I have to admit to some schadenfreude at the news that Central Asian despot Islam Karimov has ordered the US to vacate the airfield in Uzbekistan which has been, according to military experts, an indispensible staging area in the occupation of Afghanistan. Since apparently none of the surrounding Central Asian states offers a viable convenient alternative, we certainly put all our eggs in one tyrant’s basket.

This should be seen as a template for one of the ways in which the US has progressively squandered the post-9/11 goodwill of the world as it has become more and more clear that the Central Asian wars have little to do with the fatuous stated goals of spreading democracy and freedom and everything to do with spreading American hegemonism. Karimov has apparently made this decision in consultation with both Russia and China. US military spokespeople have, however, put an incredible and self-serving spin on the decision. We wave aside principle and whore ourselves by getting in bed with a dictator whenever it has suited us. Nevertheless, by a verbal sleight of hand, Pentagon talking heads cite recent US support for humanitarian aid to Uzbek refugees, as the impetus for Karimov’s decision, evincing that the Bush dysadministration had made the “right choice” to favor the spread of democracy even at great potential cost and inconvenience to ourselves. US WoT® strategists are sitting scratching their heads about how the US could have been brought to our knees by this contemptible petty dictator who didn’t fully realize that his own geopolitical aspirations were not supposed to matter as long as US interests said otherwise. Oh well, the score is Coalition of the Unwilling 1, US 0.

Not very important in the overall scheme of things to ‘lose’ Uzbekistan , you might think? A parallel change of temper could have the US out of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia (where King Fahd’s death might be an opportunity for an upsurge of fundamentalist antagonism for the royal family) next…