It All Went Down the Memory Hole...

Salon has a very nice short piece about our Middle East foreign-policy cycle. Consistently, the puppet governments we install become the regimes we want to change.

Personally (and admittedly, I'm a complete layman) I've always thought we should help to rebuild the infrastructure of these countries, like we did with the Japanese after World War II. After all, wouldn't the point of forcing a "regime change" anywhere be to have a more stable government afterwards? If we helped Hamid Karzai rebuild his country's roads, schools, businesses, farms, and all the other things that have been bombed to rubble by various groups over the past twenty years, perhaps his fledgeling government might have more of a change fending off the creepy Northern Alliance warlords.

It would be nice for the United States to be seen doing something actually good for the native people of a Middle Eastern country. Instead, however, we create a huge power vaccuum that leaves the door wide open for a group of violent, mass-murdering warlords with little scruples that can easily be seen turning agains the United States.

Let's be clear. The Taliban was a bad government that did bad things to its people (but so is, say China, and don't even get me started on that), and I rejoice at their removal. I just worry that we've caused it to happen in a very sloppy way that will have unintended and tragic side effects that will come back to haunt us.