Stephen M. Walt, Professor of International Relations at Harvard University, just wrote a great article entitled, Uncle Sucker to the Rescue — Washington is making all its favorite mistakes in (another) Iraq war.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the new U.S. war in Iraq is not going well. The alliance we’ve been trying to assemble to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State (IS) is looking like a lot of other recent U.S.-led coalitions: Uncle Sucker takes the lead and does most of the work while our allies free-ride, engage in mostly symbolic military actions, or actively undermine the common effort. No wonder U.S. President Barack Obama was reluctant to get into this war, and why he keeps warning that it will take longer than the rest of his presidency.
For me, that idea is the best part of the article, but I also agree with Walt that our tendency is to overpromise and underdeliver. The result is (my words now) that we encourage our enemies by looking like idiots.
I’m not going to waste much of my precious time worrying about it, but it is nice to know there are still some intelligent people in the world. Even if they don’t seem to be governing our country.
October 18, 2014
Intelligent people do not become politicians or bureaucrats!
I’ll agree to that!
rummy. LOLOL.
right on the mark. also on it…
from your own paragraph… “we encourage our enemies by looking like idiots.”
the mess is like a hornet’s nest that just swarms bigger and bigger.
It was so clear that IS beheaded the Americans just to sucker us in. Obama rose to the bait.
The people doing the fighting on the ground are kurds and such not the US (nor Aus, its ally in this as in so many other stupid wars).
What does ‘lead’ mean in this context – when the writer knows that the idea is stupid. Pride that the US (seconded as ever by Aus) is the first to do stupid and ill-advised things?
It’s interesting that the Economist was saying the U.S. needed to lead the fight against IS. This is after they admitted they had been mistaken in saying we needed to depose Saddam, that the Iraq war had been a disaster. Stupidity abounds.