An alternate title could be…..”Time To Re-Think Dictators?”
A few years ago I wrote a piece on the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis entitled “Institutionalization Of Conflict”……now that the battle for the hearts and minds in the Middle East by ISIS I feel I need to expand on my assumptions…….
The US has a long history of siding with dictators until it is inconvenient to do so……think Iran, Guatemala, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Syria and others that have escaped my memory……once we turn our backs on them then the whole region comes tumbling down…..kinda like the walls of Jericho, well actually there is NO historical evidence that ever happened. Once we withdraw our support then violence and destruction is the rewards for our inaction…….civilians always pay the price for our geopolitical maneuvering….
Our constant interventions have cost the country dearly……and that interventionism has cost the people of the countries we deal with even more in deaths and destruction.
Our ‘war’ on dictators has accomplished little over the years…..Saddam was our friend, Mubarak was our friend and threw them under the bus at the first signs of conflict……then there is Qaddafi never was a friend but at the first signs of conflict the CIA trots out their agent in Gen. Haftar to take over the control of rebel factions in the early days of the Libyan revolt…..now there is Syria and Assad, a scenario still in motion.
My point is that the dictators that were our friends and then they weren’t……… the countries are in constant turmoil…..the loss of life and property is enormous.
Staring in 2001 with the attacks on the Twin Towers…..the US made it official….they were going to institutionalize conflict. There is a case to be made that the attacks in Afghanistan were legit and warranted….but in 2003 the US decided that Saddam had to go and every possible angle was used to justify the invasion….chem weapons, AQM, on and on……there has never been any proof of any of the allegations to justify the attack.
Of course some could use the Cold War as the beginning of the institutionalization of conflict…..the US had proxies back in those days that would glad do the fighting for the US……those days are gone. The Military-Industrial Complex (M-IC) had to find away to keep their fingers in foreign policy and the rise of AQ was such an opportunity.
Under the guise of democracy these influential companies made more war possible and to the point that it will be continuous. The best problem with fighting terrorism is that the planners look to the past for answers in the future…..the same can be said about the Israel-Palestine conflict……there will never be a solution as long as the past is used as a model. And so it is with the fight against terror. The reason there a few good answers in this fight is that the people making the plans have NO idea what the enemy is like or capable of doing.
Back to the premise…….
The area known as The :Levant has been a hot bed of violence, rebellion and chaos for centuries…..from many peoples and various empires to the Abbasids to the Ottomans to Mandates of early 20th century to the US and its 2 invasions…….all that history that is too extensive to chronicle here ……… (suggestion…if intersected the Google machine will help)………
The point being that the only times of relative calm and quiet is when a strong man was in charge…..i e a dictator.
We have seen what happens when the US aides in the demise of a dictator in the Middle East and/or North Africa…….
As evidence that a dictatorship isn’t the worst scenario, Ken Roth cites the case of Syria, where autocracy’s ostensible calm has given way to mass slaughter. Yet Roth’s answer is for the west to get tough on Assad, perhaps with military action, which would only extend and deepen the war. I draw a different conclusion while applying the same there-are-things-worse-than-dictatorship lesson. The answer to the war in Syria is peace in Syria, a negotiated settlement under which Assad or a successor remains in power. This appears to be the approach favored by a strong majority of Syrians, who back Assad according to all available information. Data compiled last year by Western activists (and given to NATO) found that 70% of Syrians support Assad over foreign-backed rebels. That is, they’ve chosen dictatorship over war.
I’m not suggesting that dictatorships are acceptable. People need governments much better than corrupt, torturing (and great-power appeasing) autocracies. But they won’t get them through western imperialism masquerading as revolution, or through “solidarity” that comes in the form of hellfire missiles. “We” must help those under attack by the dictator, says the humanitarian hawk, but the “we” in question is the US government, and the US government — bent on division, destruction, and domination — is never the friend of democratic movements. In both Libya and Syria, we can see all too vividly what results when relatively weak uprisings get assistance from (are hijacked by) imperial forces, and, yes, it’s worse than what existed before. People living in repression need indigenous movements powerful enough both to dislodge regimes and to reject the insidious help of western countries. There are no shortcuts. (thanx to Rogue Nation and David Mizner)……
We may not want to admit it…..because of our love for democracy and the belief it can cure all ills……but in a society that has NO experience in the functions of a democratic society a dictator may be the only thing that stands between violence and relative calm…..
