{"id":9712,"date":"2015-07-04T08:38:26","date_gmt":"2015-07-04T13:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9712"},"modified":"2015-07-04T08:38:26","modified_gmt":"2015-07-04T13:38:26","slug":"not-learning-from-mideast-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9712","title":{"rendered":"Not Learning from Mideast Mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/07\/03\/not-learning-from-mideast-mistakes\/\" target=\"_blank\">Not Learning from Mideast Mistakes<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"entry-meta\"><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong>\u00a0The neocon strategy of \u201cregime change\u201d\u00a0has proved financially costly and strategically disastrous \u2013 setting almost the entire Middle East on fire \u2013 but almost no lessons have been learned, no accountability assessed, and no relevant questions asked, writes ex-U.S. diplomat William R. Polk.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<hr \/>\n<p>Apparently, the United States, perhaps Great Britain and almost certainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are on the brink of a major escalation of war in what we now\u00a0can call \u201cthe former Iraq and Syria.\u201d\u00a0But is this rational?\u00a0Are we drawing lessons from our interventions in the past? Is there a realistic post-intervention plan?\u00a0How much will intervention cost?\u00a0And, finally, will it\u00a0accomplish the presumed objective of making the situation better with more security for them and for us?<\/p>\n<p>These are questions we should be asking\u00a0<em>now<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 not after the fact.\u00a0Perhaps somewhere deep in government council rooms these questions are being asked. If so, those asking them are certainly not sharing their answers, if they have any, with us.\u00a0And since we will be paying the bills for whatever decisions are adopted, we have what in government usage is called a \u201cNeed to Know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/obama-bush.jpg?55ac53\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9660\" src=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/obama-bush-300x229.jpg?55ac53\" alt=\"Barack Obama, then President-elect, and President George W. Bush at the White House during the 2008 transition.\" width=\"300\" height=\"229\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have no access to the thinking of the inner circles of any of the relevant governments, and from the sketchy and undemanding accounts in the media,\u00a0it does not appear that anyone else has better access than I do.\u00a0What I do have is 69 years of observation and study of the Middle East of which four were spent as the Member of the U.S. State Department\u2019s Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not Learning from Mideast Mistakes Exclusive:\u00a0The neocon strategy of \u201cregime change\u201d\u00a0has proved financially costly and strategically disastrous \u2013 setting almost the entire Middle East on fire \u2013 but almost no lessons have been learned, no accountability assessed, and no relevant questions asked, writes ex-U.S. diplomat William R. Polk. Apparently, the United States, perhaps Great Britain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6762,2487,4873,6963,442,6763,484,562,584,776,862,6961],"class_list":["post-9712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-afghan-war","tag-afghanistan","tag-bush","tag-consortium-news","tag-iraq","tag-iraq-war","tag-libya","tag-neoconservatives","tag-obama","tag-syria","tag-war","tag-william-r-polk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9713,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9712\/revisions\/9713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}