Fear can make you do stupid things

Haviland Smith, ex-CIA station chief, has some comments about our fixation with fixing failed states so that terrorists will not have a base from which to attack us.

There are two lessons here. The first is that there are always bad people
doing bad things in the world. It is important for us to learn that we are not
responsible for rectifying all the world’s ills. We need to let the rest of the
world accept primary responsibility for its own wellbeing.

The second is that undertaking to keep states from failing and trying to make
sure that al Qaeda doesn’t have any friends who will give them sanctuary will
not bring us any sort of immunity from the next terrorist attack. That attack
can be organized, planned, funded and carried out from any safehouse in any part
of the world that gives its residents a relative lack of scrutiny. It requires
neither a friendly nor a failing state.

As long as we are compulsively militarily involved in trying to mold the
world to our liking, we are going to create more and more people and nations who
will wish us ill, increasing the likelihood that we will be attacked again.

We are at a crossroads here. At our own peril, we are either going to
continue to undertake truly high risk military operations like the Iraq war in
places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and perhaps elsewhere, or, having been given
the opportunity to change as a result of the elections of November 2008, we can
reassess our role in the world and consider the possibility that there are other
ways to do our business that will not keep us stretched thin around the world
and not put us constantly in military, political and economic jeopardy.