One famous definition of insanity is to repeat the same mistake over and over again, every time expecting a different result. By that definition, the United States government has gone insane. We keep intervening in failed states and civil wars halfway across the world, leaving chaos in our wake. But every time we think this time it will be different.
America started a war to effect regime change in Iraq. We left that country with a new authoritarian ruler, who is now being challenged by a rebel army. Instead of learning the lesson that perhaps our intervention wasn't helpful and we should leave this chronically unstable part of the world alone, the United States is once again taking steps towards war. President Obama has authorized ground troops to Iraq:
The United State is deploying up to 275 military troops to Iraq to protect the U.S. Embassy and other American interests and is considering sending a contingent of special forces soldiers as Iraq struggles to repel a rampant insurgency, officials said Monday. ...
President Barack Obama, in a formal report to Congress, said the troops in in the deployment he was announcing would be equipped for combat and would remain in Iraq until the security situation improved.
Since the security situation in Iraq is unlikely to improve -- and will probably only worsen -- can we expect anything but a long-term, open-ended commitment of American forces into the Iraqi civil war? That's what the Republicans in Congress will be pushing for, and if history is any guide, they'll probably get their way. Although "The White House insisted anew the U.S. would not be sending combat troops and thrusting America into a new Iraq war," that seems open to change. Once our troops are there and they start getting embroiled in the conflict, it's easy to upgrade their status to "combat" or to send more troops in to help them achieve their open-ended mission.
This neoconservative philosophy of repetitive military interventionism that only seems to set us up for the next round has reached a tragi-comic level of absurdity. So I leave you with this classic scene from the movie Spaceballs, which seems to capture the essence of the moment quite aptly:
We might not be able to dial down the U.S. government's absurd policy of never-ending military interventionism, but at least we can laugh about it. I just hope it won't be some other country that gets the last laugh at America's expense.