Blowback

As they say, hindsight is 20/20. A New York Times article is saying that Pakistani intelligence has been supporting Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that carried out the horrific attacks in Mumbai. What the article forgets to mention is where ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) picked up the habit of independently aiding/funding outside groups, often times without direct approval from the government. This began during the 1980s when the US used to use ISI as a method for funneling funds and other forms of support to Afghan guerrilla groups fighting the Soviet invasion. Other ramifications of these same actions and, more importantly, abandonment of Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal, also led to the rise of the Taliban and its subsequent harboring of Al-Qaeda.

Unintended, negative future consequences of present political actions are often referred to as "blowback." One of the quintessential examples of blowback is the 1979 Iranian revolution, which has root causes of the 1950s CIA-led coup, which overthrew a democratically elected leader and returned the very undemocratic Shah to power. Blowback and unintended consequences seem to be hitting the US pretty hard recently, and while I am in no way saying that any of it is deserved, these incidents should at least be a clear sign that we need to consider long-term consequences of US foreign policy endeavers.

In today's world, there has to be some sort of method for analyzing possible future ramifications for present actions. And to some extent at least, this is possible. State Department research before the Iraq War rather correctly predicted some of the disastrous outcomes caused by that invasion (not that it did us much good). Hopefully Obama's government will make a more concerted effort to consider long-term effects, even though it has been an American tradition not to.