Sticking it to the Man: Policy Failure in the Middle East
One of the best television commercials I've seen for a while comes from Sprint promoting its Fair & Flexible Plan for cell phones. We see a pompous business executive discussing the Sprint plan and then telling his assistant that joining the plan is his way of "sticking it to the Man." The assistant is shocked: "But, sir, you ARE the Man." "I know," responds the executive "So you're sticking it to yourself," his aide ask. The executive: "Maybe." I actually used that television commercial in my recent talk at the Nixon Center to illustrate what's wrong with the Bush's Administration's policy in the Middle East. To put it in simple terms, the Bushies -- in fact, the entire U.S. foreign policy establishment -- is promoting a strategy based on the need for the United States to be the hegemonic power, the Boss, the Man, in the Middle East. At the same time, the same administration led by its neocon ideologues is adv...