Thursday
Nov202008
Another Day, Another Debate, A Better Occupation?
Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 16:57
Just emerged from a debate at the Copenhagen Business School with Dr Timothy Lynch, co-author of After Bush on "US Foreign Policy is Good for the World".
The two hours before more than 100 staff and students didn't change much in my position, and I think it's safe to say that it didn't shift Dr Lynch. It did highlight, however, both the efforts of the Bush Administration over the last eight years and the questions over what changes an Obama Administration might make.
I hope that it might have shaken up assumptions amongst at least a few in attendance, especially the thought that American power always has to be at the centre of our considerations about intervention and engagement. I say with particular respect to Dr Lynch's following comment about the US invasion of Iraq.
Dr Lynch admitted that the American intervention had not gone well. The problem, however, was not that it did too much but that it did too little. The US should have gone in with more troops and more force, planning for a prolonged occupation and turning Iraq for some time into a "51st state". Thus the lesson --- which I presume applies to Iran and Syria --- is not that the American Government should reflect on the Bushian regime change experiment but that it should try again in a bigger and better fashion.
I'm happy to be corrected if this paraphrase is wrong. As it stands, I find it a disturbingly eloquent critique of how future US foreign policy could be "good for the world".
The two hours before more than 100 staff and students didn't change much in my position, and I think it's safe to say that it didn't shift Dr Lynch. It did highlight, however, both the efforts of the Bush Administration over the last eight years and the questions over what changes an Obama Administration might make.
I hope that it might have shaken up assumptions amongst at least a few in attendance, especially the thought that American power always has to be at the centre of our considerations about intervention and engagement. I say with particular respect to Dr Lynch's following comment about the US invasion of Iraq.
Dr Lynch admitted that the American intervention had not gone well. The problem, however, was not that it did too much but that it did too little. The US should have gone in with more troops and more force, planning for a prolonged occupation and turning Iraq for some time into a "51st state". Thus the lesson --- which I presume applies to Iran and Syria --- is not that the American Government should reflect on the Bushian regime change experiment but that it should try again in a bigger and better fashion.
I'm happy to be corrected if this paraphrase is wrong. As it stands, I find it a disturbingly eloquent critique of how future US foreign policy could be "good for the world".