Let’s just put the following in the category of “no duh.”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Monday blamed the United States for the spread of terrorism in the Middle East, saying America’s dual post-9/11 wars — and its alliance with Israel — allowed extremist ideologies to flourish.
“If we did not have the U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the United States’ unwarranted support for the inhumane actions of the Zionist regime against the oppressed nation of Palestine, today the terrorists would not have an excuse for the justification of their crimes,” Rouhani said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly.
That’s obviously not something an American politician is allowed to say or acknowledge, and, in fairness, it isn’t warranted to blame Americans for the moral atrocities of other people. What we did caused the sectarian warfare in the Middle East but this doesn’t excuse or absolve people who are engaged in that sectarian warfare.
The Iranian president and his government have their own share of responsibility for what has gone on Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.
Israel, too, is too convenient as a whipping boy. When I find any government in the region that has treated the Palestinians with kindness or fairness, I’ll let you know. These regimes treat their own citizens worse than their livestock and the refugees worse than that. And then they act appalled at what Israel does. It’s very convenient for them to have their people agitating against a foreign rather than a domestic power.
So, yeah, I’m impatient with lectures from people like President Rouhani. He can stick a sock it in as far as I am concerned. But that doesn’t mean that what he said isn’t basically accurate.
George W. Bush ruined the Middle East. It wasn’t a healthy region in the first place, and it couldn’t endure Bush’s “freedom agenda.”
You know I stand by what my father a military man of 27 years and POW during WW2. America needs to stau out of the Middle East. They are all raised in an environment of hate for one another that goes back generations. All the US will accomplish is dead US military personnel and huge debt.
Stay out of there let them kill each other off it they so desire, it is their choice not ours.
Why didn’t anyone ask Rouhani about the Islamic Republic’s campaign of terror and cultural genocide against the Baha’i people?
Let us admit that Obama made it worse by advocating regime change in Syria and arming the opposition. There’s a flaw in our foreign policy establishment that is deeper than particular presidents and parties, though it does help that Obama, unlike Bush, is not a fool.
And the US drone war in Yemen didn’t lead to anything good either — for the people of that country.
Like the Balkans, the Middle East and SouthWest Asia is a seething cauldron of ethnic, religious, sectarian, and historical animosities. Every conflict seems to be 3- or 4- sided. When you touch one thing, the unforseen consequences are massive. Who knew that destabilizing Khaddafi would lead to a refugee crisis in Europe? Who knew that establishing a force to oppose the Russian invasion of Afghanistan would lead to 9/11 and ISIS? All of these events cast long shadows and play out in the whole region.
Our best choice is distance.
I do confess a strong concern about ISIS. These people are ruthless, brutal, and with no scruples. Should we put boots on the ground against them? I almost think this will be necessary. Palmyra is a world tragedy. The Yasidi treatment is horror upon horror. There are few groups in the modern world that make me convinced that force is necessary, but the ISIS group does that with me.
You’re right to have a strong concern about ISIS. It’s getting stronger, not weaker, despite many months of the US-led group of nations trying to destroy it by ineffective and inaccurate bombing and drone attacks, probably creating more recruits for the terrorists.
Putin today at the UN showed leadership, better than the defensive, neocon-sounding Obama, by advocating a broad coalition of countries, including the US and Russia and in coordination with the Assad govt, to begin cooperating towards a full military assault against ISIS. He likened the situation, not unreasonably, to the US-USSR-UK allied effort against Hitler. I think that analogy is largely on the mark and see it as a positive that Putin is recalling better times when the US and the Russians worked for a common goal.
But Obama, at least publicly, seems determined not to seem to want to be seen, or be seen smiling, with Putin nor to agree to any cooperation with Assad. By the initial news reports of their private meeting, it appears they merely butted heads for 90 minutes.
At least they met and talked — though my understanding is that it was at Putin’s request. Obama has a big decision to make on Syria, and Putin has put the ball in O’s court with a fair proposal that might actually work. I have no idea whether O will step up and show a little courage, going against the grain of his neocon national security team. So far he’s had a mixed record in FP, and a strong reluctance to directly defy the Deep Govt.
