US Foreign Policy and the Cult of ‘Expertise’

Americans want our rulers to mind their own business abroad – and good luck with that!

by Justin Raimondo, December 07, 2009

"The news that Americans want the U.S. government to mind its own business when it comes to foreign affairs has our Washington elite in a panic. The explanatory notes accompanying a new Pew poll [.pdf] describe the "rise in isolationist sentiment" that started during George W. Bush’s second term and continues in the age of Obama. The agonized hand-wringing is all too apparent in the use of the "isolationist" epithet and even in the way the question was asked: should the U.S. "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own"? Forty-nine percent – the highest proportion "in nearly half a century of polling" – answered yes. And that’s not all: a gob-smacking 76 percent agreed the U.S. should "concentrate more on our own national problems and building up our strength and prosperity here at home," as opposed to "think[ing] in international terms." .......

Yet the elite stranglehold on our foreign policy continues, in large part due to the iron grip of the interventionists on the two-party system. Our present conundrum – a president elected to office largely on the strength of his "antiwar" stance, who is now taking us into a wider and more difficult war than his warlike predecessor ever conceived – is an eloquent testament to this cruel fact.

If the leadership of both major parties sees Afghanistan as a "war of necessity," then the War Party can relax – because the restive public will have no one to turn to even as it rejects the policies put forward by the elites. This is why the policymakers can continue to ignore the rising rebellion against interventionism roiling the American street and continue talking only to themselves.

In their view, ordinary Americans don’t matter: only politicians, lobbyists, and other policy wonks matter. But this Marie Antoinette attitude can only take them so far before they run the risk of revolution."