Scott at Hoosier Pundit posted a cartoon about Iran taking provocative action with respect to Iraq. The cartoon reminded me of a Daily Show bit I saw a couple of days ago reminding us that we built up Iraq because we were opposed to Iran; we assisted bin Laden because he was fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan; we are providing military aid to the Saudis (“20% of the 9/11 suicide attackers were not Saudis”) because they are upset at the increase in Iranian/Shiite power resulting from our invasion of Iraq; and, just for good measure, we’re providing Israel with additional military aid because they’re nervous about all that Muslim military power.
There are plenty of other factors contributing to making that region of the world a pit, but I don’t think we’ve been doing ourselves any favors.
U.S. foreign policy with regard to the Middle East has been dysfunctional for pretty much the whole time that we have had one (starting around the end of World War II; assuming you exclude that whole brief North African adventure in the early 1800s, which actually didn’t turn out all that badly).
At some point, it will be refreshing to elect people to the executive office and the congress who heed the wisdom of the Founders, who advised against entangling alliances. This whole episodic timeline should serve as a prime example.
Even the wise Founders had trouble heeding their own advice. Adams, Jefferson and Franklin certainly spent a great deal of time in France working on an entangling allaince.