Perhaps the most enduring feature of US foreign policy is a self-righteous sense of divine mission blinds the Orientations of its self-referencing practitioners to the real world consequences of their Decisions, and Actions. Their missionary zeal makes their outlooks impervious to the corrective effects negative feedback from the real world. Put simply, with a few exceptions, our foreign policy elites have evolved a long-term blockage in their Orientation that prevents them from LEARNING from their mistakes, regardless of whether those mistakes evolved out of conflating the impulses of nationalism with the pretensions of a global communist “threat” (e.g., Mossadegh in Iran,Vietnam, etc.) or with a world wide “threat” of Islamic militancy (e.g., using the war on terror to invade Iraq or wage war in Afghanistan and Pakistan by confusing the nationalism of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban with the global pretensions of a criminal gang of Sunni Salafi fanatics ), or by conflating the national interests of Israel with the national interests of the United States.
The U.S. alliance of convenience with Sunni Salafis eastern Libya to effect a regime change is only the latest case study of the blowback (re: in Mali and now the assassination of the US ambassador) that results when arrogance of ignorance* shapes a policy to meddle in the affairs of others.
So you might ask: Has our self-styled elite learned anything from its Libyan misadventure? One need only to look at Syrian civil war to answer to this question.
Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: USG Arrogant Ignorance on Syria”
