ISOLATIONISM REDUX History and the Current Crisis A White Paper by Executive Summary: Ronald Radosh In this paper, leading American historian Ronald Radosh describes how the antiwar protests that emerged during the Iraq intervention revived the slogans and clichés of the isolationist movement in America before the Second World War. In both cases, opponents of military action concentrated on allegations that war was motivated by illegitimate economic interests, that America was abusing its power, that imperialism was becoming the focus of American policy, that militarism and repression were increasing, and that America risked making new enemies in the world. Although claims that Iraq was a quagmire also echo the protest idiom of the Vietnam era, such charges had also, originally, been voiced at the end of the 1930s. Professor Radosh’s arguments links these to a dangerous, anti-democratic alliance of ultra-leftists and neo-fascists. “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily May 2003 conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.” – Thomas Paine, The Crisis, 1776 The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies The Foundation for the It had to happen. The naysayers opposed The U.S. is merely new imperialism, acting Defense of Democracies to the campaign for liberation of Iraq, and to advance its interests throughout the world. the doomsday scenario they laid out, struck Fourth: War means militarism and those of us with knowledge of history with repression at home. This is alleged to include an eerie sense of déjà vu. The isolationism erosion of civil liberties guaranteed by the that was employed to undermine American Bill of Rights, and the transformation of the will and self-confidence in fighting the United States into a repressive authoritarian fascist and militarist aggressors in World regime similar in nature to that of our War II has been revived, this time targeted proclaimed enemy’s regime. against our President and our commitment Fifth: The U.S. is the Enemy. Anti- to the liberation of Iraq. war activists claim the present Bush Let us examine, in this historical context, administration, not Iraq or any other foreign the isolationist arguments, power harms the interests of the American which we hear repeated time people, as well as that of all peoples around and time again in op-eds, press the world. As the International ANSWER The isolationism that conferences, and protest group that runs the peace marches, was employed to statements. proclaimed: “the real threat of nuclear war There is a common set of and the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction undermine American arguments, echoed over and over. arises within the U.S. administration.” The will and self-confidence First and foremost: “No administration’s goal is described as a simple in fighting the fascist Blood for Oil.” The implication one, to “conquer the oil, land and resources and militarist is that the United States acts at of the Middle East.” The result will be a the behest of its largest “catastrophe,” a “war of aggression” in which aggressors in World War corporations, in this case, the social programs will end, as government II has been revived, this ever-greedy oil lobby. We were funds are exclusively used in the attempt to time targeted against told that access to Iraqi oil fields “take control of and profit from the oil of our President and our alone motivated U.S. policy. the Persian/Arabian Gulf.” Our critics said American boys Sixth: America approached a new commitment to the were going to be sacrificed for Quagmire. The enemies of liberation in liberation of Iraq. wealthy business interests. Iraq, speaking from U.S. soil, warned that Second: Our Enemies are rather than victory, the U.S. would once Victims. The opponents of again be blindly sucked into a useless and intervention said that people unwinnable war turning the rest of the whose identity, livelihood and well-being world against our nation. The U.S., as Pat have been harmed by precipitous American Buchanan so plainly put it, is acting in a action, including no-fly zones and an “triumphalist” fashion leading to “an imperial embargo on trade, will now face suffering war on Iraq.” And, of course, Buchanan in the hundreds of thousands, including argued that the U.S. is fundamentally scores of civilian deaths as a result of both manipulated by the Israeli government, the strategic bombing of Iraq and armed which hopes that war with Iraq will give invasion. They declared that nothing that Israel an excuse to return to Lebanon and Saddam Hussein has done compares to the “settle scores with Hizbollah.” The Jews, evil that will be inflicted on the people of now as in the past, are projected as the the Middle East as a result of U.S. military driving force pushing the U.S. to accept their action. agenda and endanger the peace of the world. Third: The Hegemonic U.S. Empire These themes are all reminiscent of Expands. Our opponents claim a drift to those offered in the years before the outbreak war is a result of the mechanism of the of World War II, when home-grown American Empire – acting to thwart the isolationists in protest movements and efforts of competing powers to dominate the pressure groups, backed by a hardy group trade and investment patterns of the world. of supporters in Congress, argued that a 2 sound American policy was one that put their “media cheerleaders” William Kristol, The Foundation for the “America First.” This gave the name to the Charles Krauthammer and Martin Peretz Defense of Democracies most wide ranging and representative have become the “primary intellectual American isolationist group. Indeed, Pat architects” of war against Saddam Hussein. Buchanan’s demagogy about Israeli On both Left and Right, therefore, we influence calls to mind Charles Lindbergh’s see a new conspiracy theory emerging—one 1941 accusation that the drive to enter the that shows the mindset of classical anti- war against Hitler emanated from “the British, Semitism; ie, as Lieber puts it, “a small, all- the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.” powerful but little known group or ‘cabal’ of Jewish interventionists (neo-conservatives, Jewish masterminds is secretly manipulating Buchanan now says) were powerful, according policy.” Under their influence, the nation has to Lindbergh, because of their “large supposedly shifted away from a policy based ownership and influence in our motion on protecting the people’s interests to one pictures, our press, our radio, and our that is subversive of that government.” interest—and that benefits In a fashion strikingly similar to primarily the right-wing Zionist Today, Old Right Buchanan, the former conservative, now leadership of the Likud in Israel. descendants and left-wing writer Michael Lind, has come out A striking parallel between with his own virtually anti-Semitic conspiracy today and the 1930’s is the imitators gather around theory seeking to explain what lay behind blending together of opposition Pat Buchanan and his the war against Saddam Hussein. He sees to a forceful American foreign journal, The American policy being made by “neoconservative defense policy by remnants of both the Conservative, which intellectuals” who are “products of the Old and New Left and the Old influential Jewish-American sector of the Right. Early in the Cold War, joins the Left in the fight Trotskyist movement…which morphed Harry S. Truman advisor Joseph against so-called U.S. into a kind of militaristic and imperial P. J ones wrote that “most of the “global hegemony.” right.” According to Lind, they support outright opposition” to Truman’s “preventive warfare,” which he argues is new bi-partisan interventionist based on “Trotsky’s theory of the permanent foreign policy came from “the revolution mingled with the far-right Likud extreme Left and the extreme Right…from strain of Zioninsm.” They are the center, a certain group of ‘liberals’ who had been long he argues, of a “metaphorical ‘pentagon’ of strongly critical of the administration’s the Israel lobby and the religious right, stiffening policy toward the Soviet Union, plus conservative think tanks, foundations and from the ‘isolationists,’ who had been and media empires.” It is a virtual new consistent opponents of all foreign-policy neoconservative conspiracy theory, which as measures that projected the United States political scientist Robert J. Lieber writes, is actively into World Affairs.” a “sinister mythology…worthy of the Iraqi Some fifty years later, opposition to a Information Minister, Muhammed Saeed forceful U.S. response to new international Al-Sahaf, who became notorious for telling threats, comes from the same pair of elements. Western journalists not to believe their own Once again, Left and Right stand on common eyes as American tanks rolled into view just ground, active in what some have called “the across the Tigris River.” Red-Brown coalition”—after the creation in In an analysis similar to that made by post-Soviet Russia of an alliance of extreme Lind, the left-wing journalist Eric Alterman, nationalists with old Communists. Today, writing in The Nation, has stressed that “the Old Right descendants and imitators gather war has put Jews in the showcase as never around Pat Buchanan and his journal, The before;” and like Lind, he asserts that a cabal American Conservative, which joins the Left of Jews, including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard in the fight against so-called U.S.