Keller @ Large: Foreign Policy Continues To Baffle Top Officials

BOSTON (CBS) – Foreign policy has always baffled me, which is no big deal because, fortunately for the world, I have zero say over its conduct.

Well, not entirely true. I have my vote, which I can use to help elect or defeat a president and members of Congress, who do have a say over our foreign policy.

The problem is, after decades of trying to understand our foreign policy choices, I have very little confidence in the management of it by anyone in power, from either party.

I grew up during the Vietnam War, so that got me off on the wrong foot. The rationale for that war – that if we didn't stop them there, Communists would overrun the globe – was so wrong and bizarre, it seems impossible that we ever believed it, but we did.

The war in Iraq was another head-scratcher. Expelling Saddam from Kuwait in 1991 seemed justified on the principle of not tolerating the annexation of a sovereign country, a concept that seems dated now that we're looking the other way on Crimea.

But the second war in Iraq was propelled by a ridiculous concept – that we can, in part through military intervention, create and nourish democracy in a part of the world with little aptitude for it.

Whoops, there we go again with the same conceit, that by allowing a terror-factory like Iran to flourish in exchange for a temporary, violatable pledge to forgo a nuke, we can start to remake the Middle East.

Only in Washington – or academia – could someone actually believe this.

The stellar foreign policy achievement of my lifetime was the fall of the Iron Curtain, and it took a movie actor to pull that one off, so forgive me if I'm underwhelmed by all the bigwigs weighing in on Iran these days.

Most of them share, I'm afraid, the defining characteristic of most foreign policymakers – they don't really have the slightest idea what they're talking about.

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