In 1984 Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick scorched the Democratic Party for always “blaming America first” for the problems in the world. The American people took to her charge and voted fifty states to one to re-elect President Ronald Reagan.
Five years later, the USSR collapsed, all of Eastern Europe joined the free world, and freedom appeared to be on the march. In the Americas by 1991, every nation had a near democratic government with the exceptions of Haiti and Cuba.
Fast forward to 2024, now forty years later, the Ambassador could now give that speech but instead of talking just about the leftist part of the Democratic Party, she could be describing conservative members of the CATO Institute.
In a September 12 essay, Doug Bandow, a CATO Senior Fellow, writes that the United States has to avoid and not fight future nuclear wars but that to do so the United States has to recognize the wars that might reach its shores are being kindled by US foreign interventions. In short, America is the real bad guy in this narrative.
Most importantly, the US is guilty of pursuing “global primacy.”
In the Middle East, we gave weapons to Israel which were used for the “brutal destruction” of Gaza, and thus in retaliation, the Houthis in Yemen attacked commercial shipping in response.
The US is regularly attacked by Iranian militias in Iraq, but it is our fault for being there in the first place. The US “enables” Israeli attacks on Iran which “triggers” retaliatory strikes. Overall writes Bandow, the US does much to “encourage” conflict in the Middle East.
