Sen. McCain, ABC's "This Week", today via Reuters:
"John McCain, his party's 2008 presidential nominee, ripped into the current crop of Republican White House contenders, accusing them of breaking party tradition by preaching 'isolationism.'"
We're going to get this a lot from the establishment apparatchiks of both parties for the next several years. Obama has bought into the "we can't leave because it's 'isolationism'" creed because it's what all of the serious people think in DC.
There are few egos so easily bruised than those in uniform and those immersed in the armed forces culture. More than anything else in the last 30 years, it's the perception of military strength that both those inside and outside of this country reach for when describing the power and influence of the United States in the world. Challenge the validity of that perception, and you will be accused of hating this country.
The GOP used it as both the club and the bloody shirt in the days after 9/11, and the easy conventional victories over the Afghans and the Iraqis made the sense of superiority few with political ambitions wanted to challenge.
The financial crisis of the last four years has certainly made the realization of the cost of all of that bombing, and droning, and "nation-building" painfully apparent across the political spectrum, but it's no surprise that Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham are surprised at the increasing dissent and lives and money down the rat-hole of empire.
The United States is not very good at empire, primarily because we insist on embracing it in terms of profit. And the promises of oil and oil infrastructure that helped motivate the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively have and will not work out. For better or worst, the arguments for getting are increasing couched in terms of getting out of these investments and not pour in good money after bad.
This will not stop the warmongers like McCain from still screeching "isolationism" as some sort of taunt:
"He [Reagan] would be saying: That's not the Republican Party of the 20th century, and now the 21st century. That is not the Republican Party that has been willing to stand up for freedom for people for all over the world."
It's always been easy for the Republicans to invoke Reagan for any purpose they wanted, and perhaps this would be no different. But even the ghost of zombie Reagan resurrected would have to realize what toll 30 years of GOP tax cuts and warmongering have taken on this country. Our country has been off track since 1980, and it is no longer possible to back up far enough to find where that path would've taken us. We had a chance in 2000, but the GOP Supreme Court nipped that one in the bud.
Bottom line is that when we hear, from the GOP or from the White House, that "we" (really "they") refuse to become "isolationist," make it clear that what they really want is EMPIRE on the backs our elderly, our children, our poor, and our middle class.
And vote and agitate accordingly.