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12/05/2003 Entry: "Upside Down Ethics"
Greg from North Georgia Dogma, responding to me, thinks that it doesn't much matter if everyone in the world thinks we're a threat to peace and stability, our foreign policy is not judged or affected by others. To prove this claim, he brings up George Wallace and the popular support for segregation -- it still wasn't right:
Regardless, I've never called anyone a "blame America first" type and I'm not gonna start now, but......
When it came to civil-rights, more people in Alabama probably agreed with George Wallace than with President Kennedy or Johnson. Does that mean Kennedy's and Johnson's policies weren't working or weren't right?
If other countries are mistrustful and wary of us, they won't work with us, our initiatives will lose support, and our influence over other countries becomes weaker. If Europeans rank us next to North Korea, how badly do you think their leaders are going to want to support us (no matter our righteousness)? More importantly, if their constituents dislike us, it gives them easy political cover for hindering what we do. Normally, countries like France would simply abstain from votes we call that they don't support, but the unilateral attitude of the Bush Administration ensures that their population is so angry at us that their leaders can score political points simply by opposing whatever we do. That makes it harder for us to achieve our objectives, and leads me to say that our foreign policy attitude, which is all about our ends and does little to try and convince others of our ethical position, is not working.
And this isn't a theoretical discussion, it's happening. That;s why it is mainly our boys dying in Iraq, that's why our tariffs are getting ruled illegal by the WTO (that, and the fact that they're illegal), that's why countries that would normally aid us are not letting us launch operations from their territory, and so forth. We're being hindered in a very real way, and it is hurting us and our operations. And I think it is the wrong move to retreat into moral finger pointing (but we're right!) rather than trying to fix the situation. This isn't about blaming America, it's about wanting America to succeed.
On another note, North Georgia Dogma is one of the best Conservative blogs on the web and I highly recommend it. In addition, this world that Ricky imagines doesn't seem half bad.
