If all intelligent discussion of war is about weighing risks, then what about the risks not only of policing the world but of preemptively attacking anyone who looks cross-eyed at us, or at Israel? We have troops in over 100 countries, from Bosnia to Afghanistan to Japan and Uzebekistan, but Washington, D.C., is a city besieged by fear, a terror so pervasive that Congress hardly dares stay in session long enough to conduct its business before scuttling out of town a.s.a.p...
"It is our true policy," George Washington averred, "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."
Why, why, why are we foregoing the advantages of our peculiar situation as we stand at the apex of our superpowerdom? 9/11 changed "everything", says the War Party. But did it? Are we not, still, the most powerful military power on earth? Why intervene in every conflict, globalizing its bloody consequences, when we can steer clear of all that by following the advice of the Founder?
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How far we have come from the wisdom of the Founders, one of whom warned that "nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated."
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What the alleged "libertarians" who talk of "liberating" the world using the U.S. military as their instrument don't seem to understand is that all of this costs money, and lots of it. And who is going to get the bill? You are, my friend, and it is going to knock your socks off...
They harken back to the stern republican virtues of the Founders, and then turn around and hail America as the New Rome. But it is one or the other: we cannot be a republic and an empire, simultaneously. It is either Jefferson, or Caesar...
Will America keep her old republic, or will the War Party take us all the way down the road to empire?
Libertarianism in the Age of Empire, by Justin Raimondo
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