I am so very, very tired ...

... of sending our young men and women off to die to fix everyone else's problems.

With the death of Pat Tillman, I couldn't help but think of John Hawkins incredible essay, "Confessions Of An Isolationist Wannabe":¹

Rarely a day passes on the internet without another article being written that claims America is a "hegemon", that we're like "like Rome," or that we want to "create an empire." Take it from a Conservative, ultra-nationalistic, America-first hawk; Americans on the whole would rather drive bamboo shoots under their fingernails than "rule the world."

To the contrary, isolationism is so ingrained in the American culture that it might as well be genetic. You have no idea how much I, like most Americans, would enjoy totally withdrawing from the world.

But let's face it, the United States is mired in every region of the globe. We protect Taiwan from China & South Korea from their belligerent former countrymen in North Korea. We still even protect Japan and have countless military bases in Europe for crying out loud.

Don't even get me started on the Middle East. The amount of aid we give to nations in the region and the amount we've spent on military conflicts and maintaining the peace over there is staggering. But if we were buying oil from Iraq today instead of Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia would it make that much of a difference? It would be so tempting just to bring our troops home and find out.

Every time I see a disingenuous representative of the Saudi government talking about how much his government loves the US or some stupid Palestinian blowing himself up while his mother declares that he's a hero, I just want to wash my hands of the whole damn planet. And to be able to let Africa and Latin America fend for themselves would be a dream as well. You don't how much I'd love to hear Bush say, "Well I guess Zimbabwe and Argentina created their own problems so it's their responsibility to come up with a solution." Oh and how sweet it would be to tell the United Nations and everyone in the EU except for Britain to take a hike. Let them figure out how to deal with the next Somalia or Bosnia without our help.

John is so very right here. I know of very few Americans who have any desire to keep sending our military off all around the world fixing everyone else's problems. Who in their right mind, after all, would enjoy the thought of spending so much blood and treasure to protect other people and fix their problems?

So why do we keep doing it? Well, the first reason is that we, as a nation founded and grown by misfits and outcasts have a natural affinity for the oppressed and downtrodden. Secondly, we don't seem to have any choice; every time we try to leave the rest of the world alone, things end up blowing up in our backyard.

America stayed out of World War I for a long time because we didn't feel it affected us. Washington's warning to "avoid entangling alliances" is almost a siren song for the American soul. All we really want is to be left alone. When the conflict finally grew to the point that it couldn't be be ignored, most Americans who supported the war did so because they were promised that it was the "War to End All Wars."

In the decades that followed, America withdrew from the world again. After all, people thought, haven't we done our part to put things right? Haven't we sacrificed enough to show the rest of the world how futile this stupidity is. So when Hitler and Hirohito begain their relentless march, most American's placed themselves firmly in the "do-nothing" camp. FDR was not the great domestic visionary the Democratic Party likes to pretend he is, but when it came to the new war, he was one of the few Americans capable of understanding how bad things were. The average American simply refused to understand.

And they kept right on refusing until a few thousand of our soldiers and much of our Navy found themselves at the bottom of a harbor in Hawaii. Only then did we re-learn the lesson that when the rest of the world screws up big enough, we always end up paying for it no matter how hard we try to stay out of the way. So we sent our boys off to fight and die again. Off to risk their lives to fix somebody else's problems so we could be left in peace again.

This time the lesson held, at least with those in authority. We stuck around in the outside world much longer this time. We rebuilt Germany and Japan in our image so as to minimize the risk that this would happen again. And we formed Nato. Formally, this was a mutual protection pact. Realisitically, Nato was as much about keeping the American people, and therefore America itself, engaged with with western Europe enough to be able to keep the Soviet Union at bay. In other words, it was as much about PR in the US as it was about military cooperation.

And for a long while, we stayed involved. And eventually, through engagement, we were able to beat the Soviet Union without ever engaging in direct conflict. Yes, we'd fought some proxy wars. And yes, they'd cost us dearly. But it didn't cost us as much as it could have if we'd waited to get involved until we had no choice.

This made us feel pretty good about ourselves. Good enough that for a few short years, we decided that being pro-active wasn't all that bad. So, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, most of us knew, without question that we needed to go kick him out. Sure, because of the strategic value of the oil fields, doing so was in the best interest of our economy. But even more, it was just the right thing to do. Saddam was in the wrong and he had to be stopped. Comparisons to Hitler abounded and the phrase "Never Again" was on a lot of people's lips. If we just stand by, he'll eventually march across the whole middle east. And then, who knows what he'll do. No, we decided; we've got to nip this in the bud.

And we did. And then we were feeling really good about this whole intervention thing because it had worked pretty well, all things concerned. So when Bush 41 ordered troops to Somalia to protect civilians from the warlords shortly before the end of his Presidency, most people I knew weren't exactly happy about it, but there weren't very many complaints. After all, it seemed like the right thing to do and this involvement thing seemed to be working.

