While I believe our
American government has, since our nation’s inception, generally held purer
motives towards foreign nations than that of some other governments, this is
not to say that the United States has not made its share of crucial mistakes
along the way.
The invasion of Iraq,
under the helm of the younger President George Bush, has to be one of our
biggest foibles of all time. The government of President Saddam Hussein was
overthrown on account of his supposed research and development of weapons of
mass destruction. Only to discover that, “well no, I think we may have made a
small mistake.” In the meantime, we were forced to occupy that country for
years, invest the blood and suffering of thousands of our finest troops, and to
spend untold billions of dollars.
Ultimately, his
successor made the decision to withdraw all our troops from Iraq, in spite of
warnings from his advisors that doing so would leave the door open for any
number of undesirable things; including leaving a void which was easily filled up by thousands of hell-bent, demented thugs intent on anarchy and destruction.
We couldn’t leave well
enough alone, and when we finally did, we did so entirely.
During his tenure as
president (and dictator) of Iraq, Saddam Hussein ruled with an iron hand, and
his henchmen managed to keep dissent in check. Little or no possibility existed
for the establishment of a force such as ISIS, which subsequent to our
withdrawal from Iraq has absorbed large swaths of land; acreage for which our
American troops spilled their lifeblood, and not unlike Vietnam; apparently for
naught. The American fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and husbands
and wives of those who lost their loved ones in Iraq cannot but be heartsick.
Albert Einstein
theorized that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This
theory holds true not only in the discipline of physics, but politics and
warfare, as well.
Now, as the result of
the massive influx of radical Islamists, and the resulting mayhem for which
they are responsible, literally millions of refugees are on the move, and are
straining the energies of the European Union to react to the cost of this
migration; perhaps the greatest of which is the challenge represented by what
will, ultimately, be a metamorphosis in the present culture of the nations of
Europe. A Europe which must, over the course of the next quarter of a century,
take on a decidedly Islamic flavor.
“For every action,
there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
No comments:
Post a Comment