Raids (actually acts of terror by the U.S.) inside sovereign states is abysmally shortsighted U.S. foreign policy. This horrific search and destroy non-strategy is supported by a majority of the American electorate, as numerous polls have shown. The American PUBLIC is largely accountable.
In their we-are-the-greatest-nation-on-earth, shop-until-we-drop stupor, despite record high joblessness, homelessness, lack of universal healthcare and a plummeting economy, the majority of American voters apparently thinks that a ‘strong’ America means a threatening America, a ‘strong’ America means an invading, occupying America.
The U.S. PUBLIC which historically has favored short-sighted military adventurism by their government, whether Republican (the Bushes) or Democrat (Kennedy, Johnson), got the government they deserve when they elected George Bush twice. The U.S. public, AND a poll-driven Congress, supported Bush’s invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation state, Iraq.
This is the same U.S. public and their leaders, McCain/Palin, as well as Obama/Biden, that now predictably supports raids against so-called “terrorists”, inside a sovereign nation-state, Pakistan, and kills large numbers of women, men and children, all innocent civilians, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When will they ever learn? Is it possible that a public with various civic freedoms can undermine their own democracy and endanger the prospect of democracy in other sovereign nation-states? The frightening spectacle of U.S. democracy in the last eight years offers sobering lessons for other nation-states and their publics as they chart a democratic course.
The US has absolutely NO business being inside Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.
The mere fact of U.S. military presence within these sovereign states, nation states in which the U.S. has dangerously meddled for decades, triggers adverse and sometimes violent reaction. The US has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no respect for the sovereignty of nation-states. The chest-thumping of American triumphalism and exceptionalism is continuing to challenge an emerging and fragile multipolarity in much of the rest of the world.
What the US govt. can continue to do is use its own intelligence and international intelligence resources to strengthen its OWN borders against incursions. This it has done admirably since 9/11. This is the way to go. This is the way to keep going.
Raids inside sovereign states produce more and more “terrorists”, as the evidence already shows.
