All roads lead to Washington
: Mark Heller of Tel Aviv University writes in the Jerusalem Post that the only thing that separates this current attempt at regime change from many others — the ones that trashed Idi Amin, Pol Pot, and their ilk — is that protestors don’t like Americans doing it because Americans can now act alone. But the result of their protests — O, irony — will be the death of the U.N. and the strengthening of American power. All of this is turning Washington into Rome.
At the risk of rhetorical overkill, it seems that what started out as a relatively simple mission to get rid of a vicious thug in Baghdad has turned into a transforming event in international relations….
In the past few decades, a whole host of slimeballs have been thrown out of office as a result of outside military intervention without UN sanction. The list of ex-tough guys includes Idi Amin, chief clown of Uganda, deposed by the Tanzanian army; Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge band of merry men, sent packing after a Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and Mobutu Sese Seko, chief kleptocrat of Zaire, ousted by a coalition of the African willing.
None of these interventions provoked massive protest marches in London, Paris, Rome or Surabaya, and one is tempted to conclude that the non-reaction is explained by the belief that it’s ok to kick out the bad guys, as long as the kicker-outers are not Americans….
This resistance is not being waged for the sake of Iraqi sovereignty, that is, for Saddam’s right to continue ruling Iraq as he has done for the past 24 years at least, that is not the intention of the resisters, though it may well be the practical outcome of what they do….
Instead, it is waged to constrain and hobble the exercise of American power…
