Or – and here I want to end on a darker peice of speculation – some within the US machinery of power may have a more realpolitik option in mind. This is speculation but I think worth keeping in mind. I think certain parts of the US military and intelligence have learned a lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan; that imposing stability is not as easy as they once imagined it might be. Instead Iraq and Afghanistan showed them how a country riven with factions, some of them violent and fundamentalist, can, given enough arms and encouragement, keep a country in a state of barely contained anarchy and chaos for years on end. Just enough order to extract wealth but not enough to ever unify. Add to this the lesson which I call the Algeria lesson. Algeria was perhaps the first, certainly one of the first, Muslim countries in which radical Islam took up arms. There was a period when radical factions begot even more radical factions each more certain of its right to kill than the one it split from I am simplifying I know, but eventually it ended with factions content to murder whole villages. In the end people became tired of the terror and despite some of the armed groups saying it would shoot anyone who voted (their slogan was the catchy “One Vote, One Bullet”) people did vote. The lesson I have in mind is two fold: you can create a place where you can suck in all the radicals to slaughter each other and should you need radicals for any reason – such as justifying an endless War on Terror with its necessary curbs on freedom – then it is a good place to incubate them where you can see them if not even inflitrate them. I wonder if some see this as a possible and acceptable strategy. If you have a strategy for anarchy then you don’t mind starting a civil war. It doesn’t matter too much to you if it all ends in carnage. It could be helpful carnage, a sort of ‘Win/Win Slaughter!’ In case you think this is just too outrageous and I am slipping in to conspiracy territory – this was written by Daniel Pipes for The Washington Times under the headline, ‘The Case For Assad’, …Evil forces pose less danger to us when they make war on each other. This (1) keeps them focused locally and it (2) prevents either one from emerging victorious (and thereby posing a yet-greater danger). Western powers should guide enemies to stalemate by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their conflict. The Washington Times is mainstream. Daniel Pipes is a well known neo-con whom President Bush (the W version) nominated to be on the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist telling you that.
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 17:49:39 +0000
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