Judging from the responses to my blog post yesterday on foreign
policy issues, 90 percent of those who have commented are
furious; these respondents favor a complete non-interventionist
foreign policy, a retreat to what in the 1930s was called the
“Fortress America” position. The arguments are essentially that
we cannot be the world’s policeman, that our country is in a
major deficit crisis and we can no longer afford an
interventionist foreign policy, and that it is wrong-headed and
unnecessary. I suspect that if most of these commentators were
voting back in 1972, they would have pulled the lever for George
McGovern, whose slogan was “Come home, America” and who used
similar arguments against standing up to the Soviet Union.
There always will be those who say that “the cost of one
battleship or super airplane” would finance education in fifty
school districts that desperately need money. So, they continue,
let’s spend our money at home and let peoples in other lands
worry about terrorist threats that could