From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:
Einsteinian insanity is a defining characteristic of US foreign policy – and that goes double when we’re talking about the Middle East.
You see, America loves democracy so damn much, that the US is fully prepared to impose it upon recalcitrant countries by force. Sure, that may seem oxymoronic, but it’s really just well meaning paternalism. After all, what better way to endear the local population to an occupying force and sow the seeds for the establishment of democratic institutions than to come in shooting after you’ve leveled a couple of cities with cruise missiles and airstrikes?
Of course not all autocratic regimes are subject to America’s “democracy at gunpoint”. The Saudis, for instance, get to promote Wahhabism and push the same brand of orthodox Sunni Islam that ISIS and al-Qaeda espouse free from US meddling because, well, because they’re an “ally”, because they’ve got all the oil, and because they’ve helped the US perpetuate decades of dollar dominance. As long as they can afford to provide subsidies to the masses in an effort to effectively bribe the public out of staging a popular uprising, everything will presumably be fine.
Other countries haven’t been so lucky and the results have been a disaster.
America’s effort to rid Iraq of Saddam ended up transforming the country into an unstable Iranian colony plagued by sectarian violence.
Libya is a lawless wasteland in the wake of Gaddafi’s death.
Egypt has completely roundtripped and is now run by a former intelligence chief for Hosni Mubarak meaning that i) the entire “democratic” interlude touched off by protests during the Arab Spring was completely pointless, and ii) the loss of life in the countercoup which ousted Mohamed Morsi was entirely avoidable. In other words, if we were just going to end up with a Mubarak disciple, then why did we bother? Morsi has since been sentenced to death.
Now, Washington, Riyadh, Ankara, and Doha have helped turn Syria into what UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently called “the worst circle of hell” and were it not from Russia and Iran’s interevention, Damascus might have already fallen.
What do all of these things have in common? They all represent failed attempts on the part of Washington to engineer democracies and influence the political future of sovereign states either by coercion or outright military force.
To continue reading: The “Freedom-Promotion” Agenda Has Failed
