Another Failed State
a special edition
Welcome to a special edition of the Scuttlebutt. A man I respect, Cameron M. Bailey posted a blog this morning on the war in Iran, at
And I felt called to comment on it. What started as a comment, has become enough of an essay that I felt the need to share it.
“I agree with almost everything you said. The one exception is the part about “We can’t allow our political class to saddle the world with another failed State.””
Frankly, the success or failure of a nation is not our problem or our responsibility. The “pottery barn” doctrine of “If you break a nation, you are responsible to make them a functioning democracy like us” is, frankly, horse apples.
It ignores human nature, it ignores reality, and it ignores history.
First, it assumes that the nation we attack is functioning before we attacked it. I would submit that Iran was already broken, and had been since the end of the “Iranian revolution” The nation that was created was not a functioning nation as we would call it, no more than the nation of Yugoslavia was functional under Marshal Tito. It was several nations, held together by fear, an iron fist, and murder. When Tito fell, his “heirs” couldn’t hold it together, and in fact the last was “found dead of an apparent heart attack” (cough GRU assassination cough) while awaiting trial for his crimes against humanity.
If it’s already broke, you ain’t responsible to fix it.
Secondly, human nature is such that, what you do not earn, you do not value. This is why a man can not truly free an actual slave, and a free man can not be enslaved, the most you can do is kill him. I may be captured, I may be forced to do labor while I am figuring out how to escape, or kill as many of my captors as I can on my way to Valhalla, but I am not your slave. OTOH someone who has become a slave, whose internal identity has become “I am a possession, owned by my master.” Can not be made free, simply by striking off his chains.
Thirdly, History has shown that “remaking a country in our image” has NEVER worked, for any nation that tried it. The best nation in the world at that sort of thing, the British Empire, under Queen Vic, couldn’t do it. At most you wind up with a highbred, no longer really the old nation, but certainly not your nation. India, Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, Hong Kong, the United States, under her ancestor, Canada, Bermuda, the list goes on and on, of nations that were either created or attempted to be altered into carbon copies of Great Britain as she was in prime. None of them were they successful at making over in their image. It just can’t be done. Society and social values are plastic, but not liquid.
Finally, the birth of this doctrine, while espoused and accredited to Collin Powell, is actually probably an outgrowth of the Marshall Plan, and the aftermath of WWII. It’s an over reaction to the aftermath of WWI. Yes, the end of World War One, and the Peace Treaty of Versailles created, as surely as lighting a fuse creates an explosion, World War Two.
We rightly recoiled from that, and said “OK, lesson learned, don’t curb stomp a guy then make him pay for the privilege of having been curb stomped forever. Don’t let him live, while telling him he is no longer permitted to defend himself, or to do anything else, except pay to be alive... And then fail to keep a hand on the choke chain.”
The trouble is, we, the US often does, we overreacted in the other direction. We decided that, far from making him pay, we would pay to fix him. That instead of failing to hold the choke chain, we would live in his living room, with a gun out, watching his every move, for... Wait for it... well, we still live in his living room. We still have troops in Germany and in Japan. They’re no longer called Occupation Forces, but, they’re still there!
The problem with the end of World War One is two fold. One the German Government surrendered before the people believed they were actually whipped. Two, the French wanted desperately to PUNISH “The Hun” for having the audacity to have made war with the great and powerful nation of France!
They wanted revenge!
Not just for this war, but for the entire history of Germany, which has been impeding the French DESTINY of ruling all of Europe, since the Thirty Years War!
England wasn’t going to kick over this, they wanted to see all the powers of the continent brought as low as possible, to keep their empire in power. The US wanted to go a different way, but was viewed as just a bunch of stupid colonials who needed to keep their mouths shut, and listen to their betters.
End result of all this, when WWII ended, the US decided that “being the only big kid left standing, we are going to determine how this shit goes this time, and show you Jack Asses of Europe how to do this shit!”
Not unreasonable, and in the situation that the world found itself, it was a good choice... But that need not, and should not be our only way of ending a war that we won, going forward. Sometimes, it’s enough to say, “we are done here, you can’t do to us again, what you did that caused you to get thumped. Figure out your future for yourself, but understand that if you mess with us again, you’re going to find out that this was us being nice.”
YIS
William Lehman
"Sometimes, it’s enough to say, 'we are done here, you can’t do to us again, what you did that caused you to get thumped. Figure out your future for yourself, but understand that if you mess with us again, you’re going to find out that this was us being nice.'"
Yep. Yepyepyep. The "Jacksonian Sensibility" in a nutshell! :-)