<<<a) your ideas of threatening ME leaders (and threatening to bomb Iran back to the 8th century) and
b) your desire to apologize to the world for removing Saddam;>>>
Iran should know that we are not incapable of acting in our interests -- but attacking Iran is not in our interests so there is no reason to do so or make a big deal about this now. All the bellicose sabre rattling about Iran is the empty tough talk of those who already made a mess of Iraq.
We do indeed owe the world an apology. World opinion was solidly against us and the UN refused to give its blessing to our invasion. We decided to jack boot our way into Iraq anyway and we made a terrible mess of it -- for that we owe the world a sincere apology. We destroyed Iraq and caused untold suffering to millions of people -- people who now have a very bleak future indeed. Removing Saddam is not a justification for what we have done -- you cannot say "we destroyed your country, killed you in numbers we dare not count, failed to provide even the most basic civil services such as electricity and water, failed completely to restore civil order with the situation so bad now that millions of people have been forced to flee their homes, set you up for civil war, tried to steal your oil and now cannot control the lawless mess we have created, but it is all worth it because we got rid of Saddam and the WMDs that he did not have".
<<<a) your desire to promise never to do anything unilateral and give the UN control of our foreign policy and
b) while unilaterally pulling out of a UN approved mission, which Iraq is right now.>>>
In an interdependent world, only idiots act as if nobody else matters -- as we have done in recent years. The UN is a weak institution, but it is one we can strengthen and work with to help us to navigate complex issues in an interdependent world. I know that for some that is hard to swallow -- pulling out your gun and shooting at will seems so much more manly. But even in our most alluring cultural myths, the outlaw cowboy ends up dead or in jail.
As for what you call our "UN approved mission" -- I must stifle a belly laugh to hear you imply that we are occupying Iraq at the behest of the UN. The UN recognizes that we invaded Iraq and destroyed their government -- making us responsible for the consequences. And we are responsible for the consequences despite all the pretending that it is somebody else who is to blame for the horrible situation in Iraq.
There is no way out of Iraq without acknowledging the profound harm we have caused to the world in which we live by our reckless, lawless and incompetent actions. Seeing Cheney in jail would help our global credibility. There is no happy ending -- and we will be stuck with trillions in costs no matter if we leave or stay, but we must now admit failure and invite the world to help us find a way to leave Iraq -- what little is left of it.
We must now dig deep and develop a vision of a post-Iraq-occupation world that works and is desirable, to us, to Iraq's neighbors, to Asia and to Europe. If we cannot do that we will have failed once again as global leaders -- and after so many recent and very costly foreign policy failures we cannot afford to keep on failing. |
