Making the world safe for Christianity

DallasBlog.com | Rep. Ron Paul:

“The top neocon of the 20th century was Woodrow Wilson. His supposed idealism, symbolized in the slogan ‘Make the world safe for democracy,’ resulted in untold destruction and death across the world for many decades. His deceit and manipulation of the prewar intelligence from Europe dragged America into an unnecessary conflict that cost the world and us dearly. Without the disastrous Versailles Treaty, World War II could have been averted – and the rise to power of Communists around the world might have been halted.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Whoa! For Rep. Paul to imply that Wilsonian idealism was the cause of World War II is unfair. One could as easily place the blame for the rise of fascism on the isolationists who opposed and defeated Wilsonian idealism at home. But that would be unfair, too. The blame for the rise of fascism and communism needs to be placed squarely at the feet of the fascists and communists themselves: Hitler and Mussolini and Lenin and Stalin. Wilson certainly didn't prevent their rise, but he was not responsible for the war and the collapse of empires that created the conditions for fascism and communism to thrive afterwards.

Rep. Paul rightly recognizes the folly of the United States trying to impose democracy on Iraq in 2006. So how can he imply that somehow the United States in 1917 could have influenced the course of the Russian Revolution and brought about a democratic regime in that much larger country? It's pure fantasy.

There are similarities between Wilsonian foreign policy and the current Bush Doctrine, but there are important differences, too. Both Presidents used American military power in attempts to impose American morality and democracy on others. But whereas President Bush has adopted a policy of unilateralism and pre-emption, President Wilson placed emphasis on collective security and international forums like the League of Nations and international mediation. So, whereas the goals may be the same, the methods are significantly different.

Rep. Paul is right about almost every criticism he makes of America's disastrous intervention in Iraq. In this case, American pre-emptive actions bear some responsibility for the chaos that plagues that sorry land. And he may be right that the failure shares a root cause with Wilson's failures, namely the hubris of thinking that America can impose its own morality and democracy on the world. But to learn from our past mistakes, we first have to have a better understanding of exactly what went wrong so long ago than Rep. Paul gives us in this speech.