Brilliant move or historical bungle?
Dear editor:
We are an amazing, wonderful country. But are we a country that learns from history (our own) or just a foolish one that keeps repeating the same mistake over and over again? For instance, take the recent announcement that we are going to give American arms to Sunnis to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq.
America has a long history of helping our questionable “current friends” who in actuality are no more than the “enemy of our enemies.” We did it in the 1980s, arming Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, only to wind up having to oust him out of power in President Bush’s Iraq War. We did it with Afghanistan in its fight against the invading Soviet Union, only to have the weapons wind up in the hands of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, who we are currently fighting. We covertly did it with Iran so we could take the money from the sale of those arms and use it to try and unseat a South American dictator. Now we don’t even have speaking relations with the government of Iran. We sold arms to Syria and trained so many of their officers, only to wind up with another country not on speaking terms with us. Or is it actually we don’t speak to them?
When will we learn? Will the militant Sunni groups use these weapons against al-Qaeda as promised? Or will these arms wind up in the hands of extremist groups who will use them in their civil war against the Shiites? Or worse still, will we see them winding up being used against U.S. troops, as history has shown us is the dangerous cost of our largesse? Is it a brilliant move or another historical bungle that we once again live to regret? Only time will tell…..but at what human cost?
We are an amazing, wonderful country. But are we a country that learns from history (our own) or just a foolish one that keeps repeating the same mistake over and over again? For instance, take the recent announcement that we are going to give American arms to Sunnis to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq.
America has a long history of helping our questionable “current friends” who in actuality are no more than the “enemy of our enemies.” We did it in the 1980s, arming Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, only to wind up having to oust him out of power in President Bush’s Iraq War. We did it with Afghanistan in its fight against the invading Soviet Union, only to have the weapons wind up in the hands of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, who we are currently fighting. We covertly did it with Iran so we could take the money from the sale of those arms and use it to try and unseat a South American dictator. Now we don’t even have speaking relations with the government of Iran. We sold arms to Syria and trained so many of their officers, only to wind up with another country not on speaking terms with us. Or is it actually we don’t speak to them?
When will we learn? Will the militant Sunni groups use these weapons against al-Qaeda as promised? Or will these arms wind up in the hands of extremist groups who will use them in their civil war against the Shiites? Or worse still, will we see them winding up being used against U.S. troops, as history has shown us is the dangerous cost of our largesse? Is it a brilliant move or another historical bungle that we once again live to regret? Only time will tell…..but at what human cost?
posted by Sam Schoolsky | 2:38 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home