{"id":3427,"date":"2014-02-23T07:04:06","date_gmt":"2014-02-23T07:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wp3\/?p=3427"},"modified":"2014-02-23T07:04:06","modified_gmt":"2014-02-23T07:04:06","slug":"us-long-search-for-mr-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunnionline.us\/english\/2014\/02\/23\/3427\/","title":{"rendered":"US&#8217; Long Search for Mr. Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/stories\/news3\/us-ArmySgt.jpg\" border=\"0\" style=\"float: right; margin: 5px;\" \/>What\u2019s wrong with central casting? It\u2019s a virtual truism: The United States always seems to pick the wrong guy to star as George Washington in some faraway civil war.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>  <!--more-->  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> We sell him weapons for self-defense against his despicable foes, and then, sometimes before the end of the first battle, we find we are committed to a bad actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Genghis Khan.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">President Barack Obama just approved the sale of 24 Apache helicopters to the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, despite well-founded concerns that Maliki may use them against people we do like as well as those we don\u2019t.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Helicopters aren\u2019t the only munitions on Maliki\u2019s shopping list. Washington has negotiated the sale of 480 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, along with reconnaissance drones and F-16 fighter jets.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">To hear Maliki tell it, he needs these weapons to stop terrorists from destroying his democratically-elected government. To hear his opponents, the divisive Maliki creates his own problems by hounding legitimate rivals, favoring Shiites over Sunnis and fueling sectarian grudges. To hear Obama, Maliki is America\u2019s only option: Support him, or see Iraq spiral into civil war.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">All three scenarios are correct. They almost always are.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Out of Business<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Desperate leaders of unstable countries are problematic partners. They\u2019re controversial with their own people. Backing them typically involves deep moral compromises. And, boy, we\u2019ve picked some doozies in the past: from Vietnam\u2019s Ngo Dinh Diem, to Taiwan\u2019s Chiang Kai-shek (and the notorious Madame Chiang Kai-shek), to Haiti\u2019s Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to Iran\u2019s Reza Shah Pahlavi, to Afghanistan\u2019s Hamid Karzai.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Yet the problem isn\u2019t about picking well. It\u2019s about picking at all. The United States needs to get out of that business.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Holding a nation-state together is hard work. When economies or political systems fail, it\u2019s best if local people know their own choices are to blame \u2014 not someone else\u2019s \u2014 and that it\u2019s on their shoulders to find a solution. No matter how long that takes.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Otherwise, moral hazard is the result. A local leader with the sponsorship of a world power has less reason to compromise with domestic rivals, and possesses a perfect scapegoat when things don\u2019t work out.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This may sound callous and irresponsible. Isn\u2019t it America\u2019s duty to stop the shedding of innocent blood when we can? Shouldn\u2019t the US make every effort to staunch conflict in places like Iraq and Syria? Isn\u2019t stability in Washington\u2019s interest?<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Not necessarily. History is instructive here. Not every civil war can be prevented. In our own, President Abraham Lincoln rejected mediation by Britain, which was unable to stop killing that eventually took 700,000 lives. Or consider what happened the one time a foreign power tried to jimmy America\u2019s electoral process. It backfired spectacularly. The sitting government became more reactionary and the opposition more extremist. Relations with the meddling foreign power worsened.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>The \u201cGreat Rule\u201d<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In 1796, revolutionary France became convinced that the weakling American republic had been captured by vested interests poised to sell out democracy and reinstate monarchy. The French heard this from disgruntled Americans who called their political rivals \u201cAnglomen\u201d and \u201cmonocrats.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">French diplomats did their best to subvert President George Washington\u2019s foreign policy. When that didn\u2019t work, they decided that Americans ought to elect \u201cgood\u201d Thomas Jefferson, deeply tied to France, over \u201cbad\u201d John Adams.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Certain that Americans would welcome intervention by a revolutionary big brother, the French did all they could to influence the vote. They even threatened war if Americans followed the path of perdition and chose Adams.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Adams, thin-skinned to start with, was not amused. When he defeated Jefferson in a close election, he built new warships, raised an army and passed the most tyrannical anti-foreign, anti-free speech laws in American history: the Alien and Sedition Acts.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Jefferson claimed that the federal government had forged a \u201crod of iron\u201d over the states, which ought not to submit. He and James Madison secretly wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, proposing that states annul federal law. The new nation confronted the possibility of dissolution. Well-meaning French intervention in the name of global republicanism shook the American republic.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">So, throughout the 19th century, the United States adhered to George Washington\u2019s long-standing \u201cGreat Rule\u201d to have \u201cas little political connection as possible\u201d with foreign countries. This policy continued under presidents of both parties.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In 1947, however, President Harry S. Truman proposed a drastic modification. Non-entanglement was no longer safe, he believed. The United States must \u201csupport free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">At the time, Nazi Germany was newly defeated, and the Soviet Union had all of Eastern Europe under its thumb. The stakes during the Cold War seemed incredibly high. West European countries might be overwhelmed, as they had been in 1940. Their former colonies might ally with Russia against the \u201cracist, capitalist West.\u201d And so, for seven decades, Washington played the Cold War game of shoring up deficient governments vulnerable to collapse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>The Next 70-years Course<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The policy mostly succeeded. But the collateral damage lives on in anti-Americanism. Resentments linger that the United States picked the wrong side in numerous domestic conflicts. Even in Greece, where the Truman Doctrine began, some leftist critics still demonize the US for appointing \u201cstooges,\u201d enslaving the nation, and \u201cnot allowing Greece to become a Soviet satellite in the 1940s,\u201d according to Evanthis Hatzivassiliou of the University of Athens.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Cold War is now long over. Middle East terrorists may bedevil Western governments, but are not poised to take them over. The global community is more firmly united on the sanctity of international borders than in all preceding history. The United States took the lead in building a stable world order \u2014 which has materialized.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Now is the time to consider the best course for the next 70 years.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The cardinal principle of the system of nation-states since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia is that sovereign countries must not intervene in one another\u2019s internal affairs. This principle is often observed in the breach, but it is the oldest, most stable dictum of international relations. It\u2019s based on the idea that minding one\u2019s own business is usually safer, and sometimes more virtuous, than being one\u2019s brother\u2019s keeper.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Obama\u2019s decision to arm the Iraqi government against its multifarious opponents continues the Truman Doctrine, which violates the Westphalian principle.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Truman Doctrine\u2019s inherent liabilities now outweigh its once undeniable benefits. The chance of Washington \u2014 or any outside government \u2014 sorting out the Byzantine Middle East is zero to none. Outsiders cannot pick the \u201cright\u201d leader in complex internal disputes.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Many now insist that Maliki\u2019s enemies are our enemies. America\u2019s hubristic policy ensures that they will become so. Iraqis can best save Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>By Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman<\/em><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Source: <em><strong>OnIslam<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s wrong with central casting? It\u2019s a virtual truism: The United States always seems to pick the wrong guy to star as George Washington in some faraway civil war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c42-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>US&#039; Long Search for Mr. Right - SunniOnline<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sunnionline.us\/english\/2014\/02\/23\/3427\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"US&#039; Long Search for Mr. Right - SunniOnline\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What\u2019s wrong with central casting? 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