Irrational

I was thinking over a post at Sic Semper Tyrannis by Jim Schmidt, Blame, an effort to understand the thinking behind what the Shrubbery has been doing for the past six years. He wonders if it isn’t tied to the philosophy that led to Rudyard Kipling writing The White Man’s Burden, to encourage the American government to colonize the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.

While I don’t disagree with the conclusions that it is a matter of a form of conservative philosophy, it doesn’t evince any consistency in execution.

‘Noz of Rubber Hose points to the source of my disquiet in his post, crescent crazed. The US was attacked by Sunni fundamentalists on 9/11/2001. Without capturing those responsible, we turned our attention and military might on the most secular state in the region, and are now being belligerent towards a Shi’ia country. By doing this we have allowed our attackers to recover and rebuild their organization after the initial damage caused by the war in Afghanistan.

[For those who came in late: Saddam was an enemy of al Qaeda and Iran, Iran was an enemy of Saddam and al Qaeda, and al Qaeda was an enemy of Saddam and Iran. None of the three was allied in any way to the other two. This is why Iran has benefited from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: two of its major enemies have been weakened.]

The US finds itself bogged down in two wars, winning neither, anticipating a third, while the world is distancing itself from us. Our military is sagging under the strain and the Treasury is in debt to the world.

When you throw in the reality that the civilian head of the military was, for six years, actively reducing the forces and materiel needed for this adventurism, one can but shake their head in wonder.