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US Intervention Backfires – Everywhere
by Ivan Eland

Most of the problems associated with the Bush administration's collapsing foreign policy stem from one central flaw: the attempt to socially engineer the world using military power or intimidation.

In a speech to the nation laced with presumptive rhetoric, the president demanded that allies, Middle Eastern nations and members of the United Nations share the responsibility of bailing the United States out of its self-inflicted quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With a resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, frequent bombings of oil pipelines and other prominent targets in Iraq, an Iraqi infrastructure still in shambles from the war, and an excruciating $166 billion over a two-year period (at the least) for both occupations, you'd think the president would have asked (or perhaps begged) for, rather than demanded, the help of other nations. But the hubris of a superpower and its leader – even when they have their backs to the wall – should never be underestimated....