And right on cue....Dem/Critical 'Progressive' pundit makes it clear what the left is about in foreign relations..THE GRAND DELUSION

Here is the default bottom line debugged, defactored, cleaned up position of such people ... if we do nothing outside our borders, nothing bad will happen, no one will hate us, and if something DOES happen, it won't be our fault.

Camille Paglia column:

Question: Are you not even a bit concerned that another "killing fields" situation will occur, as will surely come to pass this time in much larger numbers?

To end the Vietnam War fiasco, the U.S. did exactly what you are calling for in this Iraq fiasco: Get out now! We did get out in Nam and immediately, and nearly 3 million innocent souls were slaughtered by Pol Pot.

Paglia Responds:

Withdrawing U.S. troops and equipment from Iraq will be a complicated and dangerous process that will take many months. But it should be launched on a massive scale immediately. Iraq's fate needs to be decided by Iraqis, whose quarreling ancient tribes and factions have little motivation to compromise as long as the U.S. military is planted there to keep the peace. A democratic Iraq would be desirable in the best of all possible worlds, but it may be a desert mirage -- not worth the loss of thousands of American lives or the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars desperately needed for U.S. social services and infrastructure.

If there are parallels between Cambodia in the 1970s and Iraq now (as President Bush asserted to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August), they simply prove the folly of current U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Meaning, abandon completely democratic reform and instilling democracies? Is that the position of the inheritors of the philosophies of those who supported Stalin in order to promote social justice? Instilling democracies apparently is not an interest of the critical progressives. No doubt they would have some oatmeal and cream of wheat explanation which occupies some oxygen and results in CO2 in order to hide from themselves what they really mean is that as long as some kind of WHAT THEY PERCEIVE OF AS A RIGHT wants freedom for all, they must oppose it. Or worse, is it that anything we do must be bad because it will be following amoral (at best, in their minds, and maybe in reality) corporate profits. The Apaches follow McDonald's and Exxon instead of the marines and United Fruit, and Jesse Macbeth is really Smedley Butler redux. We are bad by nature because capitalism is evil, and when THAT (social, political realignment ) is changed, we can do things outside the border in the name of social justice and be 'good'.Is that it (this is Bill O'Reilly's belief, btw)?

But the destabilization of Southeast Asia was in fact the result of Western colonialism and intervention in the region by France and then (with all the best intentions) by the U.S., leading to the First and Second Indochina Wars. .....Iraq is ringed with nations more economically and politically developed than Cambodia ever was in the 1970s. Geography and climate also play a role: Insurgents in the Middle East don't have thick canopies of tropical forests to hide under. Yes, there will be civil disturbances and loss of life when American forces exit Iraq -- whether now or 10 years from now. But order will gradually be reasserted from within, even if Iraq itself (originally a British fabrication) fragments.

Can we not argue that the entire middle east region has been destabilized by the Picot-Sykes 'imperialist' colonial intervention of the post WW1 era, which resulted in invented nations, with borders drawn by the very same people who helped to carve out Indochina's usage? And then, as there comes the USA? Or is she really arguing that it's Israel (I'm so BORED with that line).

More if it can be argued, as it is, that we have in removing Saddam from 'control', unleashed civil war, MS Paglia's assumption AS WAS BUSH'S, is that rational actors will prevail in Iraq thus preventing the slide towards the civil war, excuse me, the RELIGIOUS WAR they themselves have been trumpeting.

If rational actors are to prevail, they can do so now. If Iraq is to be divided by tribe and religion it can occur before the awaiting result.

The idea that millions of Iraqis would be slaughtered in a new Holocaust is a paranoid fantasy promulgated by the Bush administration to manipulate popular emotion in the U.S., where knowledge of world geography and history has shrunk decade by decade, thanks to our mediocre public education and our shallow, timid and increasingly frivolous mainstream media.

Well, it is the progressives who have educated the voters as the Dept of Education whose size during the Eisenhower administration was a few thousand,... and now?

I'm sure that KSA, Syria and Kuwait, and the UAE would rush right in saving lives left and right. They are so advanced past tribal considerations. How incredibly ignorant YOU are of the people to people realities of the middle east. All you have to do to get a chill thrill of this future is listen in on a conversation of Omanis about Baluchis and their tribes (and others), and their pushbacks to get a feel for this (something I've been in on several times). But I'm sure you have never even had such a thought intrude. Hey, maybe the Zayed Centre will find a new function as a help giving NGO from this "more economically and politically developed " region.

By the way, speaking of timid and frivolous media, why haven't you covered the gross UBER-DREYFUSS level Gulf of Tonkin blood libel by the govt of France against another state which resulted in tens of thousands of casualties in the same middle east?

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE

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