Posted on 06/17/2014 8:57:42 AM PDT by xzins
America's involvement in foreign wars Doug Bandow foreign policy George W. Bush Iran Iraq Middle East Syria US military War
KILIS, TURKEY—Syria’s civil war has washed over Turkey’s border, flooding the latter with hundreds of thousands of refugees. Washington’s efforts to solve the crisis so far have yielded few positive results.
George W. Bush’s grandest foreign policy “success,” the ouster of Saddam Hussein, is turning into an even more dramatic debacle. Egypt is racing back into Mubarak-style authoritarianism. The outcome of President Barack Obama’s “splendid little war” in Libya continues to unravel.
The region is aflame and U.S. policy bears much of the blame. Washington’s relentless attempt to reorder and reshape complex peoples, distant places, and volatile disputes has backfired spectacularly.
The blame is not limited to Barack Obama. However ineffective his policies, they largely follow those of his predecessors. Moreover, his most vociferous critics were most wrong in the past.
Particularly the neocons, who crafted the Iraq disaster. Their claim that keeping U.S. troops in Iraq would have prevented that nation’s current implosion ignores both history and experience.
Rather than acknowledge their own responsibility for that nation’s implosion, the neocons prefer to blame President Obama, who merely followed the withdrawal schedule established by President George W. Bush. The latter failed to win Baghdad’s agreement for a continuing U.S. force presence before leaving office. Exactly how President Obama could have forced sovereign Iraq to accept a permanent U.S. garrison never has been explained.
Even less clear is how American troops could have created a liberal, democratic, and stable Iraq. Any attempt to impose U.S. wishes would have failed as the Maliki government put its own interests first. Using American forces to fight Baghdad’s battles would have been even worse.
Intervening today would be a cure worse than the disease. Air strikes no less than ground forces would simultaneously entangle the U.S. and increase its stakes in another likely lengthy conflict. Moreover, killing more foreigners in another people’s conflict would make more enemies of America, threatening more terrorist blowback.
In Iraq the Sunni radicals are unlikely to conquer the Shia-majority country. Their success already has mobilized Shiites, and predominantly Shia Iran will ensure Baghdad’s control over at least majority Shiite areas. Ultimately de facto partition may be the most practical solution.
Further American intervention in Syria would be no less foolish. America has no reason to fight over who rules Damascus.
The civil war is destabilizing the region, but American involvement would not impose order. Boots on the ground is inconceivable. Tepid action—no fly zones and increased arms shipments—would be more likely to prolong the conflict than deliver a decisive result.
Moreover, Assad’s ouster likely would trigger a second round of killing directed against regime supporters, such as Alawites and other religious minorities. With multiple parties engaged in the killing, there is no humanitarian option.
Nor does anyone know who would end up controlling what. The assumption that Washington could get just the right arms to just the right opposition forces to ensure emergence of just the right liberal, democratic, pro-Western government of a united Syria is charmingly naive.
If there is a bright spot for the administration, it unexpectedly is Iran, where a negotiated nuclear settlement remains possible. However, the underlying problem is almost entirely of America’s creation. In 1953 the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected prime minister, transferring power to the Shah. He consolidated power and brutalized his people.
In 1978 the angry Iranian people overthrew him. Radical Islamists pushed aside democratic moderates, turning Tehran into America’s number one enemy overnight. Fear of Iranian domination of the Gulf led Washington to back Iraq’s Hussein in his bloody aggressive war against Iran.
After an emboldened Iraq sought to swallow Kuwait, the U.S. attacked the former and deployed troops to Saudi Arabia, which became one of Osama bin Laden’s chief grievances. President Bush invaded Iraq to “drain the swamp,” unleashing sectarian conflict in that country and empowering Islamist Iran—even then feared to be developing nuclear weapons. Now Tehran is sending a rescue mission to save the Iraqi government installed by Washington.
American intervention has broken pottery all over the Middle East. It is time for Washington to stop trying to micromanage the affairs of other nations. And for Washington to practice humility.
This would not be isolationism. America, and especially Americans, should be engaged in the world.
However, the U.S. government’s expectations should be realistic and ambitions should be bounded. American officials should abandon their persistent fantasy of reordering the world.
President Obama’s foreign policy may be feckless. But that’s not its principal failing. As long as Washington attempts to dominate and micromanage the world, Washington will end up harming American interests.
Historians could have said the same thing about the Japanese.
Look how that turned out...
See #11
Oil made it all possible. Oil was money, and the middle east had plenty of oil. Money is power, so they had power to go with their oil.
