In December 1998, the U.S. and England conducted Operation Desert Fox, a 70 hour bombing campaign against Iraq, with the goal of destroying Saddam Hussein’s missile development program and chemical/biological weapons capabilities. The operation was widely seen as a failure. Some even said that for the U.S. President, the entire operation had been an attempt to distract from scandal at home.
In the aftermath, Gen. Peter de la Billiere, a former head of the SAS who commanded British forces in the 1991 Gulf war, pointed out that aerial bombardments are not effective in driving people into submission. Instead, they tend to make them more defiant.
Now the U.S. has a new desert fox in the White House. And this one has plenty of scandals at home that he doesn’t want us to think about.
So here’s a question: While the desert fox is distracting everybody by dropping bombs on countries half way around the world, who is guarding the hen house?