Many in the Congress and the administration have been clamoring for intervention in Libya under the guise of everything from promoting democracy in the Middle East to saying the United States has a moral obligation to free the Libyan people from the Gaddhafi brutal regime.
Most recently, Senator John McCain took to the Senate floor proclaiming the US President should take immediate steps to implement a no-fly zone in Libya regardless of cost.
However, instead of listening to the reckless statements of McCain and that ilk, maybe we should listen to the wise words of a man nearly two centuries ago who was trying to cool down the American government hell bent on intervening in an foreign independence movement similar to what’s happening in Libya and across the Middle East today.
In 1821, John Quincy Adams was the US Secretary of State and some Americans were advocating intervening to support the uprisings of Spanish America’s independence movement against Spain (nations throughout Latin America).
Adams spoke in front of the US House of Representatives on July 4, 1821 saying American policy should be to provide moral support to the independence movements but not military intervention in support of the same movements.
He also stated though America spoke "the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights", however at the same time, America "has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings."
Exactly the position we should be taking today.
Read what may be the greatest speech on foreign policy in American history:
AND NOW, FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind?
Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.
She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.
She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.
She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.
She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.
But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....
She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....
[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
Read more:
McCain and Lieberman want immediate action
The neoconservative argument for intervening in Libya
Comments