Update: Mr. Haass: per, NY Times, Iraq, Syria, and Libya are unlikely to ever again exist as functioning states: (Preface, parag. 16): "While most of the 22 nations that make up the Arab world have been
buffeted to some degree by the Arab Spring, the six most profoundly
affected — Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen — are all
republics, rather than monarchies. And of these six, the three that have disintegrated so completely as to raise doubt that they will ever again exist as functioning states-Iraq, Syria and Libya."...8/11/16, "Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart," NY Times Magazine, Scott Anderson
8/8/16, "Who Got Us Into These Endless Wars?" Pat Buchanan
"“Isolationists must not prevail in this new debate over foreign
policy,” warns Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign
Relations. “The consequences of a lasting American retreat from the
world would be dire.”
To make his case against the “Isolationist Temptation,” Haass creates
a caricature, a cartoon, of America First patriots, then thunders that
we cannot become “a giant gated community.”
Understandably, Haass is upset. For the CFR has lost the country.
Why? It colluded in the blunders that have bled and near bankrupted
America and that cost this country its unrivaled global preeminence at
the end of the Cold War.
No, it was not “isolationists” who failed America. None came near to
power. The guilty parties are the CFR crowd and their neocon
collaborators, and liberal interventionists
who set off to play empire
after the Cold War and create a New World Order with themselves as
Masters of the Universe.
Consider just a few of the decisions taken in those years that most Americans wish we could take back.
After the Soviet Union withdrew the Red Army from Europe and split
into 15 nations, and Russia held out its hand to us, we slapped it away
and rolled NATO right up onto her front porch.
Enraged Russians turned to a man who would restore respect for their
country. Did we think they would just sit there and take it?
How did bringing Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into NATO make America
stronger, safer and more secure? For it has surely moved us closer to a
military clash with a nuclear power.
In 2014, with John McCain and U.S. diplomats cheering them on, mobs
in Independence Square overthrew a pro-Russian government in Kiev that
had been democratically elected and installed a pro-NATO regime.
Putin’s response: Secure Russia’s naval base at Sevastopol by
retaking Crimea, and support pro-Russian Ukrainians in Luhansk and
Donetsk who preferred secession to submission to U.S. puppets.
Fortunately, our interventionists failed to bring Georgia and Ukraine
into NATO. Had they succeeded, we almost surely would have been in a
shooting war with Russia by now.
Would that have made us stronger, safer, more secure?
After the attack on 9/11, George W. Bush, with the nation and world
behind him, took us into Afghanistan to eradicate the nest of al-Qaida
killers.
After having annihilated some and scattered the rest, however, Bush
decided to stick around and convert this wild land of Pashtuns, Hazaras,
Tajiks and Uzbeks into another Iowa. Fifteen years later, we are still there.
And the day we leave, the Taliban will return, undo all we have done, and butcher those who cooperated with the Americans.
If we had to do it over, would we have sent a U.S. army and civilian corps to make Afghanistan look more like us?
Bush then invaded Iraq, overthrew Saddam, purged the Baath Party, and
disbanded the Iraqi army. Result: A ruined, sundered nation with a
pro-Iranian regime in Baghdad, ISIS occupying Mosul, Kurds seceding, and
endless U.S. involvement in this second-longest of American wars.
Most Americans now believe Iraq was a bloody trillion-dollar mistake, the consequences of which will be with us for decades.
With a rebel uprising against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, the U.S. aided
the rebels. Now, 400,000 Syrians are dead, half the country is
uprooted, millions are in exile, and the Damascus regime, backed by
Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, is holding on after five years.
Meanwhile, we cannot even decide whether we want Assad to survive or fall, since we do not know who rises when he falls.
Anyone still think it was a good idea to plunge into Syria in support
of the rebels? Anyone still think it was a good idea to back Saudi
Arabia in its war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which has
decimated that country and threatens the survival of millions?
Anyone still think it was a good idea to attack Libya and take down
Moammar Gadhafi, now that ISIS and other Islamists and rival regimes are
fighting over the carcass of that tormented land?
“The Middle East is arguably the most salient example of what happens when the U.S. pulls back,” writes Haass.
To the CFR, the problem is not that we plunged headlong into this
maelstrom of tyranny, tribalism and terrorism, but that we have tried to
extricate ourselves.
Hints that America might leave the Middle East, says Haass, have “contributed greatly to instability in the region.”
So, must we stay indefinitely?
To the CFR, America’s role in the world is to corral Russia, defend
Europe, contain China, isolate Iran, deter North Korea, and battle
al-Qaida and ISIS wherever they may be, bleeding our country’s military.