In that sense, we allowed that genie to get out of the bottle. For a long time every day Americans have known that we could change that balance of power by not enriching our enemies by buying their oil.
We were told that our oil had pretty much run out. Now we find that wasn’t precisely so, that there was plenty, but it was out of our reach. We didn’t find a way to reach it with a crash program. Instead we kowtowed to the sheiks and gave them a foothold on the world and on our own government.
We still need to stop using their oil and enriching them. We need the rest of the world to follow suit.
And if Truman had been an Obama? What then?
Locate where large parts of Al-Quaida are encamped and drop the bombs in every location “BOMBS AWAY”...no troops on the ground, just ridding the earth of the worst terrorists - oh, and accidentally drop a bomb on Gitmo - terrorists taken care of permanently! No more TRADES necessary.
They are criminals and gangsters.
It’s the hard truth. There were no mushroom clouds, we were not welcomed by flowers, oil did not pay for it all, we should not be nation building, we don’t know what side to be on. The American people were duped, our soldiers were valiant but there were not enough of them to defeat, disarm and occupy like WW II.
Hell, we don't want anybody feeling left out...let's make it the 11th of every month.
Good post, ex-snook.
Our troops won; our leaders lost.
God help America, and God bless America.
“Exactly how President Obama could have forced sovereign Iraq to accept a permanent U.S. garrison never has been explained.”
Actually, it was up for renegotiation, as GWB expected, but Obama didn’t WANT to leave 10,000 troops behind - and a token force of 500 would simply be bait.
Why do we go to places like Iraq and Afghanistan to fight? Because it is better to fight there than wait for attacks on elementary schools in the US. Better to kill 50,000 extremists in mass there than try to pick them off one by one here.
A la Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan in the 80’s and Somalia (until we let the UN take over) and ....
Since WWII, the American politicians have been too worried about the optics of war and instead try to use it to their advantage like a board game!
Let the military do it’s job, which is to fight and win wars! Kill all that oppose us and control the land/people until they can support and defend themselves. You know, like we did in Japan! Like we did in Europe!
Liberals swear that communism works, and conservatives ask them to point to a location that proves it!
Conservatives have PROOF that war and occupation works, but liberals swear it doesn’t!
“This nation building crap is and always will be a failure and a criminal waste of American lives and treasure. “
Yep! After all, we did such a poor job of it in Germany, Japan, Korea...
The problem is not that it cannot be done, but that it cannot be done on the cheap, in 5-10 years.
The problem inherent in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was our “liberator” approach. If our enemies are ever to recognize the utter foolishness of pissing us off we must conduct each military action as if we come to conquer! Were we Liberating Japan or Germany? Hell No! We aimed to overcome and righteously punish them for their Evil ways! We strove to put their collective necks under our boot and not let them up until they were a changed people, contrite and pacified completely!
All the world’s would-be terrorists and tyrants must come to understand that a unified American will IS the instrument of their certain death!
I’m no history professor but I’m fairly certain we did not embark on WWII with the intention of bringing democracy to the Axis powers. Something about a surprise attack...
>There is only one good reason to risk the lives of US troops - to protect other US lives and immediate US interests.<
.
You’re so right.
The problem is, that ever since the creation of the UN (end of WWII) the US have considered everything in this world to be of immediate US interest.
The US have looked at the world as being divided into TWO CAMPS — theirs and the Soviet Union’s, and it has decided that they were going to be the righteous cops in the world.
But instead of acting like cops, they have tried to buy the loyalty of many criminal nations and have even sided with some. They have spent way too much on purchasing the “friendship” of many nations and got very little in return.
We did, however, decide in 1945 that we didn’t want a repeat of WW2 and thus began a program of nation building.
I know each country is different and that Japan and Korea were alien cultures to our own just as Iraq is an alien culture. I don’t think 10 years is near enough, nor even 50.
Germany was in reality our own culture. Korea wanted us there. Japan was strange, but we truly did totally defeat them with the nuke bomb.
Iraq is a different nut to crack. 100 years maybe.
No,the truth is that as long as they were there they kept a lid on it. Regardless of when we left, the factionalism would have reoccurred because the Sunni and the Shia just can't live together. How many more years and how many trillions of our dollars and how many more American lives would you be willing to spend to keep the two sides from doing what comes natrually to them?
The US has moved strongly away from ME oil.
38.8% is from the US
19.6% Latin America, Mexico and Venezuela
15% Canada
12% Persian Gulf, mostly Saudi
10.3% Africa, mostly Nigeria
3.1% Other, spot market
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