I think the biggest problem here is that the US is publicly committed to and has acted on the intention of overthrowing Assad. Now it appears the only way to stabilize the situation is to back him – hard. Russia has all along, but it is a hard about-face for us, especially since we are still on the record, I believe, accusing Assad of using chemical weapons.
Sometimes a new President gets away with disavowing the policies of an old one. Generally, this is a problem because the country can’t be trusted to keep commitments. Bush 1 promised not to expand NATO if Gorbachev allowed Eastern Europe independence. Clinton then treated that as Bush’s promise, not America’s, since there was no formal treaty.
However, I don’t think we can wait a year and a half for a new President. And I think Clinton’s instinct would be boots on the ground, perhaps unavoidable now, but I don’t know that she would back Assad, which would put her at odds both with Russia and the only visible solution. Sanders, I guess, would try to just stay out of it, but if that means Russia, China, and Europe handle it without us, if that is even possible, our position in the world is reduced. Any of the Republicans is likely just to go nuts.
To be fair, NATO expansion was clearly in the works before Bush left office, at least in part because the EE countries themselves were calling for it.
When you remember that the US has consistently refused to arm the Kurds to this day, you wonder just what we are playing at?
“Who knew that destabilizing Khaddafi would lead to a refugee crisis in Europe?”
This one was actually easily predicted.
Now, I am (as you may have guessed) against fortress Europe, and believe in the right to asylum. Though I am also against civil wars in general so no celebration of the Libyan war.
What is surprising to me is that despite the obvious consequences, Libya was still bombed. I did not get it at the time and still don’t.
…Libya was still bombed. I did not get it at the time and still don’t. .
When USG policy is “regime change,” allies are not expected to resist. France got off easy for doing so — the Congressional cafeteria stopped serving french fries and existing stocks of French wine in the hands of US dummies were smashed. Germany paid no price — no boycott of VW. But Obama, Biden, and Clinton were more persuasive than Bush, Cheney, and Powell or perhaps France and Germany regretted not getting in on the action in Iraq.
wanting Qaddafi gone. France especially. We agreed with them but it wasn’t our policy as much as it was theirs. Saying the European powers were forced into action in Libya by threats of US reprisals is not an accurate reading of the events at all. Believe it or not the US alone is not responsible for every problem in the middle east. You assigning all blame to us while giving other actors a pass for their actions is very strange indeed.
Now the question is what it the right policy? I honestly don’t know. I still think there was a good chance Qaddafi was going to start a genocide against his own people. He was using the same language and same tactics that built up to the Rwandan genocide, an event he played no small part in.
Are you German? Probably not, with your handle.
What is going to happen in the next 6 months will be a wake-up call. Already the murder of 2 Swedes in the IKEA should be a clear signal that there is going to be some bad stuff happening. And because about 50% of those in Fortress Europe are economic migrants who are gonna be pissed off when they get sent home, there are going to be more bad reactions.
It’s going to end with large prison camps filled with people with very bad attitudes, all at -5c.
That’s gonna be a fun time. Plus very good for the tourist business. Tourists love to go where grumpy people accost them on the sidewalks.
Seriously, the US and UK stole Iran’s democracy and Iranians haven’t forgotten and haven’t since had the means to put it back together again.
It’s very easy for those in a country that has facilitated decades of mayhem in other countries that has led to untold deaths, injuries and destruction of their lands, infrastructure, and homes with only a single instance of blowback (that resulted in collective national anger, etc.) to tell any leader of those countries to “stick a sock in it” when he/she accurately calls us to task for our actions.
I think it’s a little much to say we stole their democracy.
Let’s try not to be so simplistic.
Those aren’t my words, but those of ordinary Iranians.
It’s how they describe the ousting of their democratically elected PM Mossadegh by western forces and foisting the odious Shah on them. It’s what has lived on (likely promoted first by religious leaders to drive a rebellion under the Shah and continued after his demise to maintain their grip on power) in the hearts and minds of the people. It maintains traction because we in the west refuse to acknowledge, much less apologize for, what we did.
