The enemy of your enemy isn't your friend: He's just the next enemy in a long line of enemies who could have been your friend if it weren't for the fact that you keep seeing enemies everywhere.

From El Reg:

The enemy of my enemy #

Posted Saturday 23rd October 2010 12:47 GMT

OK the military might have a valid point about putting lives at risk, but you have to wonder how organisations like the Taliban have managed to garner enough support to warrant going after them with guns.

Well the reason why is - we gave them guns and ammo during the Cold War in an attempt to dislodge the Russians from Afghanistan and it all kinda snowballed from there. We weren't that bothered that this might be a problem at the time because they were keeping the Russians away from us. Unfortunately this attitude seems to have gotten us into a spot of bother.

So the question is, seeing as this "arm them and don't be too concerned with the consequences" would seem to be a repeated pattern of behaviour (at least as US foreign policy is concerned), who the hell are we arming right now? Because it will be them - whoever they are - that we have to deal with next. In fact if we are currently arming someone else in the next phase of whatever ideological battle we're supposed to be having maybe we should be learning from recent history and not repeating the same behaviour over and over again?

The enemy of your enemy isn't your friend: He's just the next enemy in a long line of enemies who could have been your friend if it weren't for the fact that you keep seeing enemies everywhere.

I hope AC doesn't mind my reposting this.  The final sentence says it all so well.

via ScribeFire

Posted via email from kwhitefoot's posterous