The foreign policy of the 1980s--South African style

In a snarky retort during the 2012 presidential campaign Obama told Republican nominee Mitt Romney that the 1980s wanted their foreign policy back after Romney said that Russia was America's greatest national security threat. Obama should have told Benjamin Netanyahu that Pretoria wanted its 1980s foreign policy back. From 1978 to 1989, during the period of State President P.W. Botha, the ideology of the ruling National Party in Pretoria was that of the Total Onslaught/Total Response. This was a sort of neo-apartheid gloss on traditional apartheid. All of Pretoria's critics and enemies were clumped together as one threat led and controlled from Moscow: this meant the Western anti-apartheid movement advocating economic sanctions against South Africa in the United States and Europe, the white liberal opposition Progressive Federal Party, the liberal English-language press, the Third World countries supporting sanctions and voting against Pretoria in the United Nations (UN) and the African National Congress (ANC) liberation movement and its de facto internal wing, the United Democratic Front, and the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) liberation movement in Namibia and its Angolan and Cuban protectors in Angola. All part of the same conspiracy. Part of a vast left-wing conspiracy--it would almost make Hillary Clinton blush.

Intervention in Syria?

The op-ed columns of the quality newspapers have been full of columns arguing for and against American intervention in Syria over the last several months. I have yet to see an argument that explains credibly how it would be in the American national interest to intervene in Syria. This lack of logic is pointed out in a piece from The Nation, which I normally do not find myself in agreement with. Most that attempt this sort of argument explain that we need to intervene in order to buy influence at the bargaining table. They claim that the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs who are now backing the opposition in Syria are not interested in democracy and human rights. This is true. But anyone who knows Islamists or even ordinary Muslims knows that they are like those pious Christians who ignore all the direct causes of anything that happens and attribute it all to God. If Washington gave arms to the Free Syrian Army or another outfit, the group would be happy to claim credit for Allah. Washington would be only a conduit. Is it really necessary to be grateful to a mere conduit?