We should be very careful in our desperate search for allies in our war with Islam. We need to remember recent history, and this time try to learn a lesson from our repeated mistakes.

Our progressive friends in the DEMOcrat Party frequently like to blame us for this current extended crisis, reminding us that we supported the Afghani Mujahideen against their beloved Soviet Union during the 1980s. Unhhh yes, that omits the context that we were engaged in a bitter cold war against the Soviets, and that we seemed to be losing with the DEMOcrats doing all they could to hinder Reagan’s efforts, leaving him to find allies where he could. And that certain of the Muj leaders (like Masood & Rabbani) seem to have been better than others (Hekmatyar), and that we may have chosen the wrong ones under the influence of the CIA and the Pakistani ISI, and later we abandoned the good allies to the bad ones. But the overview does make a point; in desperation, we badly chose our allies, and that choice came back to cause our next problem.

Occasionally they like to remind us too, that during the same period American policy tilted toward Saddam against Khomeini, thankfully without giving him full endorsement. In retrospect he still looks like the lesser of the two evils, even as he cautions against trusting our allies.

But perhaps the best lesson of all, come from World War II, where we allied ourselves with the greatest murderer of the twentieth century against the second greatest, who happened to be the more immediate, if shorter term, threat. Churchill understood what he was doing from necessity, and behaved with due circumspection. Roosevelt, Hopkins and the other DEMOcrats practically wet their pants from excitement.

Let’s also remember that Castro came to power with the backing of the New York Times, because the Sulzbergers were offended by Batista’s petty corruption. Diem was overthrown by Kennedy & Lodge because he was not democratic enough. We got Khomeini because Jimmie Carter found the Shah Reza Pahlavi not up to his exquisite democratic standards. Haiti? We’ve been trying to meddle our way out of that mess for almost a century, each choice proving a little worse than the one before. In contrast, Spain, Chile, and Taiwan all seem to have survived their dictators and recovered fairly well.

The lesson is "Nations do not have friends, they have interests." And a corollary might be that the greatest danger comes not from your enemies but from your own well-meaning moralists.

In choosing our next round of high-minded Middle Eastern democrats, please try to remember this lesson.

And those of you who actually read your Machiavelli before putting him on the shelf, might remember his caution that allies stronger that yourself will tend to dominate you, while weaker allies are likely to prove a strategic burden.

-Rurik

Contributed by George Mellinger on December 21, 2006 at 01:37 PM in Current Affairs, George Mellinger, Iraq, Islamism Delenda Est | Permalink

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