Italian capitalists fostered fascists and German capitalists - Nazis to oppose communists. Fostering devils to oppose beasts is a bad strategy. It can be good tactics, though. Israel would do well to prompt the PLO to bleed Hamas. Israel would be stupid to foster the PLO as an alternative to Hamas. Your enemy’s enemy is a tactical tool to bring your enemy down, but often not an acceptable alternative to your enemy. America figured out that Saddam relied on Sunnis, and pulled the Shia majority to power; the emboldened Shia extremists fought the Americans.
The US repeats similar error with Kurds: for the tactical benefit of having a strong anti-Arab ally, America creates a time-bomb of the terrorist Kurdish state. Iraq’s Kurdistan will support the insurrection among Turkish Kurds, prompt a civil conflict in Turkey, and cause a wave of Turkish nationalism which could drown Turkey’s secularism in Islamism. The Iraqi Kurds won’t do the American bidding. They don’t care about democratic Iraq where Arabs outvote them. The Iraqi Kurds want to appropriate oil revenues and isolate themselves from the Arabs. Kurds are set on a crash course with Iraqi government over administrative autonomy-cum-sovereignty and oil income. Kurds sit on much of Iraqi oil – which the Arabs consider their own. Kurds stress the Saddam’s ethnic cleansing of Kirkuk oil field region; Arabs equally stress that the Kurds demographically swarmed that region, originally populated by Arabs. Once America ceases massive infusions into Iraqi economy, the Kirkuk oil issue will become critical enough for the Iraqi government to fight the Kurds for. For the illusionary benefit of having the Kurds as a viable anti-Arab ally in Iraq, America risks the only secular Muslim country, Turkey.
CIA and the State Department embarked in Iran on their usual course of finding “our SOBs” and proclaiming them “moderates.” Thus the American support for the Iranian ex-president Khatami who is expected to oust Ahmadinejad. Khatami will have – unrealistically – to oust ayatollah Khamenei and the Council of Guardians first, since they support Ahmadinejad. America ignores that Khatami is an Islamist who spreads Iranian Shia influence from Africa to Middle East to Asia. Khatami unequivocally supports the Iranian “peaceful” nuclear program.
Morality is not an academic concept, but time tested strategy of communal survival. Decidedly immoral approaches, like fostering thugs who specifically aim at oppressing the target population, rarely bears fruit for sponsors. If local collaborators are indispensable, they should be paid only to do the job necessary, and not to develop into the ruling parties. Israel can pay the PLO’s cost of combating Hamas – if the PLO will do that at all. America rightly co-opted Shia to overthrow Saddam and hunt down the Baathists. Khatami can be given media tribune and funds to bug Ahmadinejad and damage the Iranian consensus on the nuclear weapons. Small efforts like these often bring disproportionate effect; extending the efforts into large-scale operations like the occupation of Iraq is generally inefficient in cost-benefit terms. Bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities is way cheaper, simpler, and more reliable than bringing Khatami to power in the expectation that he will end the nuclear program. The bombing is more moral, too.
