I want to expand on something I touched on in the previous post regarding the current war(s) in which we find ourselves. When someone presents an argument that clearly and definitively makes a strong case for the invasion of Iraq, or the reasons for 9/11 (great, now I am linking the two) the knee-jerk response is: “It’s our own fault. We armed Iraq and Afghanistan. The CIA created a radicalized Iran, our unholy alliance with Saudi Arabia has served to fund radical Islamic terrorists around the globe… blah blah blah.”OK. Fine. Yes. True. Agreed.
Do you remember when all that shit happened? There was this little thing called the Cold War going on. We were busy trying to keep England from becoming the "smallest fucking province in the Russian empire.” That meant being everywhere they were and hampering the enemy in any way possible. That’s what a war is, hot or cold.
You never hear these same people say that creation of Israel after WW II is the cause of unrest in the Middle East. Well maybe you do, but you shouldn't. We had just witnessed the Holocaust, where 9-11 million Jews were exterminated. So yeah, we gave them a little strip of land they could call home. Did it make sense, were we thinking long term? Of course not. We had just dropped a couple of atomic bombs on Japan. We were thinking big, we were using a broadsword not a scalpel.
No offense, but a full theater nuclear war with the Soviet Union would’ve made the Holocaust look like a food fight. So yes, we harassed and hampered the Soviet Union wherever they existed; we pressured their spheres of influence and undermined their alliances at every turn. The long-term consequences were not, and frankly, could not be considered. The immediate stakes were too high.
As a consequence, yes, we now have to deal with it. As usual in the post WW II world, we (the U.S.) are the ones who have to try to fix it. That’s our job as the dominate world power. "You break it, you buy it".
So yes, we armed Iraq and Afghanistan, the CIA radicalized Iran and we created radical Islamic terrorists around the globe. But the next time you hear someone talking about how this is our fault in the first place, try to inject some context into the dialogue. My suggestion is to explain, in detail, what a MIRV is.
You never hear these same people say that creation of Israel after WW II is the cause of unrest in the Middle East. Well maybe you do, but you shouldn't. We had just witnessed the Holocaust, where 9-11 million Jews were exterminated. So yeah, we gave them a little strip of land they could call home. Did it make sense, were we thinking long term? Of course not. We had just dropped a couple of atomic bombs on Japan. We were thinking big, we were using a broadsword not a scalpel.
No offense, but a full theater nuclear war with the Soviet Union would’ve made the Holocaust look like a food fight. So yes, we harassed and hampered the Soviet Union wherever they existed; we pressured their spheres of influence and undermined their alliances at every turn. The long-term consequences were not, and frankly, could not be considered. The immediate stakes were too high.
As a consequence, yes, we now have to deal with it. As usual in the post WW II world, we (the U.S.) are the ones who have to try to fix it. That’s our job as the dominate world power. "You break it, you buy it".
So yes, we armed Iraq and Afghanistan, the CIA radicalized Iran and we created radical Islamic terrorists around the globe. But the next time you hear someone talking about how this is our fault in the first place, try to inject some context into the dialogue. My suggestion is to explain, in detail, what a MIRV is.
2 comments:
It's not a matter of saying it's our fault or it's not our fault. It's just the reality. To win the Cold War, for example, we armed the Mujahiheen in Afghanistan without worrying so much about how it might create the Muslim Brotherhood and come back to bite us in the ass.
That doesn't mean it's our fault that crazy zealots want to kill us. It's still the fault of the crazy zealots. It's just a critique of foreign policy, like, "Didn't someone maybe foresee that doing x might produce y and try to mitigate it?" We know there are crazy people in the world. Purely on a pragmatic level, couldn't we have, say, realized that dependence on Saudi oil is a really really bad policy when its government funds al Qaeda? Isn't that what you call a (air quotes) no-brainer?
Saying "it's our fault" is just an overreaction on the left to the extreme on the right that says the righteous and pure United States just COULDN'T have had ANYTHING to do with fomenting Islamic nationalism, because we can do no wrong, and to criticize us is to be guilty of treason. Just as stupid.
I agree with you. Of course, this post was clearly aimed at the left. Your point about their over-reaction to the right's own zealotry is something I didn't consider. Consider it considered. How considerate.
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