Dear CCI Followers,
Like many of you, I’ve been deeply conflicted regarding the role our nation has and is playing across the world. Our military combined with NATO has caused unimaginable devastation, death and suffering in one nation after another for decades.
For years the notion that we were ‘taking out dictators’ and creating the way for democracy, seemed to make us feel like we were forging a noble path. Ignoring the killing fields in Vietnam, we moved into the Middle East countries with a vengeance. Many of us have become deeply disturbed by the outcome of these wars.
Reading James Carden’s “Isolationism Revisited” below, I’m finding myself excited by Thomas Jefferson’s 1801 inaugural address saying “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” Any of the Middle East people today would be better off if we had stayed out of their countries.
I think I’ve just become a Jeffersonian Isolationist! If we go into another country to share food, water, sanitation and medical help, that’s wonderful. If not, we need to stay out and let them work out their own evolutions.