One analyst seems to wax nostalgic about our former foreign policy (sorry, no link) but laments:
[The] United States has demonstrated a growing willingness to act alone and to opt out of multilateral initiatives. Whether tiring of its international obligations, preoccupied with domestic concerns, or tempted to exploit its hegemony, the country has in a number of prominent instances withdrawn form collective initiatives, demanded exemptions from global rules, shirked commitments to international organizations, or extended its dometstic law extraterritorially.
Pretty damning. But it is obviously wrong. So obviously wrong that I won't bother to pick it apart. By definition, it simply cannot be true.
How can I be so sure about this judgment, you may ask.
Well that's the easy part. It's a no-brainer, really. You see, the article appeared in Current History in December 2000. It was surely written before even President Bush was declared the winner of the 2000 election. This judgment about our unilateral foreign policy came after nearly eight glorious years of the lip-biting foreign policy of President Clinton--which we are told now were days when the world loved us and when we loved the international community as embodied in the United Nations.
I mean, if this article's charge is true, the uniquely evil nature of the current administration might have to be questioned by our Left! So, ergo, it must be false. Simplisme, eh?
There. Doesn't everybody at the New York Times feel better now?
