How do you feel about the constitutional position on American Foreign Policy?

Question

"It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

--George Washington

"Last week I wrote about the critical need for Congress to reassert its authority over foreign policy, and for the American people to recognize that the Constitution makes no distinction between domestic and foreign matters. Policy is policy, and it must be made by the legislature and not the executive.

But what policy is best? How should we deal with the rest of the world in a way that best advances proper national interests, while not threatening our freedoms at home?

I believe our founding fathers had it right when they argued for peace and commerce between nations, and against entangling political and military alliances. In other words, noninterventionism.

Noninterventionism is not isolationism. Nonintervention simply means America does not interfere militarily, financially, or covertly in the internal affairs of other nations. It does not we that we isolate ourselves; on the contrary, our founders advocated open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations.

Thomas Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations- entangling alliances with none.” Washington similarly urged that we must, “Act for ourselves and not for others,” by forming an “American character wholly free of foreign attachments.”

Yet how many times have we all heard these wise words without taking them to heart? How many claim to admire Jefferson and Washington, but conveniently ignore both when it comes to American foreign policy? Since so many apparently now believe Washington and Jefferson were wrong on the critical matter of foreign policy, they should at least have the intellectual honesty to admit it.

Of course we frequently hear the offensive cliché that, “times have changed,” and thus we cannot follow quaint admonitions from the 1700s. The obvious question, then, is what other principles from our founding era should we discard for convenience? Should we give up the First amendment because times have changed and free speech causes too much offense in our modern society? Should we give up the Second amendment, and trust that today’s government is benign and not to be feared by its citizens? How about the rest of the Bill of Rights?

It’s hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify interventionist policies today. The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change. If anything, today’s more complex world cries out for the moral clarity provided by a noninterventionist foreign policy.

It is time for Americans to rethink the interventionist foreign policy that is accepted without question in Washington. It is time to understand the obvious harm that results from our being dragged time and time again into intractable and endless Middle East conflicts, whether in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Palestine. It is definitely time to ask ourselves whether further American lives and tax dollars should be lost trying to remake the Middle East in our image."

-- Ron Paul December 18, 2006

Please limit your range of discussion to foreign policy issues only.

Answer 1

First of All, Ron Paul is an idiot. Principals can't work when disconnected from reality, which is what Ron Paul offers.

I agree with you that there are principals in the constitution that we must keep to, because they are timeless and the logical brilliance and long term effect look to in some of those brilliant writings will never change.

It is however complete folly to fail to understand how changes in situation create completely different foundation on which to apply the axioms which at the time were so brilliant, and still are under the same conditions.

I will submit to you the situation before WWII, when Churchill was Warning of the rise of Hitler and Nazism. Nevil Chamberlain who took your view, and the French, didn't wish to act to head off Hitlers rise and the growing military power in Germany. Now we know that had the Europeans listened to Churchill a terrible world war could have been averted. Ugly treatment of the Jews, at least to the extent it occurred could have been avoided.

The situation which existed in 1776 (though without the help of the French which violated the ideas you put on our founding fathers, the British would have probably won, at least for a time, and our founding fathers had no hesitation accepting that help). is quite different than today. You had to travel months by ship to take part in anything around the world, and they had to do the same. To claim those ideas based on that reality apply to our current situation and our much different reality where the world is much more local would be ludicrous.

To fail to act in the world while those who would be your enemies are acting and gaining power is just blind stupidity, and a good way to become extinct as a nation and possibly a people, as Hitler would have provided to all but the Arian race. Muslims have much the same world view, non Arab and non Muslim people are not even people to some of these groups, and should be wiped off the face of the earth. Do you want to really sit back and allow that to build up to the point those left when they started in on us would have no chance to win against it? Wouldn't that be pretty stupid?

The fact is, that while the principals were brilliant, our founding fathers were intelligent enough that under current conditions they would have never put forth such axioms, because the foundation on which those principals were based, which was then sound, have changed dramatically and those principals are not only unsound in todays reality, but completely stupid and self destructive.

AND the constitution was always meant as a local document, because it deals with the people, the citizens of the US and how they will be governed and treated, and what rights they will have. It in no way applies to others, who are not covered by the constitution in any way shape or form. To say that because the Constitution doesn't say it doesn't apply outside the US is completely ridiculous. That's like saying that the policy in a movie theater apply outside of that theater, because the policy doesn't specify that the policy only applies within the theater. Of course the Constitution only applies to US law and US citizens, it's the US Constitution.

Is there any president to consider a Country's constitution should apply outside that country, and to non citizens? NO ... because the very notion is completely ridiculous.

The mental gyrations and trips into lunacy some people go into to attempt to justify their own pea brained thoughts on how things should be done in their own limited world which lacks much coherent consideration of reality, can become completely insane.

Answer 2

Pres. Bush has overstepped his authority and deceived the American People, who are no longer sovereign in their own country. Reality is that the nation is ruled by the international business elite and has a mercantilist approach to foreign policy. The guiding principals of foreign policy enshired in our history are mere political myth at this time in our history. This plus the fact that the Royal Society in Britain (a think tank) says that America's role in the world should be "policeman;"  their loyalty is to the Queen, not the U.S. This is another reason that we're pulled into international conflicts around the globe; we're doing what the internationalists overseas want; they have no loyalty to the U.S.  Foreign policy in the Middle East?  Dictated by what's good for Israel, not the U.S. (Saddam Hussein was the only ruler in modern times that fired missiles on Israel.  He's out. What about Iran? They fund terrorists groups - Hezbollah and Hamas - that are also firing missiles on Israel.  So now the prospect of war with Iran looms. The big problem with that is that Israelis have no loyalty to the U.S. Their loyalty is to themselves.  So what do we get out of a war with Iran?  If Israel wants to fire on nuclear facilities in Iran, that's their business & I would support them. ) But I believe it's time for the U.S. to do what's good for the American People; that the American People should insist on a return of sovereign rights to the population of this land, not international business interests, who have no loyalty. And that we, the People, should insist on addressing infrastructure and energy problems at home, in this country. The nation needs us to fight for it NOW. We must insist on focusing our power and treasure on our own problems at this time.  

Answer 3

You pretty much set out my position on foreign policy.

Ron Paul 2008 or as close as I can vote and have it counted.

Answer 4

I think Bush has done what was necessary, and what was authorized under the Constitution.

Answer 5

This is one of the things that reveals how radically un-conservative the Bush regime has been.

Of course few presidents in memory have stood by this principle and we have forever gotten ourselves tangled up in dreadful messes in other countries, either in the service of presumed allies or at the bidding of the corporate forces that are the real and actual government of our times.

For real enlightenment as to how long term this  problem is I would direct you to a Mark Twain volume called From a Pen Dipped in Acid... here we can see the roots of the View Nam War, international Holy War and corporate wars limned clearly and with great wit and observational

panache.