On radio this morning, Glenn argued in favor of something that goes against our very nature as people: Should we just butt out of Syria because we can’t stop every single tragedy that happens around the globe?
“I want to stop first on something that I said a minute ago that as soon as I said it, I thought, ‘Boy, that is uncomfortable to say, and I bet really uncomfortable to hear because people will not understand it,’” Glenn said on radio this morning. “And what I said was, ‘I'm sorry, but you're going to have to let everybody over there just kill each other.’”
It is undoubtedly a harsh sentiment, but when you consider the current state of American foreign policy, it becomes more and more obvious that we can no longer afford to be entangled in other counties’ conflicts.
“Now, that seems so harsh, and so awful, and so un‑American to say, ‘You're not going to be able to solve this.’ And ‘you're going to have to let everybody kill themselves,’” Glenn explained. “We can't play a role in everybody's civil war. And goes against our very nature.”
Glenn laid out two distinct reasons he believes this is necessary position to take.
First, “All of of the treasure and all of of the power, influence, and goodwill that was earned by the greatest American generation in World War II is now gone,” he said. “We do not have the clout that we had in the rest of the world that was earned by those people. We do not have the treasure that was earned by those people. We have spent the treasure. We have spent our morals that they taught us, and we have spent our power and prestige and our goodwill. It's gone.”
Two, “The reason why we spent all of that treasure, the reason why we spent all of that goodwill and everything else is because we adopted this progressive idea that we can be the world's policemen, that we can actually stop everyone from fighting. You can't. You cannot,” Glenn explained. “Here we are sitting here trying to solve the world's bickering children who end up killing each other. It's not going to get any better. It's only going to get worse. And in the end you will be in a more dangerous world because no one will have any self‑control. You won't have any power. You won't have any clout because you'll be blamed for absolutely everything in the end. The bickering children look at you and say it's your fault. You're the one who put me on this couch. You're the one that caused all my problems. That's what's happening.”
“The progressives came in and said there's a whole new world. Progressives believe that people progress past certain caveman‑like instincts. No, they don't. I guarantee you, you take away civilization, and your neighbor, who you think is kind of a nice guy but not all that great, will kill you for food. You take away civilization. We are the same animals. It is civilization that puts us back together,” he continued. “Civilization is not equal. I'm sorry. But all nations and peoples and their governments are not the same. They are not equal. Some of them work. Some of them don't. They haven't figured it out in the Middle East yet. You cannot impose it on them. You can't.”
The world just witnessed what happened in Egypt – the failure of the Arab Spring to create a real, functioning democracy. In Syria, we known the faults and violence of the Assad regime, but we also know the rebels are linked to terrorist groups. So who’s helping whom here?
“Let's say we do get involved, and we lob cruise missiles. We destroy chemical weapons. We help the rebels,” Pat said. “What's the good outcome there? On the one side you have Bashar al-Assad, who is a brutal dictator. On the other side you have Al‑Qaeda and the related radical extreme fundamentalist Islamists. Who's better ruling that country?”
But Glenn explained the true progressive will attempt to (incorrectly) draw a parallel to World War II.
“See, here's the thing. They will go back to World War II and they will say, ‘Well, we stopped the Nazis.’ Well, yes – because you were dealing with people who fundamentally understood the Western way of life,” Glenn said. “In Syria your people, the resistants are eating people. You didn't have the German Underground eating the Nazi soldiers. You didn't have the German Underground or the French Underground being those kind of people. They were people we could relate to. They were people that understood the Western way of life.”
“You don't have a good guy here. You don't have good groups of people. The good groups are the ones that are not fighting. They are the ones in the middle going, ‘God almighty, help us, please,’” he concluded. “You don't have, like this revolution, or the freedom fighters that understood freedom and understood why fascism was bad. Look what happened to us when we got into war with the Soviet Union? We got into bed with the Soviet Union and we said, ‘We're allied with you.’ We built them up and we spent the next 40 years fighting them.”
