“Friends” Today, Enemies Tomorrow — That’s Foreign Policy

19 Dec, 2003 by John Hawkins

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This picture has been making the rounds on the left again,

It usually goes along with an addle brained rant that goes a little something like this,

“See, there’s Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam back in 1983! The United States used to be friendly with Saddam. He was our ally! We were friends with him once and now we’ve thrown him from power! What do you think about that huh? Huh, huh?”

You know what I say to that? So what? Much of foreign policy is simply making the best of bad choices and trying to select between the lesser of two evils. In our case, we had Saddam on one hand and the fanatical fundamentalists who had once taken our people hostages on the other. So we dealt with both sides at one time or another.

You think that’s unacceptable, you think it’s wrong? Well, do you think FDR enjoyed dealing with Stalin, one of the most evil monsters who ever walked the planet? Of course not, but that’s what he had to do to stop Hitler, so he did it.

Did Reagan want to help a bunch of militant Islamists & cavemen in Afghanistan? No, but that’s what he had to do to stop the Soviet Union, so he did it.

That’s what foreign policy is like. Every President has to deal with the scum of the earth as a matter of course and you know what — YOU deal with them too. Don’t believe it? When was the last time you rode in a gas powered vehicle? For most of us, the answer to that is “every day”. Well some of that gas came from nations like Iraq & Saudi Arabia, places where brutal regimes have ruled their people with an iron fist? Want another example? Look around your house and start checking everything you own for a “made in China” label. China may be run by Commie thugs, but they also manufacture a lot of products that get shipped into our stores.

That’s what the real world of foreign policy is like. Sometimes, heck, a lot of the time, we have no choice but to deal with dirty, rotten, SOBs. But because they are dirty, rotten, SOBs, they may end up on turning on us down the road. That’s just the rules that we have to grit our teeth and play by sometimes, whether we like it, or not. If you can’t accept that we sometimes have to deal with regimes we detest, then you’re too naive to be commenting on foreign policy…