Failed wars and useless occupation by the US:
Count through the list of foreign adventures since our hurried departure from Vietnam in April 1975, and we proceed, in random and unseemly sequence, to the exit from Iran and the flight from Lebanon, the pointless assault on Panama, the shutting down of the Gulf War without decisive victory, the abandonment of the Kurds in northern Iraq, the escape from Somalia, the refusal to intrude upon the killing in Rwanda or the Balkans. Drawn to despots whom we hire to represent our freedom-loving commercial interests (Diem, the Shah of Shahs, Somoza, Thieu, Marcos, Jonas Savimbi, Noriega, Saddam Hussein, King Fahd, Arafat, Mobutu Sese Seko, Ariel Sharon), we pretend that our new ally stands as a pillar of democracy in one or another of the world's poorer latitudes, and for however many years the arrangement lasts we send F-16's and messages of humanitarian concern. But then something goes amiss with the band music or the tin mines; the despot's palace guard doesn't know how to fire the machine guns, or fires them at the wrong people, and the prime minister's brother appropriates the traffic in cocaine. We decide that our virtue has been compromised, or that we no longer can afford the cost of the parliament, and we leave by helicopter from the roof of the embassy. The incoherence of our current policy in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia perceived by the Pentagon as our mortal enemy and by the White House as our dearest friend, President Bush committed on Tuesday to the establishment of a Palestinian state, on Thursday to the everlasting kingdom of Zion) suggests that the Washington travel agents have begun considering various estimated times of departure on the assumption that if we can run another "very successful operation" in and out "in something under a month," maybe Oliver North can get everybody to the roof of an embassy to watch the free election.
harpers.org |
