All eras have a siren call.
One that is now growing in our own day is the idea that America can withdraw from the world.
And it’s coming from the right.
The idea gained popularity under Donald Trump.
But Trump’s foreign policy wasn’t actually one of American withdrawal.
He successfully bounced this country’s NATO allies into upping their defense spending. And he operated a largely successful foreign policy.
He did so in part because he had the “madman” advantage.
Adversaries from China to the Taliban knew that Trump might prove to be a crazy SOB.
So it was best not to test him.
That’s a good deterrence. But it’s not the most stable or permanent one.
Yet it is quite different from the calls now going up on the American right.
Which is for America to withdraw from the world entirely.
For the past 18 months, we have heard Republicans balking at this country arming Ukraine.
And now prominent Republicans are similarly stepping away from the idea of arming Israel.
Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy this week said the US shouldn’t send any military aid to Israel. Diplomatic cover, he says, but “no money.”
Of course, I can see where politicians and pundits who advocate this are coming from.
They point to aid packages to Ukraine and Israel and ask why we aren’t spending this money at home.
They ask what good America can do in the rest of the world given that our own cities are deteriorating so fast.
There’s a lot in this.
You can’t travel through this country today without being struck by the rotting of our cities.
But the causes of this are obvious.
Follow along with The Post’s coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas
- Hamas chief says a ‘truce agreement’ and hostage exchange with Israel is close
- Hamas captives spill secrets about operating from hospitals: ‘We became their human shields’
- How many aid groups knew Hamas was hiding in a hospital and lied about it?
- Israel war live updates: Follow along for The Post’s latest coverage
And none of them would be improved if we threw more money at the problem.
Just as New York education standards don’t go up with every extra dollar splurged on them, cities like this one won’t improve with more money.
We all know why our cities have gone the way they have.
It is the result of a years-long war on policing.
The imposition of ultra-liberal district attorneys.
The idea is that people who are clearly insane should not be kept off the streets.
The idea is that controlling the southern border is an impossible task.
These things, among others, are not fiscal problems.
They are simply bad decisions.
Bad decisions need to be dispensed with.
Not have more money thrown at them.
Still, it is obviously appealing to some people to say that the money America sends to allies abroad should instead be spent at home.
I’ve heard it ever since returning from Ukraine last year.
As it happens, the amount of money this country has sent to Ukraine could count as a rounding error in any US spending budget.
If you want to find places in which government burns money in this nation, there’s no shortage of places you can find it.
Israel-Hamas war: How we got here
2005: Israel unilaterally withdraws from the Gaza Strip more than three decades after winning the territory from Egypt in the Six-Day War.
2006: Terrorist group Hamas wins a Palestinian legislative election.
2007: Hamas seizes control of Gaza in a civil war.
2008: Israel launches military offensive against Gaza after Palestinian terrorists fired rockets into the town of Sderot.
2023: Hamas launches the biggest attack on Israel in 50 years, in an early-morning ambush Oct. 7, firing thousands of rockets and sending dozens of militants into Israeli towns.
Terrorists killed more than 1,200 Israelis, wounded more than 4,200, and took at least 200 hostage.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to announce, “We are at war,” and vowed Hamas would pay “a price it has never known.”
The Gaza Health Ministry — which is controlled by Hamas — reported at least 3,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,500 injured since the war began.
But is deterring Russia not worth at least some American expense?
I’m in the Baltic States this week, a few miles from the Belarusian border, and I can tell you that American allies like these take the invasion of Ukraine very seriously.
Countries like Latvia and Lithuania have no doubt that had Vladimir Putin not been stalled in his effort to take over Ukraine, countries like these would have been next.
It may be the case that Americans don’t want to lose any American lives in Ukraine. But we’re not.
The fighting and the dying are all being done by the Ukrainians.
All they are asking from the outside world is support.
It is the same with Israel. As demonstrations across this country and indeed this city should have reminded us, we have a serious problem of radicals in this country.
Both Islamic radicals and idiot leftist radicals.
All of whom think that the rape, mutilation and killing of innocent civilians is in some way justified if the victims are Jews.
But as the Israelis know, the Jews are just the first victims in the line of fire of these radicals.
Everyone else is next. So it should be easy to support Israel in its fight against Hamas.
After all, it isn’t as though Israel is asking for Americans to come over and fight its upcoming war.
So why are people like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) saying that it is “radical” and undesirable to send foreign aid to Israel?
Massie (who previously voted against funding Israel’s Iron Dome system) recently said that America can´t fund Israel in any way “when we´re going bankrupt.”
Main sites of the Ukrainian counteroffensive
- Melitopol: Kyiv’s forces continued advancing toward the city of Melitopol on the Sea of Azov in the south. If Ukraine were to claw back Melitopol, it could bring it closer to breaking through the Russia-held land corridor linking the annexed Crimean Peninsula to mainland Russia, splitting Moscow’s forces in two and cutting their supply lines.
- Zaporizhzhia: Intense battles raged in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, where US officials said Kyiv has launched its “main thrust” aimed at retaking 20% of its occupied territory. While Moscow claimed to have repelled Ukraine’s attacks involving dozens of armored vehicles and inflicted heavy losses on Kyiv’s troops, the Institute for the Study of War reported that the Ukrainian offensive appeared to have broken through some Russian defenses.
- Donetsk: Ukrainian troops on Thursday recaptured the strategically significant village of Staromaiorske located in the Donetsk region south of a cluster of settlements along the Mokri Yaly river that Kyiv had seized at the start of the counteroffensive. Control of the village could open the way for Ukraine to push southward toward the coast.
- Bakhmut: Ukrainian forces were said to be “gradually moving forward” near Bakhmut in the east, where Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar claimed Russians were dying at a rate eight times higher than Ukrainians. Geolocated footage showed that Kyiv’s troops have made gains south of the town of Klishchiivka, and additional fighting was reported near the settlements of Kudriumivka and Andriivka.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.) has sung a similar tune.
“We shouldn’t send troops, and we shouldn’t get involved,” she recently said.
Well, I have good news for Taylor-Greene. America isn’t going to be involved.
There is absolutely no plan to send American troops to Israel.
The Jewish state has its own troops. It will be Israelis who will be doing the fighting and the dying.
But once again, it needs support.
MTG thinks that America should concentrate on its southern border.
And of course, it should. But since that clearly isn’t going to happen under this administration, why should the Israelis suffer shortages because the Biden administration can’t address the southern border issue?
Why should our closest allies abroad suffer because the current administration has been so reckless at home?
I understand the attitudes of many Americans on the right.
They see cities that have been mucked up by the left and runaway spending from everyone.
But the two wars America needs to support at the moment are ones where our allies are simply requesting help.
To withdraw from helping them would solve none of our issues at home and create whole new problems abroad.
After all, we’ve just had a taste of what such a world would look like.
A world in which America’s allies can’t rely on it and our enemies and competitors take advantage of it. Someone will fill that void.
People who found the era of American power burdensome will miss it deeply in any world that comes after.