Sometimes, Bad-Tasting Medicine Needs to Be Swallowed
Like a mother forcing her children to take bad-tasting medicine for their own good, disgruntled American “allies” have recently compelled the financially ailing U.S. superpower to scale back meddling abroad that it can no longer afford.
The United States — always reluctant to remove troops from any overseas location, even if the situation on the ground there has changed greatly — wanted to renegotiate the U.S.-Iraqi agreement for a complete American troop withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2011. The U.S., however, wanted its troops to have immunity from Iraq’s laws, something the occupation-weary Iraqis would not stand for in the wake of the Haditha and Blackwater massacres of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops and security contractors, respectively.
Many conservatives have criticized the Obama administration for abandoning Iraq, and they cite the recent spike in violence, the attempt by the Shi’ite prime minister to arrest the Sunni vice president, and the crumbling of the prime minister’s Shi’ite coalition as evidence that U.S. troops should have remained in the country. Yet this same argument was made by conservatives as U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam after decades of meddling and is made to this day about having abandoned that Southeast Asian country too soon. And like the South Vietnamese government, the Iraqi government may fall apart in what is essentially a civil war. Yet how long should the United States keep its finger in the dike in such developing countries, especially when it is almost impossible to remodel foreign political cultures using armed force? In Iraq, the United States now has to rely on the largest embassy in the world — 16,000 embassy employees and contractors — to hold the country together. Good luck. Because Iraq is an artificial country with rival ethno-sectarian groups and tribes competing in a political culture that rarely allows compromise, Iraq probably would be doomed to significant civil strife whenever American troops departed. It might as well be now, after almost nine years of failed nation-building.
In Pakistan, a similar situation is playing out. Anti-American sentiment is at a fever pitch after a CIA security contractor killed two Pakistanis in January, a U.S. helicopter-borne raid killed Osama bin Laden in May, and an American airstrike killed 26 Pakistani military personnel near the Afghan border in November. As a result, Pakistan will likely scale back its broad security relationship with the United States. “We’ve closed the chapter on the post-9/11 period,” according to one senior U.S. official quoted in The New York Times. Good.
In a bizarre twist of policy, since 9/11, the United States has been shoveling billions in military and economic assistance to Pakistan so that the Pakistanis can aid the Afghan Taliban — which the U.S. is fighting. After all, money is fungible. In return for the massive aid to Pakistan, the U.S. has been allowed to use drones to kill al-Qaeda members in Pakistan and transmit supplies and military equipment through Pakistan to fight the Pakistani-supported Afghan Taliban. Aiding the primary benefactor of your enemy is crazy!
After the American airstrike killed Pakistani soldiers last month, Pakistan made the U.S. close a drone base in southwestern Pakistan and closed supply routes for American war materiel going into Afghanistan. All CIA drone attacks have been suspended since November.
Although Pakistan is reevaluating security cooperation between the two countries, it seems like the excessive American party is over. Reflecting enraged Pakistani public opinion, the broader security relationship will probably be scaled back to a narrower counterterrorism relationship that more tightly restricts drone strikes against al-Qaeda on Pakistani soil, limits the number of U.S. spies and troops on the ground there, and raises the cost by millions of dollars to get American supplies through to Afghanistan.
But as in Iraq, the reduced U.S. footprint may seem like bad news but is actually something to celebrate. Even if we subscribe to the dubious proposition that the U.S. can kill its way out of the al-Qaeda problem, the United States will still be able to continue to hunt al-Qaeda with drones but will save billions of dollars by continuing to freeze massive military aid to Pakistan.
This narrow counterterrorism relationship is all the United States should have had in the first place. Al-Qaeda attacked the United States; the Afghan Taliban did not. The United States could save even more money by rapidly withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan, thus allowing Pakistan to have a greater say in Afghan affairs through the Afghan Taliban and eliminating U.S. dependency on Pakistan to allow the transit of supplies for that war.
Moreover,
a lighter U.S. presence in Islamic countries would actually reduce the
ire of radical Muslims against the United States, thus draining the
swamp of potential anti-U.S. terrorists. It is a shame that it
takes Islamic nations themselves to compel oblivious U.S. policy makers
to reduce the underlying cause of anti-U.S. terrorism.
