A Conservative Refutation of Isolationists on the Libyan Civil War, Part I

     In my first post on the Libyan Civil War, Conservative Commentary on the Libyan Crisis, I made the case that the Libyan Civil War was of international interest. In addition to the need to rescue foreign citizens from Libya, I cited the problem of refugees, political instability, the necessity to avoid moral complicity in crimes against humanity and the disruption of trade as concerns of the United States and its allies. In raising these points, I was mainly making the case of U.S. interest in the Libya, not the prudence of intervening beyond the imposition of economic sanctions and the freezing of assets.

     The case for military intervention, however, was made particularly by my observation of the increasing fear that if Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, who had retained some of his chemical weapons, had held onto power, he would return to terrorism against the U.S. and its Western allies.

     The U.S. has global interests and Americans have a global presence. It also has the technical ability to intervene effectively, which imposes a moral duty on it to act to protect human lives. The U.S. military needs not serve as the “policeman of the world,” as isolationists on both the left and the right claim it would be if it intervenes, as they do every time. In fact, it does not serve as the policeman of much of the world, which is peaceful. Indeed, the American military does not even serve as the policeman of the United States! But U.S. interests and capabilities often compel it to act, sometimes non-militarily, sometimes militarily.

     To isolationists, only one motive at a time is possible for any U.S. action. Thus, for example, if an intervention has a humanitarian aspect, they focus on that aspect alone and argue that the U.S. ought not to intervene militarily for humanitarian reasons. If an action benefits an ally, isolationists argue that it our alliance is “entangling” us in a war for our ally’s benefit, as if it is necessarily not in our interests. The motive of acting on additional interests is ignored.

     In fact, whenever the U.S. acts in one way or another on behalf of its interests, isolationists oppose such intervention because they argue that it is not taken on behalf of a “vital interest,” which they insist is the standard for justifying intervention. Isolationists never have to explain what they mean by the term “vital interest,” which is not a term found in the U.S. Constitution they claim to follow strictly.

     A closer examination of the term would be illuminating. “Vital interest” implies that there are interests less than vital, but isolationists never distinguish between the two. They always dismiss any interests as not being “vital interests” because they regard them as insignificant or illegitimate (e.g. they regard any economic interest, like stopping a thief, as illegitimate, while contradicting themselves by complaining about the economic cost of war). They declare a priori the lack of any “vital interests” that would justify action in defense of Americans or its interests or allies. Thus, isolationists conveniently do not have to make judgments about whether or not the U.S. has any interests, and, if so, whether they are truly vital.

     Isolationists thereby fail to explain what criteria would make an interest vital. Does “vital” refer to the United States itself or to the lives of individual Americans? The responsibility of the U.S. is to protect not only the Union itself, but the American people. See my post, An Attack on Americans Anywhere Is an Attack on Us from September of 2009. If “vital” refers to the existence of the U.S., as opposed to the lives of individual Americans, then the September 11 Attacks did not threaten U.S. vital interests. Nearly three thousand people were killed in the attacks, but they argue that there was no direct threat to the viability of the Union. It was not an invasion, as the attackers were dead and al-Qaeda lacked even the potential for an invasion, they argue. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan did not commit the attacks, only certain members of al-Qaeda were allegedly responsible for the attacks whom could have been prosecuted or sued instead, and so on go their arguments.

     Does “vital” mean an immediate interest, or the potential of one? If it means only the potential interest, then even the Pearl Harbor attack was not of “vital” U.S. interest, as the States were not yet under invasion. Remember, isolationists opposed even U.S. involvement in the Second World War.

     Isolationists are always able to come up with an argument that there is no threat to U.S. “vital interest,” other than a theoretical invasion by foreigners, which is conveniently unlikely. Even then, they would likely minimize the threat. Indeed, isolationists never seem capable of recognizing any truly “vital” threats, while conveniently blaming the U.S. for causing the threats in the first place, as if to argue that it would not need to act if only it would withdraw from the world. They even cite Pearl Harbor and September 11 as proof of their theory. The term “vital interest,” therefore, and their insistence on it as a standard for intervention, is only an excuse for isolationists to oppose any action taken in defense of Americans and American interests or allies.

     In short, the only “vital” threat isolationists see to the U.S. is the U.S. itself. Any foreign malevolence against Americans is blamed by them on American intervention, which they regard as the source of the problems in the world, in order to validate their theory. Isolationists fail to recognize the evil intent of an enemy whose ideology requires it to conquer as the source of the problems in the world. 

     Moreover, isolationists fail to see that the world does not want the U.S. to withdraw. It wants the U.S. to use its economic, technological or military resources to act for good.

     In Part II, I shall explore recent examples of U.S. intervention and compare them to the Libyan Civil War.