In my opinion, every administration at least since Reagan has focused way more on foreign policy than on domestic. We’ve been putting social and economic issues on the back burner and saying there are bigger fish to fry. But it seems to me that the vast majority of foreign policy problems we face are a result of our sticking our noses into other nations’ business. I’ve always been a fan of being more like Switzerland…trying to remain neutral in most disputes…with a tacit acknowledgement of the fact that as one of the wealthiest nations in the world, we DO have a role to play on the world stage. Particularly however, I think our foreign policy intitiatives should mostly be limited to two things:
1) Self defense. I am not a fan of “empire building” the way the Bush administration (and to a lesser degree preceeding administrations) has gone about seeking to create and maintain sort of a permanent and unquestionable supremacy of the US on the world stage. We may be a leader, but I think our leadership in this area should be more by example than by force.
2) A force for human rights and the greater good. I believe that the US SHOULD engage in humanitarian efforts around the globe…we have abundant resources, which I feel can be best served by helping other nations lift themselves up, and by making sure that we do all we can to fight against human suffering wherever we see it. However, for those of you Star Trek fans out there, I would take sort of a “prime directive” approach here, whereas it is not our role to change the way other cultures govern themselves. It does not however mean that we turn a blind eye to human suffering.
But I feel we far too often overreach, and go well beyond these areas in our foreign policy. Now there are realities here…we are engaged in two wars, and basically, to a degree, both (though one in my mind should never have been waged) do need to retain large US involvement at this point, given the circumstances. I do NOT feel we can simply abandon Iraq, as it to my way of thinking falls into BOTH of the above categories. For one, if we completely abandon the mess we have made in Iraq and allow it to fall completely into the hands of forces which are hostile to us, it does not serve our national defense. And second, if we do not rebuild what we have torn down, we will foster an environment ripe for human suffering. My feeling is our focus in Iraq should be to re-establish viability of the nation as an independent state, and that is that.
In Afghanistan however, I feel we are also meeting both criteria. National defense is on its surface about neutralizing threats from hostile parties, and clearly, Al Quaeda, Bin Laden and those who sought to destroy us are holed up here. We can not let 9/11 go unanswered as it is important to not only neutralize those who have harmed us, but to demonstrate that we do not back down from a just conflict. However, I believe if we had been following MY foreign policy caveats all along, and had not been meddling so much into the affairs of other nations and trying to strongarm the rest of the world into following us, we would not have provoked the ire of terroristic forces in the first place. One of the gravest mistakes of the Bush administration in my opinion was that when America was asking “WHY?” about 9/11, instead of accepting that our own hubris had made us a target, he answered that “terrorists hate freedom”. We can not afford to oversimplify this in the way we have, as it simply creates more nationalism, which in turn creates more of an onus for empire building around the world. So in regards to foreign policy, I feel our focus should be on really pulling back a great deal on many fronts, and engaging full bore on the fronts where we have no choice but to do otherwise.
Domestic policy however has ALWAYS gotten a raw deal as far back as I can remember, at least as I said, since Reagan took office. Reagan began the business of dismantling the social safety net set up by FDR in the New Deal in the wake of the Depression, and ever since, we have been on a long, slow collision course with what just transpired over the past few months. We have gone about economic policy with the theory that unfettered capitalism with minimal restrictions, and a tax structure which concentrates wealth in the hands of the investment class will trickle down prosperity to the entire nation.
To the credit of the free market, laissez-faire capitalists, this unfettered capitalistic economic policy has fostered explosive amounts of economic growth, however it has failed to create and real, lasting or widespread economic prosperity among the citizens of the US. It has done wonders for the haves, but has increasingly caused the middle class to shrink and the ranks of the impoverished to swell. We have seen how real investment in infrastructure, jobs and the social safety net can bring about widespread prosperity, but it’s not as flashy, not as sexy if you will to see a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage as it is to see a Mercedes, a Beemer and a 60 foot Yacht in every gated community McMansion’s driveway.