Nor is that all. We are also to convert Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and
Afghanistan into pro-Western preferably democratic countries, and
embrace “free trade,” accepting the imported merchandise of all mankind,
even if that means endless $800 billion trade deficits, bleeding our
country’s economy.
Otherwise, you are just an isolationist."
--------------------
Added: No amount of human suffering is enough for neocons who are now firmly entrenched throughout US institutions:
"Who would have thought that the neocons would have succeeded in destabilizing not only the Mideast but Europe as well." (6 parags. from end of article) "The truth is that this accelerating spread of
human suffering can be traced back directly to the unchecked influence
of the neocons and their liberal fellow-travelers"... (parag. 5)
Sept. 2015 article:
9/7/2015, "How Neocons Destabilized Europe" by Robert Parry, consortiumnews.com
............
"The neocon prescription of endless “regime change” is spreading chaos
across the Middle East and now into Europe, yet the neocons still
control the mainstream U.S. narrative and thus have diagnosed the
problem as not enough “regime change,” as Robert Parry reports."
........
"The
refugee chaos that is now pushing deep into Europe...started with the cavalier ambitions of American
neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks who planned to
remake the Middle East and other parts of the world through “regime
change.”
..........
Instead of the promised wonders of “democracy promotion”
and “human rights,” what these “anti-realists” have accomplished is to
spread death, destruction and destabilization across the Middle East
and parts of Africa and now into Ukraine and the heart of Europe. Yet,
since these neocon forces still control the Official Narrative,
their explanations get top billing – such as that there hasn’t been
enough “regime change.”
For instance, The Washington Post’s neocon editorial page editor Fred Hiatt on Monday (2015) blamed
“realists” for the cascading catastrophes. Hiatt castigated them and
President Barack Obama for not intervening more aggressively in Syria to
depose President Bashar al-Assad, a longtime neocon target for “regime
change.”
But the truth is that this accelerating spread of
human suffering can be traced back directly to the unchecked influence
of the neocons and their liberal fellow-travelers who have resisted
political compromise and, in the case of Syria, blocked any realistic
efforts to work out a power-sharing agreement between Assad and his
political opponents, those who are not terrorists....
A Dozen Years of Chaos
So,
we can now look at the consequences and costs of the past dozen years
under the spell of neocon/liberal-hawk “regime change” strategies.
According to many estimates, the death toll in Iraq, Syria and Libya has
exceeded one million with several million more refugees flooding into –
and stretching the resources – of fragile Mideast countries.
Hundreds
of thousands of other refugees and migrants have fled to Europe,
putting major strains on the Continent’s social structures already
stressed by the severe recession that followed the 2008 Wall Street
crash. Even without the refugee crisis, Greece and other southern
European countries would be struggling to meet their citizens’ needs.
Stepping
back for a moment and assessing the full impact of neoconservative
policies, you might be amazed at how widely they have spread chaos
across a large swath of the globe. Who would have thought that the neocons would have succeeded in destabilizing not only the Mideast but Europe as well.
And, as Europe struggles, the export markets of
China are squeezed, spreading economic instability to that crucial
economy and, with its market shocks, the reverberations rumbling back to
the United States, too.
We now see the human tragedies of
neocon/liberal-hawk ideologies captured in the suffering of the Syrians
and other refugees flooding Europe and the death of children drowning as
their desperate families flee the chaos created by “regime change.” But
will the neocon/liberal-hawk grip on Official Washington finally be
broken? Will a debate even be allowed about the dangers of “regime
change” prescriptions in the future?
Not if the likes of The
Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt have anything to say about it. The truth is
that Hiatt and other neocons retain their dominance of the mainstream
U.S. news media, so all that one can expect from the various MSM outlets
is more neocon propaganda, blaming the chaos not on their policy of
“regime change” but on the failure to undertake even more “regime
change.”
The one hope is that many Americans will not be fooled
this time and that a belated “realism” will finally return to U.S.
geopolitical strategies that will look for obtainable compromises to
restore some political order to places such as Syria, Libya and Ukraine.
Rather than more and more tough-guy/gal confrontations, maybe there
will finally be some serious efforts at reconciliation.
But the
other reality is that the interventionist forces have rooted themselves
deeply in Official Washington, inside NATO, within the mainstream news
media and even in European institutions. It will not be easy to rid the
world of the grave dangers created by neocon policies."
============
Comment: If Mr. Haass wants to go to Iraq or any third world hell hole, monarchy, or Islamic republic thousands of miles away and fight, he's free to do so. I'd like to know how it's not criminally insane for Haass to suggest that Americans other than himself do so. He needs to get some hobbies to give his life some meaning away from the CFR.
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