Our feathers get very ruffled by Iranian chants of “death to America” because our culture/language interprets that phrase as threatening. Yet, in Iran, “death to X” is like an expletive. A version of “bloody X” or “fuck X.” A more correct translation would be “fuck the Yanks.”
I’ve been toying around with the idea of rehabilitating the War in Iraq as a relatively harmless alternative to war with China.
My theory goes like this: in the late 90s, some sort of massive, idiotic war was in the making. This had nothing to do with any particular part of the world, other than DC, and what goes on in the damaged psyches of right-wingers hoping to undo Vietnam syndrome.
So Dick Cheney, in a perverse way, did us all a favor by choosing a target for this idiocy that would only screw up an entire region, not spell ruin for most of the planet. We should be grateful for the failure in Iraq, because it’s not the apocalypse in Taiwan.
So what do ya’ll think?
The thing is the first Gulf War never really ended. I was deployed to the Persian Gulf before 9/11. We were conducting MIO operations, enforcing no fly zones and trade embargos. That gets people killed on all sides. We were blowing people up and shooting people, and the people we were killing were killing other people, and some of our people got killed.
Even under Clinton the situation was regarded as unsustainable. Sure we had a lid on things. But we were killing Iraqi’s left and right and creating a ton of anger in the region. No matter what we did the impact on the Iraqi elite was jack shit. Sure it kept a good portion of their military crippled, but all the pain came down on the wrong people and eventually something was going to break. A ship being crippled or sunk, planes being shot down, it was going to be bad and then we’d be at war. Along the same lines, Clinton brought up invading North Korea a few times. That was another mess that always seemed a nano second away from going to hell.
But nothing was ever done about it for two main reasons. Nobody could figure out how to go about it that wouldn’t cause the sort of cluster fuck of chaos that we were trying to avoid, and selling the public on it just wasn’t going to happen. It was damned if you do, damned if you don’t. A gigantic shit sandwich that nobody knew what to do with.
A lot of people soured on containment over the years as simply delaying the inevitable. And given comparable military strength and Gulf War I’s results were willing to roll the dice. 9/11 gave us an excuse to roll out the military bucket list for the region and settle all the shit we figured needed to be settled. Which of course ended in the exact cluster fuck that was predicted and said cluster fuck was handled in the worst way possible.
Taiwan, ie the China issue, and Russia weren’t really a problem. Sure they were vastly more powerful nations with vastly greater ambition, but they weren’t run by madmen and we weren’t engaged in actions that were killing people on all sides with them. It was dick waving and posturing, the usual nonsense that seems scary but everyone knows how the game works. Besides, on certain key issues (ie North Korea) we were all on the same side of “the fuck are those crazies going to do”, especially since NK has been much more of a Chinese problem than a US problem for some time now.
Nobody thought naval asshattery around Taiwan would really trigger WW3 China edition. Most people thought naval activity in the Persian Gulf to contain Saddam would lead to Gulf War 2, full metal retard edition.
This isn’t defending what happened. There’s a reason we kept kicking the can and hoping that the powder keg in the ME didn’t go off. The results of Bush’s war show the wisdom of can kicking. But the situation with Iraq and the Persian Gulf was vastly different than the situation with China in the ocean there.
Bush and enough of the establishment was willing to roll the dice and got their excuse in 9/11. A lot of people went along because of political pressure or they figured it was going to happen anyways and the odds seemed good at the time. It was criminal and beyond fucking stupid. But nobody was all that serious about fighting China, that’s a whole new level of lunacy.
Not a bad description of what happened at all.
But the key point is that we should not have liberated Kuwait despite compelling reasons to do so.
