Politics stinks. It is an ugly, sordid business. It is also, at its worst, disastrous and deadly. The killing on the eleventh anniversary of 9-11 of the US Ambassador to Libya and three other US citizens was the work of Islamic fundamentalists. It was, however, aided and abetted by US foreign policy in the Middle East. This is the ugly truth that must be stressed.
The US Government has aided and abetted the Islamist revolutions in the Middle East over the past few years. It has supported Muslim extremists in their war with secularist tyrants, such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar al-Gadaffi. It has backed the Islamic Fundamentalists in their war on the Arab monarchies. There is no escaping the horrific fact that the US Government is partially responsible for unleashing the terrorists who killed the US ambassador this week.
The US government would no doubt deny this ugly fact, arguing that they were supporting “democracy” against tyranny. Such an argument is based on the most absurd naïveté about the Middle East and its culture. A quick history lesson will illustrate this.
Everyone knew that Saddam Hussein was the biggest enemy of Iran. He had fought a war against the Islamist militants of Iran which lasted for almost the whole of the decade of the 1980s, resulting in the death of over half a million people. I am not supporting Saddam. He stinks. He is a tyrant. But the fact remains that he was a tyrant who knew that Islamic Fundamentalists were his biggest enemies. It might not be true that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, but it is true that Saddam and the USA shared the same fear and loathing of Islamic radicals, especially those emanating from Iran. It was for this reason that the USA supported Saddam in the Iran-Iraq War.
How quickly the US government forgot the lessons of history. It destroyed Saddam, thereby removing Iran’s biggest enemy and the buffer zone that Saddam’s Iraq had supplied against the Iranian threat in the Middle East. Surprise, surprise: As soon as the US Government had conveniently removed the deadly enemy on its doorstep, Iran began to flex its muscles and rattle its sabers.
Similarly the historic lessons of Afghanistan were not learned by the US Government, which seemed to have forgotten that two of the modern world’s most formidable superpowers, the British and Soviet Empires, had failed to subdue Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan. At a time in the late nineteenth century when the British Empire controlled one-third of the land area of the world, it could not control Afghanistan. At a time in the late twentieth century when the Soviet Empire spread its influence around the world, it could not subdue the Afghan resistance. Back in 1980, when the Soviet army marched into Afghanistan, the US Government supported the Islamic Fundamentalists.
More recently, as we have seen, the US Government has supported Islamic Fundamentalists against the secular tyrants and monarchies of the Arab world. This year, on the anniversary of 9-11, these particularly ugly chickens came home to roost.
This is absolutely correct!
Additionally, this foreign policy madness has resulted in the crushing of age-old Christian communities in Iraq and now Syria.
Anyone with even a modicum of historical knowledge of the region and/or a grasp of the political forces in play understood that any move toward “popular” or “democratic” government would unleash the worst kinds of extremists bent on destroying the Christians in their lands and sweeping the Western “infidels” out of the region.
It’s sickening that we help empower these extremists and then profess shock when they behave in entirely predictable – and destructive -patterns.
Every word is true, Joseph, especially the first two.
I agree with most of what you wrote Joseph. The place I disagree is with the Iraq part of your analysis. I don’t think there is any evidence that that the situation in Iraq is responsible for what is going on in Egypt, Lybia, and the other countries. The problem with continued support for Saddam was that in 1991 he invaded an innocent neighbor and ally. We could no longer support him or trust him. In freeing Kuwait we made the mistake of keeping him in power and then had to keep him in a box from killing innocent Kurds and Shia. We were spending millions a day keeping him in that box, and by keeping him in that box he no longer had any power to offset the Iran side of the balance of power. He was only a problem after that first Iraq War (we could never trust him from trying to seek revenge) with no plus side.
Today’s problem stems from removing Mubarrack (sp?), an ally and peace keeper, from Egypt. Also while Gaddafy was no friend, he did accept his position as a stabilizing force. The stability has been removed and now we have chaos.