Never start a land war in Asia.
Do I really need a caption? I think the picture says it all.
Wow, I find it amazing that the more I work the less connected to current events I become. As I pour myself into a project my awareness seems to degrade exponentially. I don’t like it- degrading awareness that is. I generally like to work.
I’ve watched bits and pieces of the intervention in Libya unfold and wish I could dedicate more time to analyzing it in depth. I do find it interesting that the President has committed military forces in a manner that he had railed against prior to the invasion of Iraq. It makes me wonder what our strategic rationale is for commitment of military assets. Is it for the national interest, security or Values based? If it is values based why not Saudi Arabia, Syria, North Korea or Burma? All are different forms of tyranny and all mistreat their people (at least in a western sense of human rights). Is our use of military assets simply based on which political part of the spectrum you fall on? What I mean is, if your case for military action is based on “humanitarian” reasons such as Bosnia, Somalia and Libya then you line up to the left and the players on the left simply support you without question?
I’m not bashing the current decisions that have been made. You can make a similar case for the polarization that ensued during the invasion of Iraq. The right supported President Bush and the left decried the illegal war. The same thing is happening now but it is the right calling foul and the left making the case for action. Perhaps I am becoming jaded but playing partisan politics with military actions is unhealthy for our country. We risk making our foreign policies even less coherent than it already is. Our credibility as a nation suffers because our actions do not align with our stated values. If we believe brutal regimes that violate human rights must fall then why do we support the Saudis? We know why we support the Saudis- they have oil and we have no real energy strategy to make us independent from Saudi oil. That leaves us at odds with our values and our national interest (keep the oil coming). At what point do we begin to reassess our national strategy to ensure our national interest are congruent with our national values? Until that day comes we will always appear as hypocrites to the rest of the world.
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