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Monday, July 13, 2015

Responding to Failure: Reorganizing U.S. policies in the Middle East


Speech

Responding to Failure: Reorganizing U.S. Policies in the Middle East

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
    I want to speak with you today about the Middle East. This is the region where Africa, Asia, and Europe come together. It is also the part of the world where we have been most compellingly reminded that some struggles cannot be won, but there are no struggles that cannot be lost.
    It is often said that human beings learn little useful from success but can learn a great deal from defeat. If so, the Middle East now offers a remarkably rich menu of foreign-policy failures for Americans to study.
    • Our four-decade-long diplomatic effort to bring peace to the Holy Land sputtered to an ignominious conclusion a year ago.
    • Our unconditional political, economic, and military backing of Israel has earned us the enmity of Israel’s enemies even as it has enabled egregiously contemptuous expressions of ingratitude and disrespect for us from Israel itself.
    • Our attempts to contain the Iranian revolution have instead empowered it.
    • Our military campaigns to pacify the region have destabilized it, dismantled its states, and ignited ferocious wars of religion among its peoples.
    • Our efforts to democratize Arab societies have helped to produce anarchy, terrorism, dictatorship, or an indecisive juxtaposition of all three.
    • In Iraq, Libya, and Syria we have shown that war does not decide who’s right so much as determine who’s left.
    • Our campaign against terrorism with global reach has multiplied our enemies and continuously expanded their areas of operation.
    • Our opposition to nuclear proliferation did not prevent Israel from clandestinely developing nuclear weapons and related delivery systems and may not preclude Iran and others from following suit.
    • At the global level, our policies in the Middle East have damaged our prestige, weakened our alliances, and gained us a reputation for militaristic fecklessness in the conduct of our foreign affairs. They have also distracted us from challenges elsewhere of equal or greater importance to our national interests.

    That’s quite a record.  More at:


    http://mepc.org/articles-commentary/speeches/responding-failure-reorganizing-us-policies-middle-east

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