Republicans Freaking Out Over "Isolationism"

The long-submerged Republican civil war over foreign policy has bubbled to the surface after the second 2012 presidential debate featured lots of disturbing-for-interventionists talk about misguided and unaffordable wars and occupations. A sampling of headlines:

* Tim Pawlenty Warns GOP on Perils of Isolationism

* McCain Accuses Republicans of Isolationist Policy

* Republican Senators Blast Growing 'Isolationism' Within GOP Over Libya

* The Kucinich Republicans: The House GOP turns isolationist on Libya and war powers

* Leave Afghanistan, Lead Elsewhere: The Real Danger Is Isolationism

* With Growing Isolationism, We Need Obama to Lead Now More Than Ever

Note that this last headline came from the website of the American Enterprise Institute.

Some pushback on the I-word from Gene Healy, David Harsanyi, Jonah Goldberg, David Boaz, Doug Bandow, and Timothy P. Carney. I particularly enjoyed two responses from George Will:

"The United States is engaged in hostilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, the tribal region of Pakistan, Yemen and Libya. That's five wars, how many do these people want? With regard to Libya: Did Libya attack us? No. Was it about to attack us? No. Were we obliged by a treaty to get engaged in a civi war in a tribal society? No. Were American's endangered? No. Find me a reason for this."

"The reason is the humanitarian reason," Amanpour said.

"To say that people are isolationists, akin to those didn't want to resist Hitler and Japan because they don't want to prolong the folly of the involvement in Libya is preposterous," Will concluded.

And:

Disgust with this debacle has been darkly described as a recrudescence of "isolationism," as though people opposing this absurdly disproportionate and patently illegal war are akin to those who, after 1938, opposed resisting Germany and Japan. Such slovenly thinking is a byproduct of shabby behavior.