In Fact, The Opposite Was True....

Anyone who has followed our descent into madness in the Middle East has had occasion to speak these words or their variants at one time or another, particularly with regard to the current Administration's predictions on Iraq. It is very easy to start down the rabbit hole that is our reasoning on Iraq and never come out the evidence of misdealing, fraud and misdirection are so overwhelming. But it is important to recall that this is not the only time in the last twenty years that our prognostications about the world proved to be wrong and the consequences deadly. It is not the only time we have been urged to overlook abuses in order to shore ourselves up against a supposedly greater ideological enemy.

Take the example of the now deceased Jeanne Kirkpatrick, U.N Ambassador under President Ronald Reagan. Author of the "Kirkpatrick Doctrine," Secretary Kirkpatrick argued that the U.S. was perfectly justified in supporting authoritarian regimes throughout the world as long as they were not communist. The reasoning? Authoritarian regimes held the possibility of reform, while communist regimes did not. The Kirkpatrick Doctrine became the chief reason behind our support of regimes such as Pinochet (Chile), Somoza (Nicaragua), Duarte (El Salvador), and Noriega (Panama), The Shah (Iran) and Hussein (Iraq). (Odd that Pinochet and Kirkpatrick, so tied in the lives are now tied in their demise.)

Of course history has proved Ms. Kirkpatrick totally wrong. In the last twenty years communist regimes have liberalised, while brutal dictatorships either remain or had to be removed through civil war or foreign invasion. It seems we overestimated the endurance of communism and underestimated the endurance of right wing authoritarians.

Food for though the next time we are confronted with a call to arms in the "defining ideological" battle of one generation or another .