There is clearly, then, a growing concern among the American people, that the costs of our engagement abroad, particularly the cost of how we have engaged abroad is simply too great these days -- and that the best way we can reduce these costs is by disengaging from the world, by retreating, by coming home.

Opinion polls have shown a sharp increase in the number of Americans who believe America should mind its own business internationally -- to a level (42%) that is higher than any time since the early 1960s.

But Mr. Daalder, you don't honestly believe that anything close to 42% of the American people think that we should literally "disengage from the world" and "come home", do you?  Do you think that many people believe that American business people should stop selling their goods around the world and come home?  Or that we should stop importing goods from other countries?  Or that we should all stop learning languages and stop traveling abroad?  Or that we should cease reading scientific articles published in other countries?  Or that we should stop talking on the internet to people in other countries?  Or that we should only listen to American music?  Or that we should never cooperate with any foreign countries on any projects of common interest?

There are times, you must grant, where "mind your own business" is precisely the message somebody needs to hear.  If my brother knocks down our neighbor's door, and goes rushing in with guns drawn and blazing in order to rearrange our neighbor's life, I might say to my brother "I think you should mind your own business."  But he would have to be obtuse to interpret my comment as an injunction that he go home, stay home, and never come outside again to enagage with other people.  And he would surely have missed the point if he started mouthing platitudes about how no man is an island, how we are all interconnected in the great web of life, how what comes around goes around, etc.

So who did Bush have in mind when he railed against the danger of isolationism in the SOTU last night?

I don't think it is very complicated.  Bush knows that there are a lot of quite normal people out there who have this funny notion that one shouldn't invade and demolish a country has neither attacked you nor posed a serious threat do you; and that you should avoid killing tens of thousands of people who weren't trying to kill you first.  Bush would like us to believe that all these quite normal people are in fact bizarre and misanthropic desert hermits who want to disengage from foreign interaction altogether.

By the same logic, all of those who speak up against cannibalism are really vegans, drawn in by the seductive temptations of radical vegetarianism.  So from now on, when people say "Hey Bush, stop eating human flesh!", he plans to respond "We must not succumb to vegetarianism!"

Extending that metaphor, Bush also knows that he can count on acertain bunch of "muscular omnivoires" to get themselves worked up into distracted paroxysms of moral terror about the worrisome critics of cannibalism, about the dangers of creeping vegetarianism, and about how important it is to eat meat from time to time.

No, he's referring to the foreign policy sphere. When it comes to economic & trade illiberalism it's not isolationism it's protectionism.

Ivo, "disengage from the world" is just as reprehensible a straw man as Bush's "isolationism." Yes, we are all interconnected up with the world. We will continue to be, unless international trade and travel collapse. The question is not about that. It is: What should the US government be doing with its military? Why is it, exactly, that we need not just a war in Iraq, but 735 military bases in 38 different countries all over the world -- to mention only the publically acknowledged ones?

That sentiment, while perhaps understandable, is one that should concern all of us.  For whether we like or not, we have no choice but to engage a world with which we have become increasingly interconnected.  

Ivo, we all agree with this of course. But like too many Democrats you worry too much about saying the sensible thing and not enough about saying what's politically effective.

What's happening right now is that the American people are beginning to question the cost (in blood and treasure) of our engagement in Iraq. At the same time, they're beginning to clamor for our tax dollars to be spent at home, particularly on medical benefits. Bush and his political staff are afraid of this trend because it reflects a public shifting away from Bush's strength (war) to Bush's weakness (domestic policy).

So, to try to counter this trend, they've invented a bogey man: isolationist Democrats. Now all the Democrats are trying to show they are not isolationists--which is just what Rove wants. Because the more you talk about isolation, the more you give credibility to the concept. And the more you defend yourself, the more guilty you look.

I've said the proper response to the Bush speech is to take him on. Say he's more interested in being President of the Middle East than the President of Middle America. Accuse him of investing vast amounts of our hard-earned tax dollars in building infrastructure in Iraq while allowing New Orleans to rot. Accuse him of trying to cut Social Security and Medicare at home so he can build democracies in places like Zimbabwe and Burma. I know this isn't totally fair. There are good reasons to build Iraq and promote democracy. But I think we all agree that the Bush administration has not achieved anywhere near a proper balance between meeting international goals and meeting domestic goals. Therefore, we need to emphasize the failure by a bit of hyperbole--exaggerating the imbalance and accusing him of caring only about the international and not at all about his own people.