Read more by Ivan Eland
- How to Avoid a Return to Iraq – January 2nd, 2012
- No War for Oil: US Dependency and the Middle East – December 20th, 2011
- Quit Preaching and Lead by Example – December 13th, 2011
- Pro-Business vs. Pro-Market: What’s the Difference? – December 6th, 2011
- Moderation in Following the Constitution Is No Virtue – November 29th, 2011
GOP Neocons: Out-Warmongering the Dictator-in-Chief (and other news…) » Scott Lazarowitz's Blog
December 28th, 2011 at 5:23 am
[...] Ivan Eland: Sometimes, Bad-Tasting Medicine Needs to Be Swallowed [...]
liveload
December 28th, 2011 at 6:17 am
People keep bringing 9/11 up and expecting everyone to continue treating America like the victim. That crap doesn't cut it anymore. I have no respect for people who continue to invoke 9/11 with their crocodile tears. More Israelis died of peanut allergies. More people died by a factor of 1000 in our violent thrashings since then.
War OF Terror
War OF Drugs
We're not fooling anyone but ourselves, America. Wake the hell up and take this nation back from the Fascists and Banksters. Step one is to remove the Fed's ability to print money. They are a privately owned bank. Here's a relevant quote that is attributed to Josiah Stamp:
""Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take away from them the power to create money and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.""
RickR30
December 28th, 2011 at 9:57 am
Great post.
It's astonishing and indeed makes you wonder about the very soul of bankers (if they have one) that given enough time and left to their own devices all they manage to create nothing but catastrophe the world over, again and again. Aren't they themselves tired of this. Everyone knows they are crooks and bastards (except a few Americans who think of them as the gods of finance) and all they do night and day everyday is confirm that suspicion.
MvGuy
December 28th, 2011 at 10:03 am
Good comment liveload…. I''m with you… End the Fed… and their wars…!!
jgmoebus
December 28th, 2011 at 10:33 am
Okay…… HOW!?!
HOW is this to be done???
HOW is The Fourth Reich to be confronted, combated, defeated, and destroyed?
By which tactics and strategies? By what methods and means?
HOW?
And By WHOM?
And, WHEN?
jgmoebus
December 28th, 2011 at 10:36 am
EveryBoy KNOWS that EveryThing is totally and completely screwed up.
So What? Now What?
When is the move made from massaging gums and egos to actually DOING something in The Real World?
When and How is The Fourth Reich to be confronted, combated, defeated, and destroyed?
Or do we just keep sitting around *****ing and pissing and moaning and hoping…. pretending that somehow THAT is going to change something?
We are as were the Germans in the mid-to-late 30s…… it is really no simpler nor more complicated that that.
dink
December 28th, 2011 at 7:59 pm
Its not difficult, sanctions on Iran are an act of war. For whats left of secular Iraqi institutions it the Lukid faction that dominates AIPAC that is pushing for a war with a country almost four times the size of Iraq. Until Washington DC is cleaned up how much stabilization is going to happen? Iraqis can get together. There amount of bickering only works as long as those factions can gain from it.
But if you think they are getting all those explosives and arms to kill each other from Iran exclusively you are mistaken. Arms are being given to them from the US, and they will be used against each other if their will and hearts are in the wrong place. Do I think Iraq should be stay together, yes. But if Iraqis bloddy each others noses eventually they will tire of fighting. The pie-in-sky hope-ium of M. Sadr and the current Sunni government of Iraq will only last so long. If the USA isn't there to blame, then they have to fix their own situation. Something that civil war does not accomplish. I ask who really wants Hizbollah in Lebanon, if there is no threat from Israeli invasion? Who wants the poverty parties of Sadr
Things are related. Fundamentalist settlers, the Herardi or Shas party allow Benyamin Netanyahu to be elected. High Birthrate and religious zealotry push women and human rights aside. They push for more resources. Israel then pushs for war, they marginalize the UN and Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. More religious zealotry, higher birthrates. Americans don't claim their sovereignty and push back from the Likudist warparty that dominates AIPAC, which are agents of a foreign (faction of a) government. We are fed half truths and jingoism. The truth is usually in the middle. Will Israel exist ,sure, and if that hurts some commenters, too bad. America can retract from empire now and still hold some influence, or it can take a harder fall soon anyway.
If the Sunnis and Shiites want to fight, let them pick up sticks and stones instead of American taxpayer bought munitions. The Kurds are not going to launch any offensives.
dink
December 28th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
For what is left of secular Iraqi institutions, it is the excessive meddling of foreigners, far (US) and close (Iran) that threatens Iraqi's future. <– Goof, I meant that to be the second sentence