A true geo-political catastrophe for Western values and Western interests is unfolding right now in the Middle East, and it is extremely difficult to avoid the feeling that Washington, D.C.’s power elite no longer really cares a great deal about the entire region. This country has devoted truly mammoth amounts of blood, treasure and diplomatic effort to the cause of building a politically moderate and economically prosperous Middle Eastern realm since 1945. One might say that we’ve “moved heaven and earth” for nearly 70 years in our desire to conjure forth elementary decency in the area, to very little avail.
Iraq’s Anbar Province is today an al-Qaida playground, while next door, in Syria, a myriad of Sunni and Shiite factions duke it out savagely. Lebanon seems about to descend into a pit dug by events unfolding next door in Syria. Libya has more or less reverted to simple tribalism, even as its oil facilities have gone into a tailspin. Egypt is once more a military dictatorship that struggles to keep street mobs in check. Yemen is tearing itself to shreds with multiple insurgencies and regional uprisings. Capable superpower though it is, the United States of America by itself simply cannot cure the desperate sicknesses that beset these societies. Our policymakers are fed up with them.
We’re retreating from the Middle East, and no Beltway denials to the contrary can conceal the fact. Just as was the case during the mid-1970s when we finally walked away from the corrupt chaos of Southeast Asia, our officials will try pulling the wool over our eyes with all sorts of soothing rhetoric and speeches of reassurance. Few people who possess even a scintilla of analytical sense ought not to be fooled by these maneuverings.
America is washing its great power hands of a mess that simply will not end.
Frank Goheen