H.I.F.
Readers have never seen many TDE posts about foreign policy, probably because my stance on foreign policy is pretty isolationist and doesn't rise much above the level of, "Let's leave people alone and mind our own business." There isn't a whole lot to add after that, unless one wants to get frustrated beyond his belief with his country, so I don't harp on it much.
If you want to read a good piece (borderline screed) about our foreign policy in Iraq, however, I highly recommend this piece from Dave Stockman that appeared in the weekend of edition of Lew Rockwell: Washington Opened The Gates Of Hell In Iraq: Now Come The Furies.
Among other things, Stockman points out a fact about today's world that recurs over and over again: the borders of modern countries are phony and arbitrary, concocted by western powers to serve their own interests. Iraq is no exception:
Iraq was never a nation. At least the Ottoman's knew that you don't put Shiite's, Sunni and Kurds in the same parliament or police force, and most certainly not the same army!
By contrast, it was the British and French foreign offices which in 1916 drew the Sykes-Picot boundaries and created the historical illusion that a nation called Iraq actually existed. And it was their successors in the west which installed a series of corrupt and brutal rulers, including kings, generals and Saddam Hussein himself, who maintained an always tentative and frequently blood-soaked semblance of governance within these artificial borders.
Then came the neo-cons who for no discernible reason of national security could not leave well enough alone. By god, they were going to have regime change, a stable supplier of 6 million barrels of oil per day, and a stalwart ally armed to the teeth on the very doorstep of the Axis-Of-Evil; that is, the Iranian Shiite theocracy which happened to be religious kin to the single largest block of the Iraqi population.
