David Books in a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times titled "The Autocracy Challenge" outlined the need for constant "interventionism" foreign policy by United States in autocratic regimes around the world. In his piece, Mr. Brooks criticizes President Obama's outlined foreign policy for his remaining tenure in office. Mr. Brooks seems to correlate what President Obama outlined as foreign policy with allowing all the worlds' dictators and thugs to operate with impunity. Even if he had step up to the podium and said just that would it be such a horrible proposition? After ramping down over a decade of war on multiple fronts, would minding our own business for a short period of time not be a healthy respite from the current political climate?
However, this is not what President Obama outline at West Point, he spoke of America's current relevance on the global stage. Obama shared his vision for an America that is a front runner for leading the world throughout the next century using the backbone of the greatest military in the world. He spoke of balance between over-reaching and under-reaching, not of keeping our hands out of geopolitical affairs. When President Obama alludes to the fact that the United States cannot fix all of the world's problems, David Brooks hears that we will not attempt to address any of them. Instead, Mr. Brooks has tuned out the president's speech in favor of a stroll through his geopolitical "international garden". David Brooks speaks of America's need to tend to this "international garden so that small problems didn't turn into big ones." I think Mr. Brooks needs to take a look around that garden he is daydreaming in; the only things United States "interventionism" is growing in that garden are more enemies and extremists.
As David Brooks continues on in his piece towards a conclusion he cites American foreign policy history over the past 70 years as having an effective 2 layer system. He criticizes the President of undermining the layers of this system by removing the United States as a global "enforcer." Well since Mr. Brooks is so proud of the history of our foreign policies let us survey the historical landscapes for our successes in the past. let us start with our meddling in Iran in the 50s, end result destabilized region that hates America. This gives rise to an Islamist revolutionary state which holds our diplomats hostage for 3 months threating to execute them. Korea, bloody conflict that never truly ends, nation split in two in which the north holds significant resentment toward America and remains an enemy state to this day. Vietnam, more than a decade long bloody conflict that claimed the lives of thousands of U.S. service men and countless Vietnamese among other southeast Asian people. Afghanistan, another decade long bloody conflict which cost thousands of lives; when we finally withdraw the bulk of our security forces in the near future I predict the same destabilized state in which the United States left Iraq.
Iraq, over a decade of bloody conflict again costing the lives of thousands of American service men and women and countless Iraqis. Since the withdraw of U.S. troops there has been increasing sectarian violence, leaving a decimated political structure which allies itself with a neighboring old American friend, Iran. If the United States had the foresight in foreign policy to see the only thing containing the sectarian violence in Iraq was the brutal autocrat that we destabilized, tried for war crimes, and hung. Perhaps if we would have exercised some restraint in the region it would have saved thousands of lives albeit not the ones Saddam took on his own accord. Either David Brooks is not familiar with the history of our foreign policy or he pays as close attention to it as he did to the president's speech before climbing upon is op-ed soapbox to denounce the command-in-chief's outline of future foreign policy as not being militarily interventionist enough.
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