In betraying and killing a foreign leader [Gaddafi] with whom we had made peace, we have taken on terrible karma.[1]The Serbs helped downed U.S. pilots escape capture by the Germans in WWII. We sided with the Muslims when they wanted part of Serbia. Mubarak kept the peace between Egypt and Israel and we abandoned him in favor of completely unknown successors, almost certainly to be members of the Muslim Brotherhood. As Lawrence Auster says we made peace with Gaddafi yet turned on him later. These three items vindicate what someone said during the Cold War, namely that there is no benefit to being America's friend and no danger in being America's enemy.
There's something tawdry and cheap about Gaddafi's death. I don't have any illusions about the killing he did but if he did make peace, as I believe he did, a realpolitik analysis would have said better the devil we know who is able to control at least some portion of the N. African coast and keep the Muslim crazies under his thumb.
Our N. African, Middle Eastern, and Balkan policies seem either to be focused on aiding Saudi Arabia, meekly accepting Iranian weapons being used against our troops, or naively pursuing a passive, aimless course that assumes only good things will come of Arab street demonstrations which are harbingers of the establishment of democratic (and non-Islamic) institutions.
The attacks on Libya seem to vindicate no national interest whatsoever and the responsibility to protect nonsense is just pure horse feathers, something that is patently absurd given events all over the world that involve governments killing or violating their subjects. It's thus a meaningless doctrine since it justifies intervention practically everywhere except Saskatchewan. The real question is the obvious follow on question, "Why RTP in this particular country?"
Too, this adventure comes at a time when we are under huge financial strain and is merely a part of a world-wide system of military bases and other hugely expensive military expeditions which have indeterminate end dates. I've mentioned before the absurdity of billions being spent to keep our military in the field half way around the world for dubious strategic objectives but not a penny being spent to control our own borders.
Our foreign policies seem absurd for being divorced from fiscal reality and our genuine national interests, and they are all the more repellant for the galling sanctimony with which they are declared and celebrated. This betrayal of a friendly, if odd, foreign leader, not to mention the greasy prevarication at the outset of the hunt for him, and the trivial strategic value of the intervention, are nothing to be proud of at all.
What in the world are we doing? We can't get our troops back home and why we can't close our borders. Some sort of black hole must suck in politicians who dare to suggest both courses of action.
Notes
[1] "Kaddafi dead. Long live 'democracy.'" By Lawrence Auster, View from the Right, 10/20/11.
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