Kudzu

Edward Tenner tells us in his book Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences that kudzu, which smothers all other vegetation in the South, was originally promoted by the Soil Conservation Service as a way to improve land and soil--we paid people to plant it, and now it's taking over. I see the darn weed all over suburban Atlanta, Georgia, where I often teach, and rural North Carolina, where I have family. Tenner also observes:

Finesse means abandoning frontal attacks for solutions that rely on the same kind of latent properties that led to revenge effects in the first place. Sometimes it means ceasing to suppress a symptom.

(book quote lifted from Global Business Network because my copy is nowhere to be found)

I've been arguing that we need to stop tinkering in the affairs of other nations. Venezuela, Panama, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Chile, Iraq, Vietnam, Cuba, Iran...but a few examples of our clumsy meddling. In fact today is a dreadful anniversary, as the Asia Times reminds us:

Fifty years ago on August 19, 1953, the Americans, with the help of the British, overthrew one of the few democratic governments in the Middle East. The Central Intelligence Agency carried out a coup against premier Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran and brought the Shah, who was in exile at the time, back to power. The success of this subversion emboldened the US for the coming decades to carry out similar actions in Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, Vietnam, and many other countries in the world (The Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba and the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile that led to the ascendance of Augusto Pinochet to power are just two examples).

Although the whole operation in Iran cost the US less than US$1 million (including money given to mobs and looters to create chaos in the capital), the coup proved to be much more costly for Washington than anyone could have imagined at the time. Today, it is quite clear that that operation paved the way for the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which in turn inspired fundamentalist movements in the Muslim world for decades.

What we have been doing for 50 years is paying people to plant terrorism in various countries. It's biting back.

ntodd  ¶ 9:47 PM