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'America first' is becoming America alone

D. Allan Kerr
D. Allan Kerr

In the previous century, supporters of an “America First” policy wanted to sit out World War II. It wasn’t our fight, they said.

Fortunately for the world, Japanese forces launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, finally compelling America to join the Allies.

But imagine if America had abstained from the fight. It’s a pretty good bet Germany would have conquered all of Europe to the east, and Japan would have ruled the Pacific to the west.

And with our potential allies destroyed, the United States would have been left vulnerable to attack on our mainland, sandwiched between two of the most powerful militaries the world had ever known. I’d like to think America would have still prevailed, but the damage suffered would have been like nothing we’ve seen since the Civil War.

This is the value of allies. This is the strategic genius of global friendships. We were reminded of this nearly 30 years ago when George H.W. Bush cobbled together the international coalition of Desert Storm, and again when other nations rallied to our side in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

But memories are short and history is never-ending. America today is being steered back toward isolationism by leaders who have either forgotten the lessons of the past or are simply ignorant of them.

Now we seem to be on a kamikaze mission to drive our allies away.

The list of episodes illustrating this bizarre phenomenon is too long to chronicle in such limited space, but let’s just consider the ongoing disaster in Syria as an example. Most folks by now have weighed in on what Sen. Mitt Romney called the “bloodstain” of leaving our Kurdish allies to their Turkish persecutors, but the withdrawal could have other consequences as well.

For one thing, it appears Donald Trump – the serial draft dodger who claimed during his campaign he knows “more about ISIS than the generals do” – is determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Last weekend, his former defense secretary James Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general, warned that ISIS is not yet defeated – a claim made repeatedly by his former boss.

“If we don't keep the pressure on, then ISIS will resurge,” Mattis told NBC. “It's absolutely a given that they will come back."

In addition, now Russia is further enhancing its own resurgence as a world power by sweeping in to fill the vacancy left by the United States. President Vladimir Putin just happened to visit the capitals of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last week, even as Russian military police were keeping the peace in parts of Syria.

“Trump’s mistake on Syria could be described as an unexpected ‘lottery prize,’” a Russian newspaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets, recently crowed. “It has further strengthened Moscow’s position in the Middle East and damaged America’s reputation as a prudent political actor and a reliable partner.”

(It’s almost too easy here to insert a comment about this being just the kind of opportunity Putin foresaw when he helped Trump win the 2016 U.S election.)

The Kurds now have to resort to an alliance with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the guy who in the past has been willing to use chemical weapons against his own people.

But perhaps most significant was when Trump finally acknowledged why it was OK to surrender the region. Even if ISIS prisoners do escape, he said, “they’re going to be escaping to Europe.”

“We’re 7,000 miles away,” he said on another occasion.

Given what we now know about the way Trump conducts his foreign policy, it’s worth asking if there was some kind of quid pro quo for his sudden decision to pull out of Syria after speaking with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the phone. One of his most valued properties – a Trump Tower complex, which includes a residential tower, office tower, multiplex cinema and shopping mall – is located in Istanbul.

Trump himself said of Turkey in 2015, “I have a little conflict of interest, because I have a major, major building in Istanbul.”

And even by Trump’s standards, his flip-flops regarding our former allies has been downright bizarre since his talk with Erdogan. Last year, he said the Kurds “died for us and with us” in the fight against ISIS, losing tens of thousands.

“They’re great people,” he said at the time. “And we have not forgotten. We don’t forget.”

Just last week he said, “I love the Kurds.”

Then, less than a week later, he said Kurds were “more of a terrorist threat in many ways than ISIS."

Seriously, with friends like Donald Trump…

But placed in context with our retreat from the Paris Climate Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with Trump’s juvenile jabs at the leaders of friendly countries like Canada, England and Germany, we are truly becoming an island. And not just geographically.

That might be OK with some folks, but seems to me the world was a better place when we were leading the way. We might start feeling a little cold just sitting in the bleachers.

D. Allan Kerr became a really big fan of James Mattis this week. Kerr may also be found on the Sloth Blog at https://slothonline.com/portfolio/d-allan-kerr/ and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/D-Allan-Kerr-354849648605637/?modal=admin.