Apples to Oranges

Everytime anyone brings up a non-interventionalist foreign policy, they immediately smear it as isolationism. Then, like the sun will rise the next day, they say, "This is the attitude that caused World War II," as if this situation could apply today.

First of all, it's pretty obvious that Americans learned their lesson about letting countries invade other countries and de-stabalize a region. This is evidenced by our swift counterattack on Iraq when they invaded Kuwait. I don't think we would ever make the same mistake of World War II appeasement.

However, I don't think that applies today. When the U.S. was ignoring the Axis rise to power, they were ignoring two military juggernaughts - the Japanese and Nazi Germany - who possessed superior technology and blitzkrieged their way through their respective global spheres. Germany effectively conquered Europe, save Great Britain, and started into Africa. They would have kept going if the U.S. didn't finally jump in and the Germans decided to invade Soviet Russia and not quit despite getting whomped. Japan had conquered Korea, Manchuria, vast swatches of China and was working their way through the island chains like the Phillipines in South Asia. They were powerful, they were strong, and they had lasting occupational power.

The countries we deal with today are small, petty, and insignificant. Iran, with all its bellicose rhetoric and anti-American sentiments, could never invade one country and hold it (except for maybe Iraq at this point, if left alone by us), let alone an entire geopolitical region. And even if it managed to conquer and hold the Middle East, any excursion into Asia or Europe will lead to their untimely and incredibly swift defeats. Same with Iraq pre-invasion. Saddam was a bad guy, no doubt about it, but he was no Hilter. Not even close. He tried to invade once, and we crushed his military. We fought on his home turf and destroyed his entire military infrastructure within weeks. Hardly comparable to the D-Days and Iwo Jimas of World War II.

Stop insinuating as if when we stop paying attention to the Middle East, some Nazi-esque power is going to rise and plunge the world into a global bloodbath. They are of no military concern to us. Should we leave no presence at all, and they start invading each other, then the rest of the global community will be on our side to sort things out and we would destroy the entire military capability of that region in months. It wouldn't even take half a year. And the truth is, they probably won't start invading each other. They don't have the capability to do so.

It's not 1945, and Iran or Iraq are not Nazi Germany or Imperialist Japan. Such a comparison is laughable. A non-interventionalist foreign policy says we stay out of people's business unless it becomes our own, not let the world go ablaze and warm ourselves next to the fire. And the world will not go ablaze and threaten us if we leave it alone. We've been leaving Africa alone, and we're still okay (though the Africans aren't. But we still don't seem to care about them anyway). Reducing global politics to such ridiculous, simplistic terms that "isolationism" will always lead to another world war makes me raise an eyebrow (figuratively, since physically, I'm not sure what muscle to flex to accomplish it).