{"id":10181,"date":"2011-06-22T16:40:10","date_gmt":"2011-06-22T20:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=10181"},"modified":"2011-06-23T09:28:13","modified_gmt":"2011-06-23T13:28:13","slug":"mccain-too-quick-to-make-charges-of-isolationism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/10181\/mccain-too-quick-to-make-charges-of-isolationism\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain Too Quick to Make Charges of Isolationism"},"content":{"rendered":"

For John McCain — who has never met an evil anywhere on earth that doesn’t require Spartanesque military might from the U.S. — Republicans that question America’s role in Libya and the continued need for a large footprint in Afghanistan are part of a worrying trend. As the Los Angeles Times reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“There has always been an isolationist strain in the Republican Party,” McCain said on ABC’s “This Week,” “but now it seems to have moved more center stage…. That is not the Republican Party that has been willing to stand up for freedom for people all over the world.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McCain is engaging here in the logic fallacy known as “hasty generalization”. Just because some<\/em> Republicans question the utility of some <\/em>military missions, it doesn’t follow that they have a principled and categorical objection to America acting overseas. Tony Blankley makes the point with his trademark gusto in his column in today’s <\/a>Washington Times<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

… Almost two years ago, I was one of the first GOP internationalist-oriented commentators or politicians to conclude that the Afghan war effort had served its initial purpose, but it was time to phase out the war. As a punitive raid against the regime that gave succor to Osama bin Laden, we removed the Taliban government and killed as many al Qaeda and Taliban as possible.<\/p>\n

But as the purpose of that war turned into nation-building, even GOP internationalists have a duty to reassess whether, given the resources and strategy, such policy is likely to be effective (see about a dozen of my columns on Afghan war policy from 2009-10).<\/p>\n

Now many others in the GOP and in the non-isolationist wing of the Democratic Party are likewise judging failure in Afghanistan to be almost inevitable. That is not a judgment driven by isolationism. Neither are we – along with Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and almost the entire uniformed chain of command – isolationist when we see no national interest in Libya.<\/p>\n

This is not isolationism. It is a rational effort at judging how best to advance American values and interests in an ever-more witheringly dangerous world. The charge of isolationism should be reserved for the genuine article. Such name-calling advances neither rational debate nor national interest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bravo to Blankley. McCain is an honorable man — but one who ought to be a little more careful when throwing around ideological labels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For John McCain — who has never met an evil anywhere on earth that doesn’t require Spartanesque military might from the U.S. — Republicans that question America’s role in Libya and the continued need for a large footprint in Afghanistan are part of a worrying trend. As the Los Angeles Times reports: “There has always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2797,138,2799,2798,721,2436,571,190,2796,2708],"class_list":["post-10181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2012-presidential-race","tag-afghanistan","tag-internationalism","tag-isolationism","tag-john-mccain","tag-libya","tag-osama-bin-laden","tag-robert-gates","tag-tony-blankley","tag-u-s-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10181"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10189,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10181\/revisions\/10189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}