The President knows he's weak on this issue. He's tried to grab the initiative. Don't help him. Attack back. Attack back hard. Counter the isolationist accusation with an accusation that he's not doing enough at home and his expansive nation-building is taking our tax dollars away from important priorities in our own backyard. Let him call you an isolationist. Who cares? You're not, and the American people are with you, not him. Stick to your guns. Shit, if you do that, you might even win a red state . . .  

Purple state, this sounds an awful lot like America First. 

This should help: http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/

Opens Feb. 20 nationwide. 

I think the next few years will be a bumpy ride for interventionists, Right and Left .

There's a bit of overlap--maybe enough to bring a few America First types over to the Democrats--but ultimately it's pretty different. We're not buying the America First agenda on immigration, English language only, trade protectionism, or disregard for multilateralism and the UN. All we are stressing is that Bush should be paying more attention to the major problems at home (medical costs, retirement security, jobs, the budget deficit, education, re-building New Orleans, etc) and be a bit more frugal with the tax dollars he's shipping in droves to Middle Easterners to build their democracies. Iraq is going to cost us at least a half trillion dollars. That's a heck of a lot of money. Bush was bragging about reducing the budget by $14 billion. Well what does that do when he's spending $100 billion or more per year in Iraq?

I was supporting Kosovo intervention but now I have second thoughts.

I think that the principle that one should value human life and preventing genocide above the letter of the international law is valid, but it requires a proviso that avetting a war is a value in itself and one should go an extra mile to seek a solutuion that avoids a war.

That said, Darfur is a much clearer case of a violent humanitarian crisis that Iraq under Saddam.  That pretty much excludes humanitatian concern as the reason for the war.  WMD proliferation and even securing oil supplies can be excluded too, as pretty much every other reason except the liking of a "splendid little war" that allowed to win a pair of elections in a row. 

 True isolationisms roam United States in very small numbers, and are largely libertarians and paleo-cons.  So the problem with them is as acute as the problem of werewolves and other human-animmal  hybrids.

US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were ready to go to war against Iraq with or without a second United Nations resolution, it was reported today.

The allegation was based on a White House memo - which the program said it had seen - following a meeting between the two men in Washington on January 31, 2003.

In the memo Mr Bush is alleged to have said that military action against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein would start on March 10, 2003.

The war actually started 10 days later on March 20.

Britain's Channel 4 News reported that according to the memo, Mr Bush stated that the United States would put "its full weight behind the effort to get another (UN security council) resolution" and would "twist arms" and "even threaten" to get it.

"If ultimately we fail, military action would follow anyway," Mr Bush is said to have added.

To Mr Bush's assertion, Mr Blair is alleged to have replied that he was "solidly" behind the US president and that he was "ready to do whatever it takes to disarm Saddam".
For Mr Blair, "a second United Nations resolution (against Iraq) would provide an insurance policy against the unexpected, and international cover, including with the Arabs", Channel 4 News said.

On the other hand, in January 2003, less than two months before the start of the military action, the two leaders did not seem persuaded that Iraq had made any material breach of United Nations resolution 1441.

Dr. Daalder's assessment of Bush's speech was dead on. In some respects, Bush should not be condemned for his use of the "isolationism" charge. Bill Clinton did it effectively throughout his eight years in office. I currently have an essay out that tracks Clinton's use of the isolationism argument. What we should be debating is, Dr. Daalder suggests, the propers ways of American engagement (e.g. renewing the liberal international order as G. John Ikenberry has written in a variety of posts over the past few months). Instead, Bush has pursued a more unilateral foreign policy, which actually harms American leadership in the WoT, than helps it. Bush could take a lesson from the Truman and Clinton administrations who pursued foreign policy on a number of fronts that ensured American engagement and American leadership. The isolationist argument, is in some respects a "boogeyman," but it hides the debate that we should really be having in foreign policy.