Just minor, the SAVAK was trained by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Yeah, a great run of western “democracy.” Not to stop here, the Reagan administration supported Saddan Hussein in its ten year war with Iran’s Khomeini, and was well aware Iraq’s massive use of grenades with deadly gas. The CIA supplied Saddam’s military with intelligence on troop concentrations. Iran lost a million of its citizens. This war sealed the fate of Iran as a state run by the mullahs, what better way than a common enemy to solidify a government using terror to subdue its people. Can anyone explain the Iran-Contra Affair? Yeah, for the release of American hostages in Lebanon after the intervention by Israel with an invasion, massive destruction and occupation. Syria was requested to pacify Lebanon and the warring parties … until western guns were aimed at the Assad regime after the 9/11 attacks and the reign of Bush/Cheney in the White House. Bringing democracy to the Middle-East. Obama continued this deadly enterprise with use of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey as another of its proxy wars. No problem getting arms into Syria by covert action and washing hands in innocence to the bloodshed.
The fiasco of the decision by US Congress and the Bush White House to invade and occupy Iraq will last to the detriment of the invaders for generatons to come. Use of military fire power, overwhelming “shock and awe” plus assassinations, torture (Abu Ghraib) and rendition will be part of a traumatized nation for many decades. ISIS is a first back-lash of the Iraq invasion and shunning the warning given by all Arab leaders in the Middle East. Israel was in strong support of president Bush and the strategy of Divide and Conquer. The Middle East has become a more dangerous place!
Thanks for this and your post mentioning the CIA coup that killed Iranian democracy and installed a pro-US/Israel dictatorship – an extremely harsh and violent one.
Even most people on the left in the US just assume that the people in the middle east are inherently crazy and violent. Yet what we see today is the direct result of US intervention in the middle of the 20th century for the sole purpose of securing US corporate access to the oil. Afghanistan, believe it or on, was a secular society with advancing education, women’s rights, etc. through the early 1970s. Iran had a parliamentary style democracy. And so on.
But modern democracies are messy things. You never know who might be elected and what they’ll do when in power. Why, they might to regulate the US industries! Can’t have that. Dictatorships are much easier to deal with – easy to influence, much more consistent in their behaviors over time, and most importantly they can be relied upon to crush any popular opposition to the US corporations.
So, our country has put in place the nastiest dictators we can throughout the middle east. When we lose control we fund even more extreme people to oppose the people we oppose – bin Laden learned his methodologies from the CIA when he was fighting the Soviets, for example.
Until you understand that history and that context you won’t understand the statements from middle eastern residents like those quoted in this post.
○ The Rubicons That Have Been Crossed
○ Isfahan: Heart of Persia, Possible Nuclear Target (2006) by Natasha Chart @BooMan
Americans from the beginning have so liked to have an enemy to create domestic unity in a fractious bunch of regions. We like to put the black hat on other heads of states for the pettiest of reasons.
What we did to Iran was like some other country destabilizing Canada and Mexico. I doubt that the response of the US President to that situation would be so diplomatic.
The US ability to get on its exceptionally large high-horse is no longer the asset it was in the past. Come to think of it, in the past that attitude got us whupped several times as well.
It has been American policy since the 70s to control oil in the Middle East, using Saudi Arabia as a surrogate when it can. Afghanistan was not about Osama hiding in a cave there at one time. State Department hubris presumed that it could build a pipeline from Turkmenistan to serve the factories in India which were about to take away American jobs.
Financing the Mujahadeen was the first step, much of it done through the “Safari Club”, a group effort of reactionary intelligence services and the CIA. The Mujahadeen morphed into al Qaeda, then al Qaeda in Iraq, then into ISIS. The US has financed the military buildup in Georgia prior to the 2008 war, earlier they aided the horrendous Chechen rebellion. They had long-standing goals to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, and left that country in a mess.
Libya too.
If you don’t see the connection between US wars of choice and corporate energy (oil) companies you have been missing it all.
Iran’s future is with Russia. The US’s history has guaranteed that to the Iranians. So too with China and India. Europe, especially Germany will recognize the price they are paying for America’s military empire and will eventually look east too.
At this stage the US has just about reached its military limits. It can destroy anyone but people are getting tired of being destroyed.
Does anyone still think that the US is trying to wipe out ISIS?