Which Is It?

By big problem with "liberals" when it comes to foreign policy is that they tend to base their decisions on party platform and personalities as opposed to policies themselves. For instance, liberals proudly criticise US policies during the Cold War when we tacitly (or actively) supported awful dictators in strategic places, such as Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

But now things are turned around. In Iraq, we've gone against our Cold War policies of supporting dictators for regional stability and opted to remove an awful dictator who was out of compliance with UN resolutions. Instead, we are choosing to support a more democratic, more liberal, albeit weak, government in Iraq. Except liberals are the most forceful detractors of the Iraq policy as well.

So which one is it?

I know the devil is in the details...and so one could conceivably support the "idea" behind Iraq or the "idea" behind "realist" foreign policy without agreeing with how it has been implemented. Of course, that is sort of like supporting the "idea" of communism against the reality of capitalism and to me amounts to an intellectual dodge.

And to be fair, conservatives aren't exactly off the hook on this issue either. Most of them used to support a more isolationist, realist approach to foreign policy and even went so far as to criticise Clinton for going after Bin Laden in Sudan. But all of a sudden a Republican gets in office and the Republicans turn into Woodrow Wilson democracy advocates and become the worldwide do-gooders they used to mock the liberals for...

I guess when it comes down to it, I sort of shamlessly support most of the decisions that were made both during the Cold War and post 9/11. In hindsight, Vietnam seems like a pretty gigantic mistake...as does the decision to no longer support the South Vietnamese after we pulled out. Of course I wasn't born yet, so I feel somewhat stupid talking about it. In my lifetime, it seems like we should have gone after Bin Laden more vigorously in the 1990s and probably should have dealt with Saddam after gulf war 1. But yeah, hindsight is 20/20 and I remember neither of these positions were at all popular at the time. I venture to say, most people would've considered both positions tremendously stupid. I can imagine campus protests if we invaded Afghanistan prior to 9/11. The Vietnam analogy would've been made. Weird how the world is...