And that feeling lasted right up until the day that two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and we saw images of United States soldiers being dragged through the street. At which point we gave the rest of the world a big #$*(&@#(*&*(#&@#(*&$(A*@#&$*(@&#(*$&#*% that! If you didn't want our help, you could have just said so. And we withdrew and did our best to keep our heads down for a while.

When brutal ethnic cleansing started up in the former Yugoslavia, we ignored it for as long as we could. Only reluctantly did we decide to stop it. And when we finally did move, we were reluctant to bring much force to bear. That reluctance has meant that we never have really fixed the problem. When similar slaughter happened in Rwanda, we pretty much did ignore it. Our desire to leave the rest of the world alone if they'd only leave us alone was so great that without our European allies screaming for help like they did in Bosnia, we just couldn't muster enough care about the rest of the world to overcome our isolationist tendencies.

We desired so much to be left alone that when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, we shrugged. Our barracks were bombed in Saudi Arabia and we shrugged. Embassies in Africa were bombed, and we shrugged again. Suicide bombers attacked the USS COle, and again we shrugged.

And we kept right on shrugging until those planes brought down the World Trade Center. Finally, after nearly a decade of us doing our best to ignore the rest of the world, the rest of the world had managed to screw itself up so badly that we just couldn't ignore it any more. So now, we've woken up again. We've decided, once again, to try to fix one of the world's biggest problems and people like Pat Tillman are fighting and losing their lives to do just that.

And the rest of the world looks at us and sneers. We're being heavy handed, they claim. We want to impose a Pax Americana, they claim. We have imperialist ambitions they tell anyone who will listen.

They fail to understand this fundamental truth: we dont' want to do any of this. What we want is to be left alone and to leave the rest of the world alone. For the average American, the only contact desired with the outside world is to sell them cool stuff and buy their cool stuff. (That's a paraphrase of something else John Hawkins said somewhere.)

The problem is that every time we try to do that SOMETHING BLOWS UP IN OUR BACKYARD. If the rest of the world wants America to leave them alone, all they have to do is fix their own problems for once. If we thought we could disengage ourselves from the rest of the world without having to fear that we'd wake up one day to find Chicago missing, we'd probably do just that.

I am so very, very tired of reading stories about Pat Tillman, Brad Shuder, and so many others. All I want is to be able to call every man and woman in our military back home and tell them that they've done enough, and they're not going to have to die for us any more. I'm so sick of the blood and the worrying and the waiting and the flow of coffins from places I can't pronounce.

I just want to bring them all home and let the world fix it's own problems. They claim they can do this better than us any way. It's uncharitable, since I know they can't, but a huge part of me just wants to say, "Fine! Do it yourselves then." And to be honest, the reason I don't say that isn't because of some great fear for the rest of the world. It's because I'd very much like to not wake up one day and find out that San Diego became a giant crater over night.

So, since we can't afford to disentangle ourselves in the war, all I can do is thank the men like Pat Tillman who gave their all to defend us.

¹ If you haven't read this whole essay stop whatever you're doing and go read it now. It excellently describes the frustration a lot of Americans feel.

Update: Thanks to Mark Butterworth for pointing out that the link to Hawkin's essay was missing. That's been corrected.

Comments

[mark butterworth]

I would read the essay but there's no link.

But I agree with your sentiments. We get called arrogant cowboys by the world, but the truth is we'd rather have nothing to do with their nonsense.

[Ralph Englishman]

You talk all the way through as if the people of a country are the same as the rulers of a country, but that's totally untrue.

For example, you say that many americans want to leave the rest of the world alone, but that's not at all how the US government feels. They have intelligence in every single country in the world, and when something happens that they don't like, they do something about it whether its any of their business or not. In Ukraine right now with the election problems, the US said that if the communist got into power, they would not have anymore to do with the country. This is because communism is not to their liking so they want to stop it selfishly.

Also, the majority of Britain's hate the UK's alliance with the US, because we all hate the US government, just like most of the rest of the world. But this doesn't mean we don't like the American citizens. This is a misunderstanding which happens all the time in loads of places.

The American government cannot ignore the rest of the world's problems, like you say, because it is one of the things that causes them. In the past, the US has given millions of dollars to Osama Bin Laden and his army to fight the govrnment over there. They also helped Saddam Hussain come to power in the first place.

The problem is that other poorer countries have become so jealous of the US and the way it is trying to control the world that some people have turned to terrorism. I think the US is too selfish to be able to effectively solve problems around the world, because they will change things to their liking. No doubt the US will come out of Iraq with an amazingly cheap source of oil because of some law that they force in in that country.

America and the rest of the rich world needs to use its economical strength to help the poorer countries so that they can support themselves.