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Our relations with the Islamic world have been evolving.

At one time it was convenient to see Saudi Arabia as a US safe zone, they were a rich pal who seemed to have no ambitions of his own beyond helping us to balance our budget and seeing to it that our key politicians and State Deparment weenies had a comfortable retirement. Since they seemed content in that role, it all seemed rather harmless.

And since they rather hermetically controlled their territory, and their banking secrecy is pretty complete, it makes a great platform for all kinds of operations, as well as a good place to get funding for those operations that Congress would not want to know about.

The first attempt at playing for bigger stakes came when Carter and his national security advisor decided that Islam could be harnessed as a direct hammer against Communism much more effectively than could Western values, which seemed to be on the defensive everywhere (including within Carter's own cerebrum). They withdrew support for the Shah and encouraged the rise of the Ayatollah, which has led to a generation of misery and warfare.

It also made the Saudis even more important as our outpost in the Islamic world.

Then, we turned to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as full partners in the war to eject the Soviets from Afghanistan. It worked. From there it was easy for us to see the possibilty of using Islam to open up the Soviet underbelly. It also awakened the Saudis and Pakistanis to the possibilities of projecting themselves into Central Asia which, with the fall of the USSR, suddenly became very possible.

I continue to maintain that our foreign policy during the nineties was written in Riyadh. Our policy of supporting jihad which had some sense directed at the Soviets ceased to have any further reason to exist almost as soon as we formulated it, since the Soviet Union fell very quickly after they withdrew from Afghanistan. And US companies began to operate in Central Asia very early in the nineties, and to form partnerships with Russian companies, which made the insurgent friends of friends a threat to our quickly evolving interests in the region.

But what normal people could see very quickly, the State Department and the Clintons failed to see, and they continued to support Islamic movements where ever they found them, even when they began to attack the US. Our first responses to attacks on us were calibrated to be weak, because these movements were abetted by our Saudi and Pakistani allies. Thus, our failure to take Bin Ladin when he was offered was not a mistake, but intentional.

We did not back away from these movements until GW Bush took office, and made his partnership with Russia the centerpiece of his early effort at foreign policy. His embrace of Putin meant withdrawing support for the Chechens, which implied the beginnings of a break with the Saudis.

9/11 sealed the deal, and we began to attack Saudi funded insurgencies all across Asia, we gave Russia the green light to do what they will with the Chechens, and we began the dance in South Asia, where we use our ability to hold India back as our hammer against Pakistan.

Our Islamic strategy which made some perverse sense in the waning days of the Cold War, when we were losing our confidence and our enemy seemed unstoppable, but it took on a life of its own even once its purpose was gone. Jihad as a means of projecting Western values was always a dubious proposition, it was more a case of setting fire to the neighborhood when you think the battle is almost lost. You only think you can control the direction of the blaze, but you can't.

Morality is in short supply in foreign policy, but this does not mean it has no place. Quite the contrary. The fact that we deal in imperfect humanity, the fact that we deal with flawed regimes and imperfect nations means it is an absolute necessity to keep a close grip on your moral purpose. If you do that you can bring good out of a murky and dangerous situation. But if you lose track of your principles you are lost, and you may become the proxy of your proxy.

And this is the story of the US in the nineties. We became the proxy of our proxies. We lost the grace that comes from clarity. And our proxies found ambitions of their own, and turned their weapons on us. They will pay for the mistake, but there is an object lesson in this for any country that aspires to be a moral force in the world. Sometimes you have to fight dirty, but you must never forget why you are doing it, and never lose sight of the dangers of doing it, never lose sight of the larger moral purpose, or you are lost.