The Europeans seem to believe the continent can be a military power without possessing military power.So, someone please tell me why it's the U.S. that should get out in front and do the deed in Libya at this particular hour. Aren't the Europeans big-time human rights champions and isn't Libya in their backyard? Can we even ask this?
The ongoing fiscal crisis has caused the Europeans to reduce defense outlays even more deeply. . . .
. . .Virtually all European peoples prefer to preserve welfare benefits than guard against security threats.[1]
Apparently they're saving their army(ies) for a rainy day or can't muster 10 fighters to inconvenience the world's no. 1 killer screwball. Given European long ago-established priorities – and obvious intention to let Sam do it toujours l'amour, will all domestic neocons, manifest destinyers, America-must-lead hysterics, and only-remaining-superpower drivel maestros please put a sock in it.
It's NOT AT ALL clear to me that what's happening anywhere in the Middle East has any kind of potential to disgorge anything democratic, rational, or un-Islamic. For the past 150 years while the rest of the world has been scrambling to rationalize politics, society, and economics, the Arab and Persian nations have been firmly in the grip of autocracy and Islamic whatever. Where enlightened efforts were made in Turkey, Iran, and even Afghanistan to break free of the mullahs, those nations have been or are being dragged back to the archetypical Islamic sand farm. One way or another, a Muslim state that purports to "modernize" can be likened to a satellite in a degrading orbit around the earth – huge, huge effort to get up there in the first place but inevitable failure down range.
In-ev-i-ta-ble.
Similarly, Al Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood lurk in the background of Libya and Egypt and are far likelier to command events in the near term whether we do nothing or make like Dudley Do-Right.
As the brilliant adage goes,
People usually are the way they usually are.What we have in the Middle East is 1,400 years of Islamic locked brakes and nothing any arrogant ferengi, haoli, infidel dimwit can do is going to change that. Intervene anywhere in the Middle East and the end result will be Middle Eastern -- replete with persecution of Christians, honor killings, first-cousin marriages, and flat-earth Koranic science.
If someone will explain to me how a vital national interest is jeopardized by Outcome A versus Outcome B in Libya, well then, let's debate that. But let's not get involved in yet another formless, shapeless, pretty-much-pointless foreign ground (or air) adventure with a game plan that ensures that our troops get picked off or mined for 365 days and then we wait for State and Defense Department thinkers to issue plans for "Intervention – Phase II: Our Real Objectives in Somalistan Now That We Have Given It Some Thought."
And if you think that our South-Side-Chicago, Alinskyite Strategist-in-Chief is going to have some grown up input into any of this, well then, you just report to the principal this instant.
We still aren't getting any Iraqi oil and we still haven't stopped the flood of heroin out of Afghanistan onto our streets. Two modest payoffs for a lot of blood, treasure, and aggro, if you ask me.
I do like the part about our killing large numbers of al Qaida types and missing-link Talibangers . . . ok, I LOVE that part, but at the present moment under the current state of affairs with Europe being AWOL from acting like grown ups in their foreign policy (as well), I say we go with "friend to liberty everywhere but guardian only of our own."
In fact, let's go with that for the next three generations.
Seriously.
Notes
[1] "Libya's Lesson for Europe." By Doug Bandow, The American Spectator, 3/16/11.
No comments:
Post a Comment