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Tuesday, February 15, 20051108453500
May Allah Protect the Syrians - or - The Wolfowitz Plan
"Mr. President, Here's How to Make Sense of Your Second Term, Secure Your Legacy, And, Oh Yeah, Create a Future Worth Living," by Thomas P.M. Barnett, Esquire, pg 128, February 2005.
"Unhelpful Sabre Rattling: Lebland, Syria, US," by "Collounsbury," Lounsbury, http://www.livejournal.com/users/collounsbury/287898.html?view=1181082, 14 February 2005.
"Re: The Assassination Was Tragic...," by "Collounsbury," Lounsbury, http://www.livejournal.com/users/collounsbury/287898.html?thread=1176218#t1176218, 15 February 2005.
Tying together two tangentially related Collounsbury posts
None of this is worth it. Syria needs to reform its economy to be sure, and the sooner the better. Bloody basket case, but there is no key state interest for the US to destabilize Syria.
and
Egypt is not (and if one thinks it is, one needs much, much better idea about the region) making progress. The regime is treading water, playing a song and dance game to keep the gullible Americans paying its bills, and when it blows, the "transformation" is not going to be pretty.
Egyptian gov is the US's little whore, and she's painted up really nice, but she's got AIDS.
And this is your model for Syria. May Allah protect the Syrians.
In the first post, C denies any "key state interest" in destabilizing Syria. In the second, on another point, he notes that U.S. policies can be disasterous for another state.
From reading his blog, I gather C is a realst who is strongly opposed to destabilizing regimes and harming societies. We should all be careful of the ill we cause. And clearly a policy of regime transformation that "blows up" is a failure. However, the Lounsebury position is too extreme. Causing state chaos can be beneficial. It serves as a warning to all other rogue regimes that they cannot rely shoft-term American interests to save them.
This ties into regime change. As Dr. Barnett writes in Esquire
Version #3 (Ugly) is delivered sotto voce. Just have Paul Wolfowitz show [North Korean Leader] Kim the "six-month reconstruction plan" the Pentagon neocons drew up for the postwar occupation. If he thinks you're bluffing, then instruct Wolfie to slip him some of those morgue shots of Uday and Qusay looking al stiched up like a pair of Frakensteins. Kim'll get the hint. Your administration has proven that you're willing to wage war with almost no concern for the resulting VIP body count, the subsequent incompetent occupation, or the inevitable political uproar back home. I say when you've got it, flaunt it.
The reconstruction of Iraq has gone worse than it should have. But the lesson -- that the U.S. is willing to throw a state into chaos -- is very valuable. This encourages conservative forces in rogue regimes to advocate normalization of relations. Good.
Update: The whole article is now online.
01:45 Posted by Dan tdaxp (Webmaster) in Greater Syria, Iraq | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this | Tags: syria, wolfowitz
Comments
>But the lesson -- that the U.S. is willing to throw
>a state into chaos -- is very valuable.
Indeed, it is. You see, Europe is a lot nearer to the disorder the US is causing - whether deliberately or naively seems not entirely certain - and when the middle east blows up, the fallout is going to hit Europe first and the US a lot later - if at all.
Given that Europe astonishingly seems not to heed this danger and does not confront the force of chaos, the US has to be God's chosen country - once again, they are going to get away with it - just as they got away with it every single time for the last 150 years.
If you wish to interpret this assessment as a defense of bloodthirsty dictators - it is not meant this way, and that is obvious.
Posted by: Tjalf Boris Prößdorf | Thursday, March 24, 2005
The attacks of September 11th showed that the United States is very "close" to the Middle East -- in some ways closer than Europe. As far as America is concerned the middle east has "blown up" -- we experienced a catastrophic failure of our Greater Middle East foreign policy. (The U.S. pre-9/11 policy was heavily influenced by Atlanticism and European-style Realism, but I disgress.)
Still recovering from their second civil war of the 20th century, Europe is acting as they did after their first. Again and again we hear talk of appeasement. France and Germany seem resolutely opposed to assimilation or the economic growth required to bring it about. Spain actually capitured to a terrorist attack.
I'm not sure of the "God's chosen country" / "got away with it" remark. Echos of the policy failures that led up to 9/11 can be found in Imperial Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and Revolutionary Mexico's 1916 attack on Columbus. America, by nature an isolationist state, responds ferociously to attacks on central locations.
I didn't read your post as a defense of bloodthirty dictators. I see it as a depressed criticism of American policy from the perspective of a tired Europe.
Posted by: Dan | Thursday, March 24, 2005
>I didn't read your post as a defense of bloodthirty
>dictators. I see it as a depressed criticism of American
>policy from the perspective of a tired Europe.
You are right. The situation is depressing.
However, there is a misunderstanding in that I do not criticise US policies, that is up to the citizens of the USA - I try to assess these politics.
In doing so, I may be critical of Europeans who seem to be not tired, but fast asleep.
If that assessment sounds critical, than try to imagine an assessment of the US' policies toward Vietnam in the sixties from a cambodian perspective.
Not that a Cambodian's opinion did matter then.
Posted by: Tjalf Boris Prößdorf | Saturday, March 26, 2005