The late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas wrote a book in 1966 called The Arrogance of Power. Fulbright was the longtime chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was respected for his knowledge of foreign relations and was strongly anti-Communist. However, he spoke out against America’s growing involvement in Southeast Asia that eventually led to the Vietnamese conflict.

He did not fear, he said, that the United States would seek to dominate in the manner of a Hitler or a Napoleon. He feared rather that we would drift into commitments that were beyond our capacity to honor. We should, he suggested, confine ourselves to doing only those things that truly matter to us.

Like another senator known for his foreign policy expertise, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Fulbright was eventually defeated in his party’s primary. Politicians risk losing their constituency when they emphasize global concerns. “All politics is local,” U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill once said.

Are we concerned only for our, admittedly important, domestic concerns?

Perhaps we would never have committed so much blood and treasure to Viet Nam, now a byword for a failed U.S. foreign policy, if we, the people, took more time to understand the rest of the world. And what about Iraq, ten years out? Was it worth it?