War is for Winning

The Isolationist Myth

The central myth of isolationists.

"People can only liberate themselves, they can’t be liberated by a foreign power.

However there has hardly ever been successful liberation movement which was not assisted by foreign powers or benefited from the regime being in direct conflict with a foreign power - Russia/German attacks of WW1, China - Russian support & Japan WW2, America/French assistance. Further in places of minimal international interest tyrannys tend to flourish - Lesotho, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Chad, Burma.

Isolationalists spin out this myth to reinforce a delusional self-image of superiority. Isolationalists need the myth so that they can justify the freedoms and lifestyle they have, as having been achieved by themselves. So that freedom and happiness become merely a choice that isolationalists (or their forebears) have made, but "strangely" the oppressed people of the world refuse to make - and therefore it is not any fault of "isolation" the oppressed are subject to.

Based upon this supposed mythological superiority isolationalists typically take a stance that place higher value on the lives lost in conflicts where interventionists have acted than anywhere else. In the case of us westerners this will mean hitting on Israel, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Never mentioned are the non-interventions including Tibet, Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Burma, Cambodia that have cost approximately 4-6 times as many lives. This apparent callousness needs the myth. If it were a simple choice of the oppressed to be oppressed, then their deaths in the absense of intervention would be their own fault and only the deaths under (western) intervention would be avoidable.

Labels: imperialism

posted by unaha-closp @ 11:46 AM