January 10, 2020
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
My Latest Column at
LEW ROCKWELL – Crisis in the Middle East
Friends,
I pass on my latest essay reprinted by LewRockwell.com
(January 9, 2020):
Another Crisis in the Middle East – When Will We Ever
Learn?
Qasem
Soleimani is dead, his life snuffed out by missiles shot from American
drones which targeted his convoy near Bagdad International Airport. By all
accounts this man, in many ways the second most important figure in Iran, was
the mastermind of numerous violent actions—we call them “terrorist” acts—throughout
the Middle East, and very likely was indirectly (maybe directly) responsible
for the deaths of dozens of Americans in the region, at least if we can believe
our discredited intelligence agencies (it’s ironic that most of those who
rightly indict these agencies for their anti-constitutional attempts to “take
out” President Trump, now enthusiastically embrace the assessments of those
very same agencies when it comes to Iran).
And now the Iranians have reacted
directly by firing ground-to-ground missiles aimed at Iraqi army bases; from
reports no Americans, military or civilian, were killed or injured in these
attacks. That may or may not indicate a particular strategic calculation on the
part of the Iranians. Indeed, if this should be the only major response
to Soleimani’s death it may—underline “may”—indicate an implicit desire to
lower the level of high stakes hostilities…and a realization that the United
States under President Trump is unlike previous American administrations. After
all, Soleimani was arguably the most powerful and most significant military
leader in Iran; the Iranians, given his death, had to react. As our leaders
recognized, that was certain, and the attacks by the Iranians did not come as a
surprise.
But now that this is done, multiple
questions arise.
Watching
“Fox & Friends” this morning there appeared former Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich and newscaster Brian Kilmeade, all a-twitter—almost in a
frenzy—talking about “regime change” in Iran, about a “future strategy” to “take
out” the regime in Tehran, about a Middle East strategy of total American
involvement which takes hardly any account of the fall of Soviet Russia or the
sorry record of repeated American disaster in that region of the world (e.g.
Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, etc.).
President
Trump ran for office on a platform of strategic disengagement from many areas
of the world, the draw-down of American troops, including from the immense and
complex quagmire of the Fertile Crescent.
The fall
of Communism in late 1991 as a world threat radically altered global politics.
Winston Churchill once described Soviet Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a
mystery, inside an enigma”; if that was the case with Communist Russia, it
certainly describes tenfold the situation in places like Iraq or Syria.
Arguably,
when we were dependent on Persian Gulf oil and were facing Soviet
expansionism—when we feared the emergence of Soviet power as a hegemon in the
area—a position of massive involvement was at least intellectually debatable.
It is, however, no longer tenable and no longer in the interest of the United
States or, a “Make America Great Again” policy.
The major
challenge that President Trump confronts is, in fact, that many of the foreign
policy advisers he has surrounded himself with are
persons—Neoconservatives—with views diametrically opposite to the vision he
enunciated during the 2016 campaign and won him the presidency. Those
individuals—echoing the sentiments of Gingrich and Kilmeade—are positively
giddy over the prospect of a shooting war with Iran. Remember the late
unlamented John McCain’s little ditty caught on a microphone: “Bomb, bomb,
bomb…bomb, bomb Iran” (set to popular rock tune “Barbara Ann”)? Recall the
threats and designs to assert “American suzerainty” over the entire region? And
the pink elephant in the room that almost no one talks about: defending
Israel’s right flank against Iranian-supported terror attacks, mostly from
Hezbollah in Lebanon? (Israel can take care of itself.)
But American
interests in this case do not coincide with the interests of either Israel or
with the Neocons policy wonks who zealously continue to push what they call
“democratic regime change” (at the price of thousands of dead Americans). Since
1991 that has been attempted too many times with horrendous results. It is not
in the interest of the United States.
No; we
have made our point in Iraq. We need now to find a way to withdraw our troops
from that nation whose parliament just asked us to leave (Iraq is, after all, a
sovereign nation). Our invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, while
presented as necessary by the G. H. W. Bush administration was a tragic
mistake, based on faulty and contrived intelligence. Yes, he was a cruel
dictator, but he was a Sunni Muslim (who favored Iraq’s large Christian
population) and a staunch opponent of Iran. What we “achieved” by that invasion
was rule by a fanatical Shi’a majority, favorable to Iran…just the reverse that
those think-tank ensconced Neocon “experts” and advisers promised us. And with
dozens of body bags on their way back to American shores.
Let us hope that America will now
finally come to its senses. Let us pray that President Trump will honor his
campaign promises. We do not seek regime change; we seek to make America great.
We don’t have to prove how strong we are—under this president others know it.
Time to lower the volume, time
to—through third parties, if possible—once again go to the table, maybe not
right away, but within the year. Yes, Iran is a bad negotiating partner. But a
first good step would be if we were to announce that we were exiting Syria and
Iraq, not with our tails tucked in behind us, but because it does not serve our
strategic interest. Not for political reasons—as witness the hysterical (and
bogus) response by Democrats—but for national strategic reasons. In other
words: to live up to the slogan—“Make America Great
Again.”
*****
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