Minding Our Own Business – The “Official” Foreign Policy of the AltLeft

Author: Brandon Adamson

“You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?” -Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949)

So it’s official, Trump screwed the pooch. After campaigning for years as a non-interventionist in contrast with Hillary’s aggressive neoconservative foreign policy, Trump went ahead and intervened in Syria’s civil war, a conflict which is of course none of our business.

At this point, I think it’s important that the anti-war left and anti-war right set aside their differences and combine forces to protest against US military interventionism. I’ll gladly ally with even the shrillest blue haired, transracial tumblrista on this issue, even if it means having to eat some pepper spray or endure a punch from some confused antifa who doesn’t know what to make of it all.

The official foreign policy of the “AltLeft” as far as I’m concerned is one of non-interventionism. Aside from the moral issue of these countries’ having the right to manage their own destiny, we recognize that meddling in these foreign conflicts is simply not in our long term interests (in many cases it is not even in our short term interests.) What happens in another country’s civil war is none of our business, period. We helped overthrow Iran’s democratically elected leader in the 1950s, and we’re still paying the price nearly 65 years later. We got involved in the Korean War, which was a disaster. 65 years later we still maintain a substantial military presence there (for which we receive practically nothing in return) and face a potential nuclear threat. We intervened in the Vietnamese civil war, in which we had almost nothing to gain and meanwhile lost 60,000 American lives and over 168 billion dollars (in 1960s-70s dollars!) That is to say nothing of the Gulf War, the Iraq war, the Iran-Iraq war, Nicaragua, the indo-pakistani war of 1971 and scores of other conflicts we have inserted ourselves into either directly or indirectly over the years. In most cases our involvement arguably makes the situation worse. Not only that, but we also ultimately end up being blamed for the entire mess.

It’s mind boggling that our leaders have not learned their lessons that they should just stay out. We already have enough problems in our own country which are being neglected. The 2 million spent on each cruise missile would be better utilized paying down the debt or rebuilding infrastructure in our dilapidated urban areas. Worried about ISIS? No need to bomb random nations. Just don’t invite potentially hostile aliens into your country. Do you ever wonder why Uruguay or Argentina is not worried about the North Korean nuke threat or ISIS? They are not dumb enough to stick their noses in places where they don’t belong. The North Korean nuke threat to the USA is entirely self created. After 60 years South Korea should be ready and able to fly on their own. If they can’t now, they never will.

It might be comforting for some to say the president is being corrupted by the neocons, but this lets him off the hook too easily. The reality is he has no one to blame but himself. If he listens to neocons, agrees with them, and acts upon their recommendations…it’s ultimately a reflection of his own poor judgement. Remember that Trump’s whole persona is “Look at me. I’m mr alpha male. I’m in charge of the room, and I don’t take orders from anybody.” Nobody should be making excuses for Trump or pretend he’s playing some kind of 4D chess. For some reason Americans always do this, and then eventually we find out they were full of shit and never really had any coherent strategy. When a leader says or does the opposite of what we want him to do, we can’t just say “he doesn’t really mean it. He just has to say that to cover his tracks. Deep down he’s really our guy! No, he isn’t. None of these people are “our guys” until they are explicitly saying so and backing it up with synergistic action. We need to take them at face value. From now on, the burden of proof has to be on them to demonstrate they’re going to act in America’s interests. They don’t get the benefit of the doubt. Their credibility is worthless here, and they need to put a deposit up front.

Robert Stark and I discussed the official AltLeft foreign policy and reacted to Trump’s attacks on Syria last night on an episode of The Stark Truth podcast, which can be found here.

Topics:

-The gas “attack” in syria and how it’s being used as propaganda to draw us into war

-Anatoly Karlin’s article This Fishy Smell of Sarin, or Was it Chlorine?

-Regardless of what happened the conflict is none of our business

-How the AltRight is totally united in not wanting to go to war in Syria and disillusioned with Trump

-Richard Spencer: Will Trump Gas His Presidency Over Syria?

-Hillary and the Neocon Never-Trumpers praising Trump’s decision to invade Syria

-The hubris in thinking we should decide who the the leaders should be in other countries and how the US never learns its lessons

-Trump’s use of liberal humanitarian rhetoric to justify intervention

-The Trump admin being taken over by neocons and Trump himself making dumb statements

-Steve Bannon’s removal from the national security council

-How gullible US politicians and media are and how easily manipulated emotionally people are by imagery

-How the North Korea situation is none of our business either and how it is a self created threat

-Other Trump examples of Trump betraying his base including signing measure to let ISPs sell your data without consent, health care, and Free Trade