Say Anything Blog

That’s the likely outcome of the so called “return to realism” indicated by the return of such Bush I luminaries like Robert Gates and James Baker to prominence in America’s foreign policy decision-making process.

As Michael Young explains:

Amid the joy surrounding the defeat of the Republicans in last week’s midterm congressional elections, I might be forgiven this dissenting observation: With George W. Bush so roundly beaten, don’t expect much American interest, in the foreseeable future and probably beyond that, for liberalism in the Middle East. We’re returning to the days when the United States put its regional hopes mainly in leaders who were reliable thugs. . . .

There was considerable hypocrisy in the Arab liberal reaction to Bush’s wars. For decades, an unwavering lament of the liberals was that the US had abandoned democrats in favor of autocrats. That was true, particularly during the Cold War, when administrations pushing for greater openness on the part of their Arab allies were reminded by the latter that pushing too hard might induce them to lean toward the Soviet Union. In an era of superpower competition, the “realist” paradigm accepted such blackmail: It was better for the US to deal with states primarily on the basis of interests as opposed to values, even if values were never abandoned in Washington’s public rhetoric. . . .

...9/11, whichever way you cut it, was a by-product of that approach. Because militant Islam thrives in repressive Arab societies, because America can only appear more hateful to peoples who see it bolstering their absolute rulers, nothing prevents another terrorist attack against the US. That is the fatal flaw in the realists’ approach. For them 9/11 was a glitch in the international order, albeit a substantial one, an event that should have merely brought retaliatory police action designed to re-establish an equilibrium. Realists were incapable of gauging the importance of ideas, of understanding that militant Islam is perilously eschatological in its ambitions. In their fixation on power, realists never see beyond the dry instruments increasing or lessening power.

Read the whole thing.

I wonder…if Gates and the other “realists” succeed in persuading President Bush to abandon the so-called “Bush Doctrine” (the belief that the best way to fight terrorism is to topple oppressive regimes in the middle east and replace them with representative governments) and move back to a policy of tolerating tyranny for the sake of stability in the middle east, will it be the beginning of a new cycle for America?  One where we tolerate tyranny in the middle east until some event (like 9/11) makes us attempt to fight root causes again in the middle east (like we are now in Afghanistan and Iraq) until we run out of patience and decide to give up and return to the beginning of the cycle once again?

It would be unfortunate if that happened, but I think that’s exactly what will happen if we pull out of Iraq prematurely.  In the short term we’ll forget about Iraq.  We’ll go back to choosing the path of least resistance in Iraq and tolerating tyranny in the middle east even as that tyranny continues to foster the sort of extremist terrorism that has resulted in attacks around the globe.

We’re in Iraq now and as the President just pointed out the other day, “We’ll succeed unless we quit.”  The terrorists cannot drive us off the battlefield in Iraq.  The only way they can achieve victory over us is if they undermine our will to fight so that we quit of our own volition.  They’ve done a pretty good job of that so far, what with our media helping out with endlessly slanted war reporting, but if it doesn’t work and we don’t leave Iraq they lose.  There’s no two ways about it.  If we stay long enough we will achieve our mission.

But some, especially on the left but a few on the right as well, aren’t interested in hearing that.  They’d rather just take the easy way out of Iraq at this point.  But while that “easy way” may seem like the better choice in the short run, in the long run it has consequences for our country and the whole world that we may not like.

(via Hot Air)