08-09-2016, 12:52 AM
(08-08-2016, 03:46 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I don't approve of the Russian polity as Putin runs it. But I don't see Russia as a threat to America. Also what Russia says on foreign policy makes more sense to me than what America says. That was NOT the case during the Cold War. I can see how what Putin says applies to the world as I see it. I do not see how what America says is supposed to make sense.
Why was America so eager so see Saddam, Quadhafi and Assad replaced by an Islamic theocracy? I don't know.
Why do we want an aging (and possibly softening) theocracy in Iran replaced by an extremist Islamist group, as most Republicans seem to want. I don't know that either.
I could be cynical and think that we want to spread fundamentalist Islam so as to recreate a far-away enemy so as to justify ignoring domestic issues, but I don't think this is really right.
I am simply at a loss. I think I used to understand our foreign policy during the Cold War. Now it seems bonkers.
American foreign policy under Barack Obama has come to resemble what Ronald Reagan got away with, and Hillary Clinton seems to be adopting much the same. So perhaps it is American foreign policy that is aging. To be sure, Marxism-Leninism is dead everywhere but North Korea (China and Vietnam are practically capitalist, but even Marxism-Leninism as remains in North Korea remains as despised under Barack Obama as the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev era. Then there is Daesh, which seems to be fascist Jihad.
Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi were murderous tyrants, and Bashir Assad is one too. Murderous tyrants in command of second-rate or lesser powers have a tendency to implode over time.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.