0658 - Enemy'sEnemy

Ever-patient Readers, we call your attention to an old saying: "My enemy's enemy is my friend." While the White House is certainly not a center of study of old folk wisdom (or any other wisdom), perhaps a short, sharp lecture will help steer them toward good sense. Look you, Readers, the Founding Fathers of the U.S. had a lively distrust of government by the daily whims of the mob. That is why the U.S. is a Republic, not an Athenian democracy. It is also not a Monarchy, despite the claims of the Bush Attorney General, who seems to want to abolish the courts and the Congress. [Note: the voting public, smartening up, seems to want to toss out the incumbents in Congress, but that is not the same as abolishing the institution.] Now that the Iraq Fiasco is drawing to a bloody and dismal close in a sectarian war, let us reason together and consider just why the Iraq invasion was such a mistake. The password for our journey is "Yugoslavia". If you can spell it, you will remember and understand.

Years back, Tito, a prototypical dictator, ruled the motley collection of small-minded Balkan enemies grouped together as Yugoslavia. When he moved on, violence broke out everywhere. The desire to kill anybody distinguishably different was unleashed, and for years they killed. Just why, neither you nor the OO Staff knows. Life after Tito was bloodier and poorer and in all ways more disgusting than life under the dictator. Does that remind you of Iraq, Readers? The current violence in Iraq is killing 100 Iraqis a day. Even Saddam didn't get that bloody. What are the differences that justify this orgy of bombings by Shiites and Sunnis? We know not – it's not at all clear why the two sects hate each other to death. Nor, remember, was it clear why in Northern Ireland two competing groups calling themselves "Christians" killed each other for years.

We are quite clear, White House PR to the contrary, that the Iraqis are in no way ready for the blessings of democracy. Neither are the Palestinians, who elect the bloody Hamas, nor the Hezbollah-ites. We are also quite clear that the invasion of Iraq and the quite awful publicity from the American torturing and degrading of Iraqi and al Qaeda prisoners is fuel for the flames of crazy Mullahs preaching death to the West. So, then, what good did we get out of pushing out Saddam? He hated the U.S., he had been humiliated once by U.S. arms, but he was not a religious crazy, nor was he planning a nuclear attack on anybody. Quite the contrary, he was a Socialist Dictator, and he was not loved by al Qaeda. He was in fact the enemy of the high religious jihadis. Time for the saying: my enemy's enemy ... Class? In a real sense, then, was not Saddam our friend? A weak, discredited, but not dangerous Dictator. Evil, true, but that was and is, and will be, the business of the Iraqis, not the U.S. Marines.

Friends, have you noted what has happened in Libyan affairs? There sits Muammar al-Qaddafi, an old-line dictator, said to be guilty in years past of blowing up innocents in planes. But, he grows old, he sits on oil, and we have – mirabile dictu – re-opened relations and started investing in Libyan oil. Is this dictator a threat? Not now, it seems. Is Libya a democracy? No way. Are Libyans better off than hapless Iraqis being beheaded by other Iraqis? Quite likely so.

If there is one crying lack in Washington, it is subtlety. Distinctions – such as between the form of a government and what that government does – are never made in the Oval Office. We have a suggestion: cozy up to Syria. Now there's a weak dictator who could be given status and could be useful. Think.

Next time: (P'raps) Changes [OO #659]

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