Born Isolationists

Feeding America’s natural isolationism — no country relishes sending its sons and daughters to fight in a far-off desert — can create a momentum of irresponsibility that moves beyond control. ~Michael Gerson

So says that deeply realistic man who wrote the speeches for Mr. Bush in which the President declared that America would “end tyranny” on earth.  He understands foreign policy and what the real world requires. 

Of course, Gerson is right in that he recognises that no people wants to send off their sons and especially their daughters to fight overseas, but it never occurred to me that this was “‘natural isolationism.”  It just seems like natural humanity to me.  I don’t know of many other peoples in the world who truly relish sacrificing their young men to war.  Peoples around the world may glorify soldiers and celebrate their deeds in war, but most people, normal people, would rather that there be no war if at all possible.  One might just as misleadingly call this desire to live in peace a “natural pacifism,” since the desire to live in peace (or the desire to have your children live that way) can be of the most powerful motivations to fight in a war.  I have seen more than a few reports in which soldiers in Iraq have explained their belief in the cause in terms of making sure that their children do not have to return in another generation.  This, too, is a natural desire, even if it makes for bizarre policy choices.  In the end, Gerson’s remark is just one in a long line of confused uses of the word isolationism by people who wouldn’t understand the instinct for what they call “isolationism” if they spent a lifetime trying.