It’s Still the Same Old Story: Isolationism and Trump

From time to time, I reflect back on America’s involvement in WWII. Raging across Europe and Northern Africa, Hitler’s Nazi forces were making a mockery of the idea that a treaty would assuage the fanatical German leader. It all seems like some distant memory for some or perhaps a trailer for a new movie ready for a 3D cinema near you.

But really, it is quite black and white. Literally. The film Casablanca comes to the forefront when I considerate as a clarion call for America to wake up from its slumber and realize that millions of lives had been and would be lost without our intervention. I spent many years teaching the subtle (and not so subtle) aspects of the film; however, today one particular question keeps running through my mind.

A jaded businessman, Signor Ferrari asks Rick Blaine, the embodiment of America’s idea that one does not stick one’s neck out for anyone: Ferrari asks:

“My dear Rick, when will you realize that in this world today isolationism is no longer a practical policy?”

Rick Blaine’s response then was that the problems of the world are not his concern. He is a businessman. Of course, we know (or should know) how the film ends: Blaine and company decide that the self-centered problems of “three little people don’t add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” Thus, he sacrifices love security to personally jump back into the fight…and this time America and the Free World wins.

My dear readers, it is time we joined the fight. Isolationism, whether it is cloaked in words like Brexit, nationalism, Trumpism, or “build that wall,” are today’s rallying cry from a small, but dangerous tribe of people so concerned with their own self interests, their own wallets, their own view of what an American should look like, whom they should love and what god they pray to, that they cannot fathom a larger cause — “a stronger together” force of will.

Isolationism did not begin with Donald Trump and it will not end with his administration. It is not a red or blue state, either. Intolerance cloaks itself in every religion, race, and creed. And the coward seeks refuge in the ‘castle walls’ built to keep out all those who threaten that entitled way of life.

Nowhere is this isolationism more evident in the Trump Administration’s rejection of the Paris Climate Accords. The idea that global warming is a “hoax” perpetuated by the Chinese, or a conspiracy by the left wing/ socialists is just another version of sticking one’s head in the sand and pretending that the crisis will pass, as if it were just a tropical storm added by foul winds. Of course, only when the inevitable hurricane blasts apart Mar-a-Logo refuge, only then will a few see the rising tides in the seas. Naturally, those with enough money and power will retreat to the next country club fortress and blithely comment that “Isn’t it just a shame….”

The Brits are also realizing the senselessness of a knee jerk, nationalistic reaction to leaving the European Union. Tossing out the baby with the bathwater is the conundrum facing those politicians across the pond. Clearly, there are issues (like fishing the waters between the continent and Great Britain), but these are compromises that need to be addressed — not a reason to abandon ship.

Turning to the turmoil in the Middle East, some believe that a total withdrawal of United States military forces is overdue in the Middle East, despite the growing danger of unchecked (and far from dead) ISIS forces — extremists that all true Muslim sects decry. What ISIS has done to millions of innocent men, women and children is a 21st Century Holocaust. The New York Times on November third 2019 ran a special section in its Sunday magazine about the ISIS slaughters, so disturbing, was the loss of life, the maimed, raped, and the mentally tortured people who were shredded by these assassins that I had to avert my eyes to the grim photographs.

Our Special Forces, along with the Kurdish fighters led to the killing of one of ISIS’s leaders, but the Trump administration once again made American foreign policy look both foolish and cruel. By abandoning the Kurdish people, who had captured some of the worst of the ISIS fighters, and then allowing the Turkish forces to both destroy the Kurds with bombardment but, in the chaos, Turkey also free at least a thousand ISIS prisoners, who will undoubtedly matriculate back to Europe to again reap havoc and destruction. How many will forget that it was Trump’s unexplainable green light to Turkish attack that may be one of the most devastating blunders of Trump’s legacy.

Why did Trump isolate the Kurds by having our peacekeeping forces retreat (a decision military leaders there and in the States criticize)? No one really knows. Was Trump motivated to protect his hotel properties in Turkey? Was he looking for a way to further ingratin ate himself to Putin, who now holds the levers of control in northern Syria? What possible sense is there in this pullout? Was it a simple “What’s in it for me?” Another one of his “Why should I stick my neck out” moment?

No one wants ‘forever wars’; however, there is a reason we protect nations like South Korea. There is a reason we are the muscle and the money behind NATO. Why not just look out for our own interest? Here are but a few reasons: Crimea. Ukraine. North Korean aggression. Russian involvement in our political elections. And the simple fact that we must lead the world from the brink of ecological destruction. That’s why.

At one point in Casablanca, An agonized Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine says: “I bet they’re asleep in New York; I bet they’re asleep all over America.”Then he sips his whiskey and remembers the calendar just turned to December….1941.