The Irony of It All

I remember reacting sharply to a remark George Bush made during the fourth debate with Al Gore in the 2000 election campaign. He said, without prompting, that under a Bush administration US foreign relations would be limited to those areas of the world where we had important economic interests. He mentioned Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East. Notably omitted were Africa and non-oil-producing countries of the Middle East. He said that aid would continue to "other parts of the world" but that the United States would not engage in "nation-building". It was out of context to the rest of the debate-discussion with Gore. It seemed to me that he was announcing a policy of neo-isolationism and appealing to isolationist-thinking voters.

Consider the post-9-11 history of the Bush Administration and its neoconservative foreign policy. We currently have armies in Iraq and Afghanistan cramming democracy down the throats of peoples too primitive to have any idea what we are talking about. Not exactly a noninterventionist foreign policy.

There is a saying that life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. It seems history is too.