out any goodwill you have gathered over all those years just because a threat has vanished. Yes some allies have proven more trouble than they are worth since the end of the Cold War , (France comes to mind) but many like the UK, Australia, Poland and many others have mostly kept the faith. Do we abandon them?
Pat ends with:
This is not the road on which the Founding Fathers set out, but it is a familiar road, one taken before by every empire in history.
No Pat. I can not think of an Empire that fights a war then leaves Panama independent, or fights Iraq in 1991 and then gives the oil fields back to Kuwait. Maybe it is Grenada when we invaded and subjugated them? Ummm no because we didn't subjugate any one there. We invaded, beat the bad guys and left. Nice try, Empires don't behave like that. Now please go away.