Over the past 3 decades, we have pushed this idea that if you just take “personal responsibility” for your own prosperity, there is no limit to what you can achieve. It is in my opinion the ulitmate bastardization of the American Dream…that anyone can succeed if they just try. In a society where everyone is given equal footing, that may well be true, but we have dismantled the constructs that have sought to give us all the same opportunities from day one. When I was growing up, my parents had jobs where they could both get healthcare, they were able to choose which plan or combination of the two gave them the best choices at the lowest cost. Pensions were part of the deal when you worked somewhere, and when you had a job, you stayed put…and the company rewarded your loyalty. If you lost that job, you could fall back on unemployment and if worse came to worse, you knew you would not fall through the cracks…pride was enough motivation to make you do whatever was necessary to avoid going on welfare, but it was always there in case you fell on the hardest of times…it was simply a very steep cliff however, one which most people were nowhere near falling off.
Now, you’re on your own in every way imaginable. You are lucky these days if your employer offers health care, and even luckier if you can afford to buy it. There is no job security or sense of loyalty or reward for loyalty to a company…you are lucky if you are offered a self-directed 401(k) as an investment tool, and even luckier if your employer will match any of your investment. But you are responsible for navigating this complex and confusing world of investment that has been set up by the movers and shakers, who know that there have to be losers in order to be big winners, so they stack the cards against the unwashed masses who are forced into this investment world, and reap great rewards at the expense of your income security come retirement.
It is no longer the case that most people are a long ways from having to seek public assistance, most people are no more than one or two paychecks from financial disaster, and the unemployment compensation is capped at a level which just doesn’t cut it for most people. Once you do lose a job, you can maintain your health care, but only if you pay the full cost of your premiums, which have gotten too expensive for most people WITH a job to afford without some sort of employer subsidy. But even if you have insurance, one bad medical problem can max out your benefit and leave you with hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses you can not afford. The biggest reason people file bankruptcy these days is because of medical expenses. And bankruptcy, which was meant to protect people, is no longer all that easy to file for…controls over all the little stop gaps to keep people from becoming impoverished and used up by the system have been dismantled and given away to the movers and shakers of the market so that they may reap even greater rewards at the expense of others.
We have failed to protect our workers as well…at one time in America, if you were able bodied and willing to work, you could probably find a job in a company and settle in for many years. But we have dismantled unions and any sort of protection for American jobs, under the mantra that cheaper is better, which in tandem with our great desire to be a mover and shaker in the Global economy (having already exploited the US for all it’s natural wealth, we now must exploit other parts of the globe), has allowed rampant outsourcing. This in tandem with our desire to allow unfettered capitalism has kept us from keeping any safeguards in place to keep American companies from exploiting impoverished nations in the name of cheap labor, in fact, our government has encouraged this via tax shelters for those who move on to greener pastures once the exploitation of American workers becomes too expensive to be “competitive” globally.
Then as for basic human rights, we have allowed the church to dictate our policy in regards to social issues, rather than to allow a sense of what’s right and human dignity to dictate what should be a no brainer. We deny people the right to enter into a simple contract to share ownership, survivorship, parenting and property rights simply because who they choose to sleep with is too “icky” for some religious zealots to get their minds around.
To put it simply, America has given a big middle finger to Americans for the entirety of my adult life, and as far as I’m concerned, the time to focus more on domestic issues than on foreign ones has always been here, but no more than ever it is important. We have reached a tipping point, where ignoring the needs of Americans is going to become catostrophic for our very society, and risks bankrupting our nation, destroying the fabric of our Democracy, and turning us into a third world country. So, though both are immensely important, and both are intertwined in innumerable ways, I feel we must focus far more on domestic policy in the short term, to tip the scales back to an equilibrium. And perhaps in a decade or two we can be balanced in our approach, but for now we need to do all we can on BOTH fronts, but make sure that domestic policy issues are given front burner status, unless a foreign policy issue is so important as to threaten our way of life unless it is addressed.
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