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| The Middle East: From Bad To Worse |
‘If you break it, you own it.” Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn Rule,
warning George W. Bush of the consequences of invading Iraq, turned out
to be dead wrong.
Make that half wrong. Bush broke it — “it” being a swath of the
greater Middle East. But the U.S. adamantly refuses to accept anything
like ownership of the consequences stemming from Bush’s recklessly
misguided acts and you will never hear a European politician openly admit to it.
Not least among those consequences is the crisis that finds refugees
fleeing Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the Islamic world in
search of asylum in the West. The European nations most directly
affected have greeted this wave with more hostility than hospitality —
Germany, for a time, at least offering a notable exception.
For its part, the U.S. has responded with pronounced indifference. In
a gesture of undisguised tokenism, the Obama administration has
announced it will admit a grand total of 10,000 Syrians — one-eightieth
the number that Germany has agreed to accept this year alone.
No doubt proximity plays a part in explaining the contrast between
German and U.S. attitudes. Viewed from Wichita or Walla Walla, the
plight of those who hand themselves over to human traffickers in hopes
of crossing the Mediterranean plays out at a great distance.
Syria is
what Neville Chamberlain would have described as a faraway country of
which Americans know nothing (and care less). And Iraq and Afghanistan
are faraway countries that most Americans have come to regret knowing.
Such attitudes may be understandable. They are also unconscionable.
To attribute the refugee crisis to any single cause would be misleading.
A laundry list has contributed: historical and sectarian divisions
within the region; the legacy of European colonialism; the absence of
anything even approximating enlightened local leadership able to satisfy
the aspirations of people tired of corruption, economic stagnation, and
authoritarian rule; the appeal — inexplicable to Westerners — of
violent Islamic radicalism. All play a role.
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| USA: The Creator Of The George Bush Refugee Crises |
Yet when it comes to why this fragile structure collapsed just now we
can point to a single explanation — the cascading after-effects of a
decision made by Bush during the spring of 2002 to embrace a doctrine of
preventative war.
The previous autumn, U.S. forces toppled the government of Afghanistan,
punishing the Taliban for giving sanctuary to those who plotted the 9/11
attacks. Bush effectively abandoned Afghanistan to its fate and set out
to topple another regime, one that had no involvement whatsoever in
9/11.
For Bush, going after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq formed part of a larger
strategy. He and his lieutenants fancied that destroying the old order
in the greater Middle East would position the U.S. to create a more
amenable new order. Back in 1991, after a previous Iraq encounter,
Bush’s father had glimpsed a “new world order.” Now a decade later, the
son set out to transform the father’s vision into reality.
The administration called this its Freedom Agenda, which would begin in
Iraq but find further application throughout the greater Middle East.
Coercion rather than persuasion held the key to its implementation, its
plausibility resting on unstoppable military power. For Bush’s inner
circle, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and
Paul Wolfowitz (but not Powell), victory was foreordained.
They miscalculated. The unsettled (but largely ignored) condition of
Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban already hinted at the extent
of that miscalculation. The chaos that descended upon Iraq as a direct
result of the U.S. invasion affirmed it. The Freedom Agenda made it as
far as Baghdad and there it died.
That Saddam was a brutal tyrant is a given. We need not mourn his
departure. Yet while he ruled he at least kept a lid on things. Bush
blew off that lid, naively expecting liberal democracy or at least
deference to American authority to emerge. Instead, “liberating” Iraq
produced conditions conducive to the violent radicalism today
threatening to envelop the region.
The Islamic State offers but one manifestation of this phenomenon. Were
it not for Bush’s invasion of Iraq, ISIL would not exist — that’s a
fact. Responsibility for precipitating the rise of this vile movement
rests squarely with Washington.
So rather than cluck over the reluctance of Greeks, Serbs, Hungarians
and others to open their borders to those fleeing from the mess the U.S.
played such a large part in creating, Americans would do better to
engage in acts of contrition.
On the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, former president Bush
visited New Orleans, implicitly acknowledging that his administration’s
response to that disaster just might have fallen a bit short. It was a
handsome gesture. A similar gesture is in order toward the masses
fleeing the region into Turkey and Europe.
It’s never too late to say to say you’re sorry.
Note EU-Digest: as to our own "whimpy" EU politicians, who are
supporting these totally failed US Middle East Policies, they ask no questions. They continue backing this madness with costly military assistance from the air and on the ground, financed by taxpayers money.
Why are European Politicians not coming to their senses and develop their own independent foreign
policies based on the real needs of the EU.
After all, as the saying goes, "charity begins at home" .
