JOE BIDEN’S FIRST foreign policy decision, surprisingly, was a good one. Breaking the habit of a lifetime, Biden chose to end support for Saudi Arabia’s genocidal intervention in Yemen, a war which the UN said had precipitated the world worst humanitarian crisis. “Diplomacy is back!” he announced.
Nonetheless, the foreign policy blob remain optimistic that Biden will restore America’s grandstanding military role. Their buoyancy seems well-founded too. Biden’s cabinet choices have reflected his longstanding neo-imperial outlook. And last week Biden lost his presidential virginity with a bombing raid in Syria, his first overseas strike after only one month: it took Trump four months to break his duck.
Since 2008, America has been in the historically absurd position of being led by two Presidents who were anti-war insurgents against their party establishment. Neither Trump nor Obama was a remotely plausible pacifist, but it would be wrong to say nothing changed. So spare a thought for the foreign policy nobility, who itched for new wars, and found their instincts oppressed. Sometimes their resistance won out: witness the (disastrous) Libyan affair. But overall, this last period has been, from the standpoint of post-WWII American history, peaceful.
However, the Trump bogeyman has allowed new space for revisionism about recent foreign policy failures. George W Bush has been effectively rehabilitated, specifically by the liberal press. Some are even wondering: was the Iraq War really so bad?
In that context, last week I read a fascinating comment piece in the Scotsman. Without even hinting at the estimated million dead from the US-UK invasion, it talks up the wisdom of Margaret Thatcher in calling for Saddam Hussein’s overthrow. It warns of the dangers of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, similar dictators in our midst.
“There will always be the temptation to treat autocracies like ordinary members of the international community, to sign trade deals and make other agreements for mutual benefit,” it warns. “The danger is that such deals increase the power of dictators who, like Hussein and Putin, are prepared to kill people in the pursuit of even more.”
And finally, it concludes with some Churchillian wisdom: in fulfilment of Godwin’s law, we must stop the Hitlers of today. “Winston Churchill realised the dangers posed by Hitler well before the Second World War,” it warns. “We can only hope the West’s current leaders are blessed with similar foresight.” That we can, that we can.
I have re-read this several times. My first theory proved unfounded: I checked the calendar and it’s not the 1st of April. My second theory was that perhaps this was akin to Chris Morris’s famous spoof in the Guardian, the suicide journalist. But I’m increasingly forced to the conclusion that this was intended as a serious commentary. If anyone would like to let me in on a joke I’ve missed, please do get in touch.
Incidentally, a detail missed in the Scotsman is that, in those same memos, officials warned Thatcher against bellicose anti-Saddam rhetoric. For the specific reason that Britain, under her watch, had spent the last decade selling arms to the Iraqi regime while Hussein indulged his most brutal instincts. Narrow minded critics may well have called this hypocrisy.
Source Direct: Bellicose Journalist
The Trump bogeyman has allowed new space for revisionism about recent foreign policy failures. George W Bush has been effectively rehabilitated, specifically by the liberal press. Some are even wondering: was the Iraq War really so bad?