An Argument for a Restrained Policy

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Jul 24, 2013 at 13:34

I only wish that similar counsel had been given our government back when Khomeini did his end-run around the Communists to guide the Iranian revolution. I'm old enough to remember many of our pundits in and out of government running around howling about the threat of "fundamentalism". Before that, I'd seen Kennedy-esque liberals begin by thinking that Americans could do everything from nation-building in Southeast Asia to putting a man on the moon to ending poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, then end by thinking that Americans had done everything from teach torture to the heirs of Inquisitorial Iberia in Latin America to teaching corruption to the heirs of the Confucian Mandarinate along the Pacific Rim.

I'm all for involvement with the rest of the world, but we really ought to remember that everyone else had a history prior to the anointed "we" getting involved.

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