“You don’t fight for your country, you fight for your government.”
Robert Gore, The Golden Pinnacle
Here’s the unresolvable paradox of the US government’s Middle Eastern policy. Give those promoting US intervention exactly what they wish for, a region made up of US-promoted, western-style secularist democracies that respect pluralism and individual “rights” (set aside the contradictory nature of the rights now respected in the west, such as the “right” of some people to compel other people to pay for their sustenance). The key words are secular and democracy—most inhabitants of the region will not freely choose the western model. They will choose some variant of Islamic-based government. Further complicating the issue, the government deck will be stacked in favor of whatever Islamic sect—Sunni or Shiite—comprises a majority of the population.
So, as Pat Buchanan points out in a recent column (“Against Terrorism—But for What?” 1/23/15, buchanan.org.), when Hamas wins an election in the Palestinian territories, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Mohammad Morsi in Egypt, the US government says, “That’s not what we meant by democracy.” What the US government means by democracy is not a government acceptable to a majority of it citizens, but rather a government acceptable to the US government. Thus, we have recent US-prompted regime changes of democratically elected governments in Iraq and, outside the Middle East, in Ukraine. What the US government actually approves of can be miles away from democracy. Who elected the Saudi monarchy, a US ally and one of the most dictatorial and repressive regimes on the planet?
To impose the governments the US government wants in the Middle East requires US force of arms and, as it discovered in Afghanistan and Iraq, a continuing military presence to maintain it. Many of the locals like our presence even less than the US electorate likes maintaining it, and express their antipathy in a variety of ways, often violent. They are fighting against American occupation and for their religion. Our Chris Kyles ostensibly fight for secular, pluralistic democracy, but actually for the installation or maintenance of US-sponsored governments. In the long run, the smart money bet is on the locals.
If the manifest hypocrisies are ignored and the ostensible goal of secular democracy promotion is accepted at face value, it will be unacceptable to most of the indigenous population. Even many so-called moderate Moslems regard secular western society as an abomination, utterly decadent. If freedom and civil liberties means they must sit still for blasphemous portrayals of their prophet, they want no part of it. If they have to accept, in the name of “lifestyle freedom,” western-style licentious and promiscuity, forget it. And while they may tolerate apostasy and non-believers in their midst, why should such infidels have the same rights and privileges as the Islamic chosen?
The choice in the Middle East is simple and stark. The US government can continue trying to impose and maintain the governments there that it wants, opposed by local populations and by a majority of the US electorate. Or it can get out, and the Middle East will be carved up, often violently, into countries with governments that will be religiously oriented and in no sense secular, civil-liberties respecting democracies. Unfortunately, the choice is never presented in this way to the US public by those promoting continuing US interventionism. If it were, someone might ask: After 14 years of the former, don’t we have the latter? Our intervention has in no sense improved the Middle East, and has in many ways made it more hellish. Among the quite foreseeable consequences: blowback terrorism around the globe and a tidal wave of refugees from the most brutal hell holes “infiltrating” the US and Europe. More of the same will produce more of the same.
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The military industrial complex took over the USA years ago. The results are exactly what you portray.
I’m sure if we just “leave them alone” everything will be hunky dory……If only Ron Paul were running the country….
This may be beyond the scope of this post but, if we “get out and leave them alone,” do you think they will cease pursuing the islamic imperative to conquer and convert to islam all the dar-al-harb?
To be clear, I’m not saying that the.gov incursions there have not been disastrous, or that we shouldn’t leave.
I have no doubt that some Islamicists will continue to pursue their own dreams of empire, and they will be opposed by others pursuing the same goal. How it all ends up I have no idea, and I think that some among the warring parties will do their best to draw the US back in. I think many of the current crop of Islamicists are quite happy the US is in the Middle East. The only way they can inflict maximum damage to us is if we are there. The US presence also serves as a convenient scapegoat for the many ideological and logical failures of Islamic doctrine. It is still in many ways a religion rooted many centuries ago. I do not claim that if we leave, it will result in peace and commendable governments; it will not. However, it will not be a US imposed non-optimal solution, paid for with American treasury and lives. And I do believe that we will still be able to buy oil from at least some governments, and isn’t that the main value of the Middle East to the US?
At the least, if we leave and they continue to attack all and sundry including the West, it will be more difficult for western apologists to excuse them on grounds of “imperialist meddling.”
Ahh… no it won’t.
“However, it will not be a US imposed non-optimal solution, paid for with American treasury and lives.”
That’s the best part… that and stand off weapons as the gentleman below suggests.
Leaving the Middle East to its own to sort out the kind of government they want will ultimately fail to give us the peace we want. The local government arising in the vacuum left by the US will brutally repress any opposition and even more brutally eliminate any followers of religions that do not line up with the governing tyrant’s preferred flavor. On top of that, the countries will be poorly run so only the kleptocrats at the top will have a comfortable life. To keep themselves in power, they will continue to demonize the Great Satan so their poor, ignorant subjects will line up to conduct terror operations and wars against us and our interests rather than foment rebellion at home.
I don’t see any realistic alternative to a) getting out, and b) tooling up with more navy ships and cruise missiles. This way, when the Middle East tyrants perpetrate terrorism against us we can beat them back into their miserable holes with stand off weapons.
There is a logical inconsistency with your argument, Robert. Your premise is that the US is trying to support and/or install secular regimes in the Middle East, and yet our track record since 1979 (when we stood by and watched Iran fall) is the exact opposite. Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Syria all represent secular regimes that we have invaded, attacked, or overtly undermined. Aside from the single exception of the Taliban in Afghanistan, there is no Wahhabist or fundamentalist regime that we have effectively opposed in almost 40 years. I am discounting our meaningless and ineffective posturing against Iran, of course, which has amounted to nothing.
You make a good point, Buckaroo. However, we did try to install secular regimes in the two countries we actually invaded, Afghanistan and Iraq (we replaced one secular regime with another). In the four countries you list, we did undermine secular regimes. In Iran, as noted, we replaced one secular regime with another. In Syria we’ve been unable to get rid of Assad, so we can’t say with what we would replace him. In Egypt and Libya, how would you characterize the governments that have come in after our efforts to undermine the previous ones? I have trouble making any kind of sense of our incoherent policies there.
Hi Robert, I would agree that the US certainly created the appearance of installing secular regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Results, of course = nil. I judge foreign policy on results. US foreign policy makes perfect sense if one considers there might be two goals, not one: First, to create an impression or illusion of supporting secular regimes; Second, working out of sight and under cover to achieve precisely the opposite, i.e. establish and support fundamentalist regimes.
This leads us to the next two-part question– why the deception, and why the secret goal of establishing more fundamentalist regimes? The answer to the first part is pretty obvious. The second part is more diabolical to fathom.
It is curious to me that, when considering that politicians are skilled professional liars, that everyone does not assume that what they say and what they do are always to entirely different things. Instead, people get “confused” and “bewildered” by our “incoherent” policies. They are entirely coherent when one looks at them the proper way.
Oh, and regarding Egypt and Libya– they aren’t really anything right now, but I would characterize those countries as perfect breeding grounds for fundamentalist regimes. Mission only halfway accomplished there. These things take time, you know. And when one is engaged in deception, time creates a helpful smokescreen to obscure cause and effect.