Stay Home and Don't Go Abroad

For John, BLUF:  Many on the "right" are against foreign intervention.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Former US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) has an article out at the AntiWar blog site,♠ saying that "Iraq Collapse Shows Bankruptcy of Interventionism".  That is to say, the slaughter of people on all sides within Iraq is an indication of a collapse of civilized government in that nation.  A nation that some of us hoped would emerge as a democracy in some form.  Didn't happen.

This strikes me as the heart of Representative Paul's thesis:

From Iraq to Libya to Mali to Syria to Afghanistan, U.S. interventions have an unbroken record of making matters far worse.  Yet regardless of the disasters produced, all the interventionists offer is a more aggressive U.S. foreign policy.

Well enough.  But, what about those interventions in which we are currently engaged?  Do we walk away or do we owe something to the people of those nations?

We Intervened—Now What?
	Walk away.
	Pottery Barn Rules.
	Something inbetween.
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Regards  —  Cliff

♠  This site is devoted to the cause of non-interventionism and is read by libertarians, pacifists, leftists, "greens," and independents alike, as well as many on the Right who agree with our opposition to imperialism.  Our initial project was to fight against intervention in the Balkans under the Clinton presidency.  We applied the same principles to Clinton's campaigns in Haiti and Kosovo and bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan.  Our politics are libertarian: our opposition to war is rooted in Randolph Bourne's concept that "War is the health of the State."  With every war, America has made a "great leap" into statism, and as Bourne emphasized, "it is during war that one best understands the nature of that institution [the State]."  At its core, that nature includes an ever increasing threat to individual liberty and the centralization of political power.