More holiday reading by Iranian author Amir Taheri, a member of Benador Associates, from New York Post December 26, 2005 (free membership required) or see the full article on Eleana Benador's Web site...
IF the polls are any indication, President Bush's recent rhetorical offensive managed to stem the tide of opposition against his Iraq policy. But the debate on the future course of U.S. foreign policy is likely to intensify until November's midterm elections.
This debate is focused on a few key questions: Is the Bush Doctrine dead? Has the United States, chastised in Afghanistan and Iraq, decided to move beyond "neoconservatism"? If so, what new doctrine should guide U.S. foreign policy?
... much of this debate revolves around two assumptions rarely tested against reality: first, that America has failed in Afghanistan and Iraq; second, that America can change foreign policy as we lesser mortals change our shirts.
Both assumptions are false.
To show that America has failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, one needs a yardstick against which success or failure is measured: ...America intervened in both Afghanistan and Iraq with the aim of changing the regimes in Kabul and Baghdad, a goal it achieved with remarkable speed. The machinery of terror and war built and maintained by the Taliban and the Ba'ath has been shattered. And whatever happens in Afghanistan and Iraq, one thing is certain: Mullah Muhammad Omar and Saddam Hussein won't return to power.
... Critics might say that the aim of the intervention was to transform Afghanistan and Iraq into modern democracies. True — yet any judgment on the success of such projects must take into account the element of time....Both may suffer years, if not decades, of violence and terror.
The real question is whether Afghanistan and Iraq would have had any chance of even a democratic dream under Mullah Omar and Saddam.
... but one thing is certain: The region's democratic forces now have their first opportunity in generations to make a real impact. Their last chance to set the agenda was early last century, when constitutional movements triumphed in Iran and the Ottoman Empire. Today, these democratic forces may fail because of their mistakes, or be defeated by Islamist and secular despotic opponents. But they also have a chance to win. And that — as seen from the United States, which should be supportive of democratic forces everywhere — is certainly a success.
On to the second assumption — that America can change its foreign policy at will and instantly.
There are those who preach a return to the bankrupt hodgepodge that Henry Kissinger sold to the Americans under the label of realpolitik for almost a decade. ....By both choice and necessity, the United States during the Cold War on occasion acted against character by supporting despots. But the context then was a global power struggle against the Soviet bloc; that justification is no more. Bush seems to have understood this. And that... is the most realistic matrix for American foreign policy in the 21st century.
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