Not All Change Is Improvement

From the Marxist flags on the streets of Tunis, to the Islamist leaders wending their merry way back to the place, we never learn, do we? Merely because the former regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq were dreadful, we backed any and everyone against them, no matter how bad any or everyone might have been.

We had pursued the same strategy against the Soviet Union even while, in like manner, cheering on the Soviet puppets in South Africa and in Latin America, although we were actually allied to the regimes themselves; in South Africa, we sold out the non-violent, non-racial, non-Marxist, pro-Commonwealth opposition. Against Ian Smith, we managed to side with the Soviet Union and with China simultaneously; again, too bad for those who still looked to Britain.

We gush over the Cuban pimps and drug barons in Miami. We back any old Stalinist, Nazi, Islamist or whatever against a Russian regime which, next to those alternatives, is not really all that bad. We adopt a similar approach to China, even while prostrating ourselves to her economically. In Iran, we support both the Sunni Islamists and the Ba'athists, the latter practically the only terrorist organisation that was supported by Saddam Hussein. In Belarus, we do not even bother to ask who or what the "Opposition" is. And so on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

And now Tunisia, which the departing regime's dear friend, Donald Rumsfeld, might care to explain closed the place to Christian missionaries. While he is about it, he might also turn his attention to the billions spent on American arms by feeble regimes that expect Israel and the US to do their dirty work for them. Where has the money gone? What are the weapons for?