Caitlin Johnstone
“While making a point as to
why America can’t cede its international leadership and retreat from around the
world, Tim was interrupted by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard,” the statement reads.
“When he tried to answer her,
she contorted a factual point Tim was making — about the Taliban being
complicit in the 9/11 attacks by providing training, bases and refuge for Al
Qaeda and its leaders. The characterization that Tim Ryan doesn’t know who is
responsible for the attacks on 9/11 is simply unfair reporting. Further,
we continue to reject Gabbard’s isolationism and her misguided beliefs on
foreign policy. We refuse to be lectured by someone who thinks it’s ok to dine
with murderous dictators like Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad who used chemical weapons
on his own people.”
Ryan’s campaign is
lying. During an exchange that was explicitly about the Taliban in
Afghanistan, Ryan plainly said “When we weren’t in there, they started flying
planes into our buildings.” At best, Ryan can argue that when he said “they” he
had suddenly shifted from talking about the Taliban to talking about Al Qaeda
without bothering to say so, in which case he obviously can’t legitimately
claim that Gabbard “contorted” anything he had said. At worst, he was simply
unaware at the time of the very clear distinction between the Afghan military
and political body called the Taliban and the multinational extremist
organization called Al Qaeda.
More importantly, Ryan’s
campaign using the word “isolationism” to describe the simple common sense
impulse to withdraw from a costly, deadly military occupation which isn’t
accomplishing anything highlights an increasingly common tactic of tarring
anything other than endless military expansionism as strange and aberrant
instead of normal and good. Under our current Orwellian doublespeak
paradigm where forever war is the new normal, the opposite of war is no longer
peace, but isolationism. This removal of a desirable opposite of war from the
establishment-authorised lexicon causes war to always be the desirable option.
This is entirely by design.
This bit of word magic has been employed for a long time to tar any idea which
deviates from the neoconservative agenda of total global unipolarity via
violent imperialism as something freakish and dangerous. In his
farewell address to the nation, war criminal George W Bush said the
following:
“In the face of threats from
abroad, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning inward. But we must
reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism. Retreating behind our
borders would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity
at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the
cause of freedom, that cause will not be led.”
A few months after Bush’s
address, Antiwar’s Rich Rubino wrote an article titled “Non-Interventionism
is Not Isolationism”, explaining the difference between a nation
which withdraws entirely from the world and a nation which simply resists the
temptation to use military aggression except in self defense.
“Isolationism dictates that a
country should have no relations with the rest of the world,” Rubino explained.
“In its purest form this would mean that ambassadors would not be shared with
other nations, communications with foreign governments would be mainly
perfunctory, and commercial relations would be non-existent.”
“A non-interventionist
supports commercial relations,” Rubino contrasted. “In fact, in terms of trade,
many non-interventionists share libertarian proclivities and would unilaterally
obliterate all tariffs and custom duties, and would be open to trade with all
willing nations. In addition, non-interventionists welcome cultural exchanges
and the exchange of ambassadors with all willing nations.”
“A non-interventionist
believes that the U.S. should not intercede in conflicts between other nations
or conflicts within nations,” wrote Rubino. “In recent history,
non-interventionists have proved prophetic in warning of the dangers of the
U.S. entangling itself in alliances. The U.S. has suffered deleterious effects
and effectuated enmity among other governments, citizenries, and non-state
actors as a result of its overseas interventions. The U.S. interventions in
both Iran and Iraq have led to cataclysmic consequences.”
Statement from Ryan Campaign
on Afghanistan
Calling an aversion to endless
military violence “isolationism” is the same as calling an aversion to mugging
people “agoraphobia”. Yet you’ll see this ridiculous label applied to both
Gabbard and Trump, neither of whom are isolationists by any stretch of the
imagination, or even proper non-interventionists. Gabbard supports most US
military alliances and continues to voice full support for the bogus “war on
terror” implemented by the Bush administration which serves no purpose other
than to facilitate endless military expansionism; Trump is openly pushing
regime change interventionism in both Venezuela and Iran while declining to
make good on his promises to withdraw the US military from Syria and
Afghanistan.
Another dishonest label you’ll
get thrown at you when debating the forever war is “pacifism”. “Some wars are
bad, but I’m not a pacifist; sometimes war is necessary,” supporters of a given
interventionist military action will tell you. They’ll say this while defending
Trump’s potentially catastrophic Iran warmongering or promoting a moronic
regime change invasion of Syria, or defending disastrous US military
interventions in the past like Iraq.
This is bullshit for a couple
of reasons. Firstly, virtually no one is a pure pacifist who opposes war
under any and all possible circumstances; anyone who claims that they can’t
imagine any possible scenario in which they’d support using some kind of
coordinated violence either hasn’t imagined very hard or is fooling themselves.
If your loved ones were going to be raped, tortured and killed by hostile
forces unless an opposing group took up arms to defend them, for example, you
would support that. Hell, you would probably join in. Secondly, equating
opposition to US-led regime change interventionism, which is literally always
disastrous and literally never helpful, is not even a tiny bit remotely like
opposing all war under any possible circumstance.
She’s not “antiwar” - she’s
anti a US war. She’s totally pro the Russian air war in Syria and celebrated
Russian air strikes that have killed hundreds if not thousands of civilians.
Another common distortion
you’ll see is the specious argument that a given opponent of US interventionism
“isn’t anti-war” because they don’t oppose all war under any and all
circumstances. This tweet by The
Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan is a perfect example, claiming that Gabbard is not
anti-war because she supports Syria’s sovereign right to defend itself with the
help of its allies from the violent extremist factions which overran the country
with western backing. Again, virtually no one is opposed to all war under any
and all circumstances; if a coalition of foreign governments had helped flood
Hasan’s own country of Britain with extremist militias who’d been murdering
their way across the UK with the ultimate goal of toppling London, both Tulsi
Gabbard and Hasan would support fighting back against those militias.
The label “anti-war” can for
these reasons be a little misleading. The term anti-interventionist or
non-interventionist comes closest to describing the value system of most people
who oppose the warmongering of the western empire,because they understand that
calls for military interventionism which go mainstream in today’s environment
are almost universally based on imperialist agendas grabbing at power, profit,
and global hegemony. The label “isolationist” comes nowhere close.
It all comes down to
sovereignty. An anti-interventionist believes that a country has the right
to defend itself, but it doesn’t have the right to conquer, capture, infiltrate
or overthrow other nations whether covertly or overtly. At the “end” of
colonialism we all agreed we were done with that, except that the nationless
manipulators have found far trickier ways to seize a country’s will and
resources without actually planting a flag there. We need to get clearer on
these distinctions and get louder about defending them as the only sane,
coherent way to run foreign policy.
