Re: Fires of revolution sweep the Aran World
OK...I can agree it can be subjective, but looking more into the Somalia example I think it must be pointed out that one of the biggest reasons for mission creep was the initial failure of the humanitarian mission.
The way I see it is that we made a moral decision to intervene in a humanitarian context.. that humanitarian effort was widely failing, so we were forced to change the mission. After the change we can argue over whether it was ultimately successful..we did have some time of relative calm, but we were never really able to solve the warlord problem from the get go.
Therefore, we intervened for a moral reason, that moral reason turned out to be a failure, so we had to change the mission in an effort to preserve the original mission..which ultimately led to total failure.
Why not? I don't think the founders would really have a problem with that.. after all they borrowed tons of money to suit their interests, why would their opinion change when the roles reverse?
If the only thing diplomacy has to offer is diplomacy, I don't see how that will really accomplish anything...
Well.. there is no example of the US acting "completely alone" because we would act in the form of bilateral agreements or setting up international agreements to act, which inherently involve other nations... but don't automatically involve the UN.
Obviously I agree with you on the importance of oil and the reasons that you outline. I would say our other interests include:
1) The War on Terrorism: In order to defeat extremists in many of these nations we are going to have to rely on (and maintain decent relations with) the governments of many nations in the Middle East.
2) Containing Iran: Obviously the nuclear issue is important, but also keeping the spread of a radical Shia agenda into the rest of the Middle East must also play a role.
3) Preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction: Links up with the Iranian issue, but if nuclear capability spreads throughout an already volatile region, it will upset the oil market, and potentially create an arms race in the region.
Those would be the main issues (obviously Iraq could be included, but I think that one might be self-evident) I would want to currently focus on the in Middle East if I were in charge. (Not to say there are not some others, but those would be the main few)
