jayeff |
07-20-2005 03:55 AM |
So here you are, George Bush, President of the USA. You inherit a mid-east foreign policy which for 75 years has been to keep the region unstable in all but 3 countries: Israel because of the Jewish lobby and because back in the days of the Cold War the US wanted to guarantee at least one solid ally in the area; and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to ensure the supplies of cheap oil on which your economy is based.
And it's all coming apart at the seams...
It has been 10 years since the last major US initiative in the region. Since then, Arab nationalism and moslem fundamentalism have both continued to grow such that without further intervention, within 5-10 years the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will be overthrown and the entire region, except Israel, will share a common hatred of the US. The 4 largest oil reserves on the planet will all be in unfriendly hands. Even if you might want to change the dependence of the US economy on imported oil, you cannot do it within that time scale.
To buy enough time, there are only two possible targets: Iran or Iraq. They are the only countries large enough for your activities to impact on the region as a whole and they are the only countries, apart from your allies, sitting on large oil reserves. Iraq is the softer target, it also presents the opportunity to finish what your father started, and to some extent your electorate is already primed to accept an attack on that country. Iraq it is.
Your next problem is how to get your voters to approve. For years your colleagues, predecessors and the media have been dumbing down America to the point where people haven't a clue about foreign affairs and care less. You haven't a cat's chance in h*ll of dragging them away from their reality shows long enough to sell them a rational argument. So you opt for fear, because as Hermann Goering pointed out, it's easy and it works every time.
I'm not making excuses for George Bush and I'm strongly opposed to what we are doing in Iraq. Yet it is extremely difficult to imagine that any President, whose priority has to be the welfare of the US, could have made radically different choices at this time. Similarly, I don't approve of the lies and half-truths that were used to mobilize public opinion, but how else can you get the public's attention these days? As for Haliburton and the rest, they are just sideshows: invading Iraq would mean lots of profits up for grabs, so why not make sure your friends get as much as possible.
The flaw in democratic government is that every four years (or whatever) you have to be re-elected and to be re-elected you have to tell people what they want to hear. You know you should be explaining to people why you need to take away their SUV's, but you know if you do that, the other guy will promise them bigger, cheaper SUV's. Approve controls on a factory that is spewing pollution into the air and tomorrow that district's representative votes against your Social Security bill.
Over the next 20 years, a lot of chickens are going to be coming home to roost in education, healthcare, employment, pollution, foreign policy, oil, the economy. You name it. Whether at the end of all that we are still a democratic republic remains to be seen.
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