Although it appears to have been lost on some devotees of President Donald Trump, one of the foundational cornerstones of “Trumpism” was the belief that all things considered, the United States was best off keeping to itself and avoiding being dragged into conflicts overseas.
All of which was an understandable reaction to the serial mayhem that was wrought by the Bushes, Cheneys, Clintons and Obama in their adventures that a casual observer might think did nothing at all to improve the lives of its putative beneficiaries from Kabul to Tripoli.
Quite the opposite some might say. As a rule of thumb, I would suggest that bombing the bejaysus out of anywhere is rarely a good thing. At least not for whoever might happen to be sitting on that train, walking down that street, or just waking up to face the daily routine in ignorance of the fact that the fighter planes of freedom were seconds away from dumping their payload on their head – in their own best interests of course.
So, I am not inclined any more to the belief that what is happening in Venezuela or might be about to happen in Iran or even bizarrely – or it ought to be bizarre but clearly is not should The Donald decide to smite the Danes – in Greenland is a good thing, as it might be in board games like Risk.
And lest you imagine that I have gone all limp wristed lefty, I cite you no less an authority than Russell Kirk, the great thinker of American conservatism. A chap who denounced the Bush venture in the Gulf as a “war for an oil can,” and advised the Republican Party not to mistake Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States.
It might be forgotten now but a central appeal of Trump’s 2016 campaign was that he promised to put an end to what he described as the “randomness” of American foreign policy. He tapped into a popular view that the thousands of American soldiers lost in the “War on Terror” were pointless.
At the Mayflower Hotel in April 2016, he pitched an America First line. In that speech he claimed that the interventions “tore up what institutions they had and then were surprised at what we unleashed. Civil war, religious fanaticism, thousands of Americans killed and many lives horribly wasted. Many trillions of dollars were lost as a result. The vacuum was created that ISIS would fill.”
And he was right. Tens of millions of Americans agreed with him and elected him. Now it seems most of the same people think that is okay if it is their guy and not a Democrat or Rino who is in the White House.
Which begs the question as to what Trump thinks might ensue if the United States presses on with “regime change” in Venezuela or backs up his promise to take down the Ayatollahs in Iran. Or even the namby pamby liberals in Denmark intent on maintaining Greenland as a colder Woke Artic California.
Which is not to defend the comic opera Castros in Caracas or the Islamists in Teheran. If they are removed by American intervention rather than popular revolt or election, then who will replace them? That is not a proposition from Wittgenstein. The answers are there, as they were in plain sight when Trump himself called them out in 2016.
The Taliban were replaced – billions of dollars and untold lives lost and destroyed later – by the … Taliban. Ghaddafi was replaced by gangs of people traffickers and lunatics intent on turning Libya into a scene from Mad Max; Saddam by mini Saddams and gangsters, and so on and so forth.
Which vision it seems has drawn some of our own like besotted moths to the candle of Trumpist interventionism. Hard to credit but it would appear that some “Irish nationalists” appear to harbour a fantasy that the CIA might do a Allende on Micheál Martin and the Simon and install themselves like General Pinochet in Government Buildings from where the punters could be regaled with free mortgage and investment advice.
If that sounds utterly mad, then it ought to. I am at an age where my cynicism and other than sunny view of the world is mostly overcome by concern that whatever my own indifference to what might happen to Ireland or the world when I am no longer here is out balanced by the fact that it is a world in which my grandson is taking his first steps.
May God preserve him from people who think that his world being turned upside down, for whatever reason, is for his own good.