Isolationist Boogeymen
Andrew Bacevich in the LA Times:
IN HIS STATE of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush worked himself into a lather about the dangers of "retreating within our borders." His speech bulged with ominous references to ostensibly resurgent isolationists hankering to "tie our hands" and leave "an assaulted world to fend for itself." Turning inward, the president cautioned, would provide "false comfort" because isolationism inevitably "ends in danger and decline."I guess this is the latest broadside in the GOP meme wars. We're not commies any more, we're not granola eating liberals (hard to characterize Murtha as that), we're "isolationists." I imagine they dreamed up this particular me just for Murtha and the growing faction he represents, in fact.
But who exactly are these isolationists eager to pull up the drawbridges? What party do they control? What influential journals of opinion do they publish? Who are their leaders? Which foundations bankroll this isolationist cause?
The president provided no such details, and for good reason: They do not exist. Indeed, in present-day American politics, isolationism does not exist. It is a fiction, a fabrication and a smear imported from another era.
Isolationism survives in contemporary American political discourse because it retains utility as a cheap device employed to impose discipline. Think of it as akin to red-baiting  conjuring up bogus fears to enforce conformity in the realm of foreign policy. In that regard, the beleaguered Bush, his standing in public opinion polls tumbling, is by no means the first president to sound the alarm about supposed isolationists subverting American statecraft.
No doubt this is poised to go on auto-repeat by the Mighty Wurlitzer.
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 2/02/2006 07:13:00 PM
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