US Out of Everywhere

[Justin Schwartz]

Changing the subject, are we, Nathan? And where did you get "no aid" and "no 
entanglements" out of what I said. I have been arguing for no military 
intervention. US foreigna id is a trickier subject. People more 
knowledgeable about this than I have argued that a lot of foreign aid is a 
giveaway to agribusiness, and certainly the US uses its miserable 
contribution to aid to advance some lousy agendas, such as its antiabortion 
policies. Nonetheless, I do not think that no foreign aid is a good idea. As 
to entanglements, I'm actually for 'em--nots o much military alliances, but 
I'd like to see the US enmeshed in multinational agreements of variosu 
sorts. Which ones matters. NAFTA, GATT,a nd the MAI are not models. 
Nonetheless, the subject here is the coming war on Iraq and the Bush 
doctrine more broadly. One may agree with you taht the US needs to do 
something more abouut AIDS in AFrica without agreeing that it doesn't matter 
if the US arrogates to itself the right and the power to preemptively attack 
everyone anywhere. jks


>
> >I think the proper response in view of the undisputed facts aboutthe 
>nature
> >of US foreign policy--and I set aside Kosova and Afghanistan as
>disputed--is
> >not "Let the US use its power to extract multinational "agreement" to its
> >depradations, but "US out of everywhere"!
>
>That's teh Buchanan position- no intervention, no foreign aid, no
>entanglements.
>
>My biggest problem with the "USA out of everywhere" position is that it
>overwhelmingly focuses on military adventurism, yet the economic role of 
>the
>US in the world-- which it is decidely not going to be "out of" in any
>case-- is deemphasized.
>
>I am against the war in Iraq but a war there is pretty damn irrelevant to
>global suffering-- over 30 million people are projected to die of AIDS in
>coming years, millions more will die each year from poverty, lack of decent
>water, lack of food, and so on.  The validation of "sovereignty" and
>"self-determination" has its conservative flip side of lack of
>responsibility by the US for doing anything about that global suffering.
>
>The Left has an overwhelmingly negative agenda, especially on foreign
>policy, when what is most desperately needed is a positive agenda of global
>justice.
>
>-- Nathan Newman

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