MORAL COWARDICE ISN'T A PRINCIPLE:

A Realistic and Principled Foreign Policy (Bill Richardson, Foreign Policy)

Sixty years ago, in the pages of this magazine, George Kennan presented a compelling case for U.S. global engagement and leadership to contain Soviet power. His strategic vision laid the foundation for a realistic and principled foreign policy that, despite mistakes and setbacks, united the United States and its allies for the duration of the Cold War.

In the wake of the Bush administration's failed experiment with unilateralism, the United States needs once again to construct a foreign policy that is based on reality and loyal to American values.

There is no American value that is vindicated by the proposal to tolerate fifty years of totalitarian oppression for the people of Syria, as we stood idly by and left the Poles to five decades of communist darkness. American values are pretty explicit...:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

... and any policy that doesn't advance them is, literally, unAmerican, as containment was.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 16, 2007 8:55 AM