The collapse of Bush's foreign policy

[Swamp Rat]

Source: Salon.com

Oct. 24, 2007 | The Bush administration once imagined that its presence in Afghanistan and Iraq would be anchored by friendly neighbors, Turkey to the west and Pakistan to the east. Last week, as the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to deteriorate, the anchors themselves also came loose.

On Sunday, just days after the Turkish Parliament authorized an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish guerrillas ambushed and killed 17 Turkish soldiers inside Turkey. In Karachi, Pakistan, a massive bomb nearly killed U.S.-backed Benazir Bhutto, who was supposed to help stabilize the country. The Bush administration's entire Middle East policy is coming undone -- if it even has a policy left, other than just sticking its fingers in the multiple, and multiplying, holes in the dike.

In Iraq, the Kurds of the north are the United States' most reliable allies. In addition to the 5.5 million Kurds in Iraq, however, persons speaking dialects of Kurdish constitute around 11 million of neighboring Turkey's 70 million citizens. There are another 4 million Kurds next door in Iran, and up to 2 million in Syria. All three of Iraq's northern neighbors fear that Kurdish nationalism, which has been fostered by the U.S. occupation of Iraq, could tear them apart. Opposition to that nationalism could provide a platform for an alliance of Syria, Turkey and Iran -- a nightmare for the Bush administration. Washington had hoped to isolate Syria, an ally of both Iran and of Hezbollah in Lebanon. That's not how it is turning out.

Even after Turkey declined to sign on to the Iraq war, then U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz praised it in April 2003 as a dependable ally and secularizing model for the Muslim world. Since then, however, Washington's relationship with Ankara has turned increasingly sour over U.S. favoritism toward the Kurds.

(snip)

Read more: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/24/kurds/

[DeSwiss]

1. From the robber baron George Herbert Walker....

....to Samuel Prescott Bush, to Prescott Sheldon Bush, To George Herbert Walker Bush, to the present incarnation Dubya, all have marked a trail of war, guns, murder, spies, blackmail, deceit, theft, dictators and sheiks, munitions, illegal investments, mass genocide and treachery. They are a family of villain/politicians who plunder the earth through discord, war and death.

With that kind of legacy, this is exactly the kind of foreign policy one should expect.

- K&R!!!

[radfringe]

2. bush had a foreign policy????!!!!

it is referring to the one the bushies make up as they go along?

[liberal N proud]

3. That was my first thought

How can something collapse that doesn't exist

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. mine too, unless FP comes with an invading army attached.

[BridgeTheGap]

6. Oh no, they had a NEO-CON plan all along

It's just that the plan for hegemony was based on wishful thinking and arrogance.

[madrchsod]

4. that`s why the old man never went to baghdad

but the little prince could not resist showing up his old man and dick finally got his wish to be a dictator.