(July 25, 2015 at 5:48 am)Crossless1 Wrote: Consider the following: if we hadn't orchestrated the overthrow of their regime in the '50s to install the Shah, if we hadn't tacitly encouraged (and actively armed) Hussein to attack them in the '80s before cynically playing both sides against each other in that ghastly war, if we hadn't stabbed the Iraqi Shia in the backs at the conclusion of the Gulf War, and if we had eschewed the endlessly stupid "Axis of evil" rhetoric of the Bush years, we might have been poised -- post-911 -- with a more friendly and pliant Iranian regime bordering Afghanistan and Iraq. Who knows? Things in both countries might have turned out quite differently.
The US has traditionally been short-sighted in terms of foreign policy because it is one of the few areas in which the President has little Congressional oversight (excepting treaties and ambassadorships, of course); so that Presidents can't steer their own course quite freely. That results in major changes in foreign policy happening every four or eight years.
Institutionalized ADD.
