What have the Romans ever done for us?

The UK's "Times Online" has a terrific column today comparing a scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian to the current hand-wringing in Europe over America's "hyperpower" foreign policy and the results that it has wrought for the people of the Middle East.

Anybody that can convincingly tie-in a Monty Python reference to make a political point gets bonus points in my book, and Gerard Baker gets the kudos today. Mirroring a line that John Cleese voiced in a scene from Life of Brian, Baker writes:

“All right, all right. But apart from liberating 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan, undermining dictatorships throughout the Arab world, spreading freedom and self-determination in the broader Middle East and moving the Palestinians and the Israelis towards a real chance of ending their centuries-long war, what have the Americans ever done for us?”

Baker explains how even in Great Britain, the folks who gave us Winston Churchill, there are whiners and doubters that the future of the Middle East can be a positive one:

"[The view of] the bold foreign policy strategists in Washington was that the status quo that existed before September 11 could no longer be tolerated. Much of the Muslim world represented decay and stagnation, and bred anger and resentment. That was the root cause of the terrorism that had attacked America with increasing ferocity between 1969 and 2001.

AmericaÂ’s critics craved stability in the Middle East. DonÂ’t rock the boat, they said. But to the US this stability was that of the mass grave; the calm was the eerie quiet that precedes the detonation of the suicide bomb. The boat was holed and listing viciously.

As a foreign policy thinker close to the Administration put it to me, in the weeks before the Iraq war two years ago: “Shake it and see. That’s what we are going to do.” The US couldn’t be certain of the outcome, but it could be sure that whatever happened would be better than the status quo.

And what's happening - a democracy domino effect - is helping make the world safer and more free. History is unfolding before our eyes.

Posted by: Gary at 09:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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