How the West was sidelined (for the moment)

This is a GREAT article by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha, Secretary General of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process, on the Ministry of Defence Web site. I also had the pleasure of listening to him being interviewed by the BBC yesterday and it was hilarious how he told the BBC about UK's incompetent, illegal and annoying meddling in our sovereign affairs.

While the entire writeup is worth reading, here's a small clip (emphasis mine):

But at the same time there are also lessons the West should learn. The anger at obvious double standards was palpable amongst all our friends. Obviously we do not expect even the most idealistic country to abandon its own interests. But in sticking to them ruthlessly, the use of sanctimonious pronouncements to reach other ends is abhorrent. It is especially important that the Obama administration, which came in with such high hopes, should not be seen as just another cynical mixture as before.

Secondly, the West should not take the rest of the world for granted. Its failure to consult at all was surprising, its failure to consult neighbours who obviously have a stake in a stable neighbourhood was astonishing. The impression could have arisen that stability in our areas is not to the interest of the West, which would prefer a plethora of weak states, to allow it to maintain more easily its current hegemony, political as well as economic.

And thirdly, the West should think about the message it is sending, in seeming to want the Tigers to survive in some form or another, particularly in the light of its past blunders. After all the horrors we are witnessing now, which are attributed largely to the West, spring from its own encouragement of Taliban terrorism during the Cold War. Whatever its purposes then, there is no doubt they could have been achieved without worrying consequences had there been at least a modicum of adherence to basic principles.

Oh BTW Mr. Miliband, please do inform us when you decide to run for re-election. We will be organizing a fund raising campaign for your election .. for WHOEVER is running against you. You need to go down in history as the incompetent bureaucrat you are .. and go home soon before you can destroy the world more. Please enjoy your extravagant expense reimbursements while you can.