Re: "as a nation we have invested heavily in a start-up that failed."
Well... that's certainly one way of looking at it.
Very useful, in a way, because *everything* has an opportunity cost associated with it, and thus must be compared against the cost/reward ratio of other options.
And, there, I'd argue that we still have viable options that have not been tried.
(I see NO REASON, for instance, why Iraq choosing to sub-divide into more representative ethnic/religious regions, via either full partition or a 'looser federal structure' would NECESSARILY be a bad thing for Western interests... or for the interests of locals. In fact, I see many long-term positives in such developments.)
And, if the way to self-determination proves to be long and or bloody (as so many other civil wars, almost by definition have been), and pits the Saudis and Gulf Arab Sunnis against the Iranians and Iraqi Shia --- exhausting vast sums of money and necessitating most of the Gulf to pump their oil 'full out' to *finance* their war efforts (as the Saudis have more then intimated recently in Washington), lowering global oil prices for a bit, and pitting waves of extremists and Jihadists from *both* sides against each other in a manner similar to the original decade long Iran/Iraq Gulf War, likely resulting in the deprecation of the VERY CONCEPT of religious war and religious extremism among their respective publics before it is all over --- well, there is obvious UPSIDE in that scenario as well... while we wait for the process of self-determination and irredentist movements to play out.
No, the SOONER we can get out of this foolish process of shooting ourselves in the foot, and let the long-term positive trends play out, the BETTER OFF we will *all* be.
Back to your analogy of a 'start-up that failed'.... One could argue that we BROKE THE STASIS that was retarding the natural development of those societies... and that, although it will not develop *in the short-run* exactly in the manner envisioned by the 'neo-cons' (flowers and kisses for the West, a privatization experiment for Iraq, 'Swiss-style' Democracy all around with no bloodshed to speak of... :-), so long as we GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY NOW, the *long-term* developments will still be favorable, ultimately justifying the 'neo-con's' assumptions that the Middle East was ripe for modernism and dramatic change.
But, impotently sitting in the middle of a civil war is the most idiotic of non-choices.... |
