Comments on: A Hijacker Confesses

by: Daniel Larison

Thu, 17 May 2007 17:16:39 +0000

Thanks to you all for your comments. Thanks for your kind words about the blog, PK. I suppose that could be what Hagel could be talking about. If that is what he meant, he could make a very Kennan-like attack on the provincialism of the would-be rulers of the world and it would be devastating (all the more so when uttered by someone from Nebraska). However, I don’t know that he really believes this. He has discovered that most Americans don’t like whatever this policy is, Hagel knows that “isolationist” is a bad word and therefore uses it to describe the policy most Americans don’t like, which taps into the conditioning everyone has received to regard isolationist as a bad word.

I can even partly understand a critique of hegemony as a pursuit of the same sort of foolish “splendid isolation” Britain pursued in the early 20th century (before it decided that allying with the other two largest powers on earth was a better bet). There is a way to understand criticism of an “isolating” foreign policy as coinciding with a criticism of interventionist policy, because interventionism does result to some degree in reinforcing the isolation of the state doing the intervening, but it would help Hagel’s case a lot if he had ever made meaningful criticisms of interventionist policies in the past. I think I have to agree with the view that he is using “isolationist” here to mean, “People I don’t like,” and it has no real content or relation to the policies being criticised.

by: PK again

Thu, 17 May 2007 08:00:05 +0000

I think (as best as I can parse Hagel’s mumbo-jumbo), he’s talking about an “isolationism of the mind”. Hagel’s funky neologism “insulationist” may actually hit it on the head: its the pathology bred by neoconservatism’s refusal to wade into the muck of the world’s heterogeneity, resulting in a kind of “I’ll only talk with those like me, who agree with me, so everybody better be like me” mentality. The hostility toward inter- or supra-national institutions to which Grumpy Old Man refers is one symptom of this. Pretty insulationist if you ask me.

cool blog, BTW. I just discovered it via Douthat.

by: Dennis

Mon, 14 May 2007 20:39:42 +0000

“Isolationist” is becoming what “fascist” became after decades of overuse. This triad he employs is exceptionally confusing, seeing as the first, “almost isolationist” and the last, “power projecters” (assuming he’s not talking about some obscure class of high status film projectionists or hyper-afflicted neurotics) would seem to be opposites. How is it that diametrically opposed factions have united to take over?
Look for more of this, as falsely antiwar politicians seek to protect the status quo by tying immigration skepticism with the more modest foreign policy forced upon us by failure in Iraq as an imaginary “retreat into isolationism”, or, from other quarters, as part and parcel of a grand nationalist movement that both closes the border to brown people as it assaults them abroad.

by: Grumpy Old Man

Mon, 14 May 2007 17:33:37 +0000

The only interpretation I can give that makes Hagel something other than a buffoon is that by “isolationist” he means someone who is hostile to international institutions and organizations, such as the U.N.

That interpretation might have made sense as to a Kerry (remember the “global test”?), but Hagel?

I suppose that expecting accurate language from politicians is foolish. Rather like the old “eating people is wrong ” routine from Flanders and Swann. Next thing we’ll be saying that fighting people is wrong, which is ridiculous on its face.

I give up. I give up. You used to be a regular anthropophagi. If this crazy idealistic idea of yours was to catch on, I just don’t know where we would all be. It would just about ruin our entire internal economy. Fortunately, I suppose its catching on isn’t very likely. Why, you might just as well go around saying “don’t fight people”, for example…

Don’t fight people? Ha ha! (Both convulsed with laughter)

Oh, that’s my boy.

(In chorus:) Ridiculous!

If you demand accuracy, next thing you know you’ll be demanding courage and honesty.

Ridiculous!

by: kranza

Mon, 14 May 2007 17:09:11 +0000

I once read an anti-war activist, British, say something like “America has got to cut out this isolationism.” This was sometime in 2003, and of course the guy’s main brief against America was its intervention of Iraq.

So apparently “isolationist”, like “fascist” and the mainstream-media/European use of the word “neocon”, means nothing more specific than “bad.”

by: mjk

Mon, 14 May 2007 16:33:41 +0000

Daniel - My wife and I were watching this segment of the program and were utterly befuddled by Hagel’s assessment of the current state of the Republican party.

I mean: talk about a case of delusion or a sufferer of secondary reality - complete newspeak!

He also made some favorable remarks about Bloomberg’s silly third party insurgency. Hagel really showed his true, confused, colors on this program…You have been spot on in your assessment of Hagel and his confusion!