A Problem with a "Non-interventionist" Foreign Policy

Radical Leftists, Ron Paul supporters and many people in between advocate what is called a non-interventionist foreign policy. In other words, we should never get involved with the internal or other affairs of another country unless they are attacking the United States. That we should trade with every country equally and treat repressive regimes like that in the Sudan the same as we treat democratic allies such as France with the assumption that everyone will be friendly towards us if we are friendly towards them. I understand the attraction of that point of view, things are much simpler in the world if you believe this. But unfortunately life doesn't go that way. Ignoring evil doesn't make evil go away. Evil can't be reasoned with and it must be confronted and destroyed. And ignoring evil, allowing evil and injustice to persist is what is at the heart of a the so-called "non-interventionist" foreign policy.

In fact, as I have extensively covered in past posts, in many cases, a non-interventionist foreign policies can lead to far more deaths to our current foreign policy, which is, as I have also covered before, extremely flawed. But if their were a choice between our current foreign policy and a non-interventionist, completely pacifist foreign policy, I would choose what we have now. The reason for this is clear when you actually face evil, when you actually confront it and understand it for what it is, you will realize that there is no actual reason, that exists for evil actions. While evil individuals and groups tend to make up reasons for their actions, they are all imaginary, the only place they exist is the mind of the person doing the evil actions. When evil is not confronted and handled, this leads to more injustice, harm and deaths. For example, let's take Vietnam, there were a stream of Leftists who protested around this nation during the 1960s and early 1970s to end the US involvement in Vietnam. The propaganda of the Leftists clamed that all of the US was committing attroicities on the people in Vietnam and everything would be perfect if we simply left. Non-interventionist propaganda, adding up to the "fact" that the US should not get involved in conflicts with countries that are not directly attacking the US was spread around. The US government foolishly followed this advice. In the wake of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, the Communists committed crimes against humanity, in three years they killed as many innocent civilians as had been killed by both sides in 15 years of fighting before this point. So looking at this, what was better, to stay a few years and actually win the war or cut and run. Obviously staying would have reduced the number of civilian deaths. Yet leftists will choose the path which leads to more civilian deaths and say that this in fact is the more humanitarian path, which is of course a lie. Now having said there, if there had been a way to break the will of the communists without resorting to war, if there had been a way to get them to leave alone Vietnam without resorting to war, of course that would have been better. And I also believe that the war was grossly mishandled, there was no need to drag it out for 20 years. When a war needs to be fought, the enemy needs to be overwhelmed with heavy force (not an atomic bomb, but lots of conventional bombs on strategic, military targets) and quickly forced to surrender. Not piecemeal attacks here and there.

So what we can learn from this is confronting and destroying evil leads to peace. It leads to fewer deaths than waiting for evil to develop and then attacking or even worse, allowing evil to develop.