It seems strange sometimes, the things that trouble Senator John McCain. Take the NATO war on Libya, for example, in which the United States is a participant, if not the outright leader.
Libya has, so far as is generally known, committed no recent offense against the United States or our NATO allies, nor threatened to do so. The African nation poses no threat to America and her interests abroad, nor has it made any assault on our nation’s honor. Yet President Barack Obama has waged an air war against Libya without any authorization by Congress, let alone a declaration of war, which power the Constitution assigns to Congress. He has gone past the time allotted by the 1973 War Powers Act for either obtaining the support of Congress or ceasing the military action.
Robert Taft died in 1953, and he took Old Guard conservatism to the grave with him. The Republicanism that survived during the Eisenhower years and after would not be called “isolationist.” Eisenhower himself mainly did the bidding of the Eastern establishment internationalists who got him the nomination at a fiercely divided Republican National Convention and won him the election over fellow global interventionist Adlai Stevenson. Richard Nixon, mentored and promoted by former New York Governor and two-time presidential loser Tom Dewey, was as thorough-going an internationalist as his Democratic opponent for President in 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy. And while critics called Sen. Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP presidential candidate, a great many things, none accused him of being isolationist.
But because Ron Paul and other Republicans are moving the Republican Party once again in the direction of non-interventionism and a growing number of Americans see no rhyme or reason to be bombing Libya and want President Obama to obey the War Powers Act and the Constitution of the United States, John McCain is once again warning of the dangers of isolationism. In truth, isolationists have never been any more prevalent in the United States than the Viet Cong John McCain fought in Southeast Asia were on the streets of New York and Los Angeles. We must not be complacent about our national security. But we don’t need Sen. John Quixote of Arizona tilting at the windmills of “isolationism” he discovered with great alarm at a candidates forum in New Hampshire.
