Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Sometimes it is merely the perception that we are behind sustaining some very unsustainable status quos that is enough to give organizations such as AQ rich fodder for their propaganda machine for waging UW against us through nationalist insurgent organizations and disgruntled individuals.

We need to create some new perceptions.
Certainly perceptions are important, but challenging a perceived situation is very different from challenging an actual situation, and we have to recognize from the start which we are doing. Perceptions get complicated, because they are in no way universal: what we are dealing with in many cases is not, for example, the actual perceptions that different components of the Saudi populace have of our role in their governance, but our perception of that perception. That's pretty messy and pretty uncertain. Certainly AQ tries to peddle a certain perception, but that doesn't mean that perception is universally or even widely accepted.

Wrapping ourselves around a dizzying galaxy of varying perceptions and trying to change them all is a good way to trip over our own feet. Over time, a straightforward, sensible foreign policy that does not involve messing around in the internal affairs of others - either to advance our own interests or to advance our perception of their interests - will drive its own set of perceptions.

We have meddled all to often on the wrong side of the political spectrum in other countries, ultimately advancing the interests of nobody but some governing elites. We cannot correct that by trying to meddle on the "right" side, because there's no universal agreement on wrong and right in these cases, and because the populaces involved don't trust us and don't want us in their business even on the sides they support. We can correct our previous mistakes, over time (trust is more easily broken than built) not by counter-meddling, but by a whole lot less meddling.