[Vision2020] Nation Building and Phil Nisbet's Misunderstandings

[Phil Nisbet]

Wow, this is going to take some serious work to set you straight Nick, so I 
shall take a stab at it.

First, I did not say you were an isolationist, I asked if that was what your 
stance was and then laid out a reasoned response to isolationism.  There is 
a substantial difference between asking you what your stance is and 
“calling’ you anything.

The stance you give us is one which calls for blockade, something legally 
equivalent to war, which does everything short of actually deposing a 
dictator by force.  It is the equivalence of sitting on the Rhine River  in 
the bleeching from the chimney smoke of Dachau, Ravensbrook and the rest and 
saying, gee I did all I could to stop the slaughter.

The argument you give us is that we do not have the means to act because 
there are so many bad actors on the globe.  The truth is that lumping every 
offender together to make such a case is a dodge.  It is similar to saying 
we should not take action against murderers because so many people speed on 
Freeways.

As the only group on our planet with truly disposable income, holding 25% of 
the world’s assets with only 5% of the worlds population, are we not morally 
bound to take action?

You are saying we will not shop at various people’s stores because this one 
litters, that one spanks his kids and that one is a mass murdering 
pedophile?  My response is that your actions make sense for minor offenders, 
polluters, repressors and others, but no sense when dealing with genocidal 
mad men.

The repression of Fidel, Chavez, of Beijing or Rangoon does not warrant the 
actions needed to take on a Pol Pot or a Hitler.  We have the means and 
therefore the moral responsibility to see that genocide and ethnic cleansing 
are stopped on this globe and that the people responsible are tried for 
their crimes.

One of the things that a Bill Clinton can hold to his credit that a Jimmy 
Carter can’t is that he looked this problem in the face and acted in Kosovo. 
  He may have failed to act in East Timor, in Rwanda and elsewhere, but he 
set into motion a new understanding of America’s role in world politics.  
Clinton cut the Gordian knot and took on Serbia without a UN coalition and 
with a lot of condemnation worldwide for doing so.

I will deal with your final paragraph in a separate posting.

Phil Nisbet

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