Is Instability the Goal of U.S. Mideast Policy?
By Sheldon Richman
October 23, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - Donald Trump's
indictment of the Bush II administration for failing to prevent the
9/11 attacks presents an opportunity for more of a bird's eye view
of American foreign policy in the Middle East, a policy that has
killed many hundreds of thousands, maimed countless more, and laid
waste to entire societies.
As
Peter Beinart reminds us, when George W. Bush took office in
January 2001 he and his closest national-security staff showed
little interest in al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, despite alarms set
off by the CIA and National Security Council counterterrorism "czar"
Richard Clarke. Al-Qaeda of course had attacked U.S. government
assets in the decade before Bush became president. (Also see
this.)
"But both Clarke and [CIA boss George] Tenet grew deeply frustrated
by the way top Bush officials responded," Beinart writes. "Clarke
recounts that when he briefed [national security adviser
Condoleezza] Rice about al-Qaeda, 'her facial expression gave me the
impression that she had never heard the term before.'"
But Bush and his top national-security aides were
interested in other things. What things? Ballistic-missile
defense, which Bush had promised in his campaign, and Saddam
Hussein, the dictator of Iraq. Let's remember that the overthrow
of Saddam, euphemistically dubbed "regime change," was a U.S.
goal at least since 1990. In 1991 Bush's father, President
George H. W. Bush, sent forces to expel the Iraqi army from
Kuwait, but he didn't go in for the kill and send the military
to Baghdad to topple Saddam's government. Instead Bush imposed a
trade embargo on the Iraqi people, subjecting them to
unspeakable hardship, a policy maintained by his successor, Bill
Clinton. The deaths of half a million children -- the result,
among other things, of U.S. destruction of the sanitation and
water infrastructure -- constituted the price for regime change
that Clinton's UN ambassador, Madeleine Albright, infamously and
coldly found "worth it." (Clinton rewarded Albright by naming
her secretary of state -- something an enterprising reporter
might want to ask Hillary Clinton about.) Bill Clinton also
conducted regular bombing raids on Iraq in the name of
maintaining no-fly zones. When will Clinton get his share of the
responsibility for 9/11? (Another question for Hillary
Clinton.)
So the Bush II administration had Iraq on its
collective mind in the first eight months of its tenure not
withstanding repeated warnings from its terrorism
specialists that al-Qaeda was the likely immediate threat.
Beinart writes:
When that April [cabinet-level] meeting [demanded
by Clarke] finally occurred, according to Clarke’s book,
Against All Enemies, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
objected that “I just don’t understand why we are beginning by
talking about this one man, bin Laden.” Clarke responded that,
“We are talking about a network of terrorist organizations
called al-Qaeda, that happens to be led by bin Laden, and we are
talking about that network because it and it alone poses an
immediate and serious threat to the United States.” To which
Wolfowitz replied, “Well, there are others that do as well, at
least as much. Iraqi terrorism for example.”
As soon as the 9/11 attacks occurred, the Bush
administration's eyes were on Iraq, and the intelligence
agencies were ordered to get the proof. Detainees were even
tortured to force them implicate Saddam Hussein, and false
stories about contract between al-Qaeda and Saddam's regime were
floated.
Can we make any sense of this fixation on Iraq? I think we can.
It begins to make sense when we realize that
American neoconservatives, who include Wolfowitz and a host of
people in the Bush's Pentagon and State Department, have for
years acted as a brain trust for the right-wing of Israel's
ruling elite (Likud). In that capacity they issued papers, under
the auspices of the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and
Political Studies, expressing favor toward policies to
destabilize the secular regimes in Iraq and Syria, as
well as the governments in Lebanon (home of Hezbollah) and,
ultimately, Iran -- the
Shia
Crescent. (Hence the general demonization of Iran and the
touting of the
nonexistent nuclear threat.) These proposed policies would
embody a change in strategy for Israel, from seeking a
"comprehensive peace" with its neighbors to managing a balance
of power. Those signing on to these papers, which were issued in
the mid-1990s just as Benjamin Netanyahu was about to become
Israel's prime minister, were aware that, at least in the short
run, radical Sunnis would profit from the destabilization and
fill the vacuums created in Iraq and Syria. (The papers are
here and
here. The author is David Wurmser, who later worked in the
Bush II administration for both Vice President Dick Cheney and
John Bolton in the State Department. The "study group leader"
who oversaw the preparation of the papers was
Richard Pearle, a leading neoconservative intellectual.)
As the first of these papers stated, "Israel can
shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and
Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria.
This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in
Iraq --
an important Israeli
strategic objective in its own right
-- as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions." The paper
envisioned, bizarrely, King Hussein of Jordan extending his rule
over Iraq, a move that the neocon brain trust expected to unite
Iraq's Sunnis and Shi'ites and cut Iran out of the picture. Note
how well that worked out.
The second paper, in speaking of Syria but with
Iraq in mind, stated, "The issue here is whether the West and
Israel can construct a strategy for limiting and
expediting the chaotic collapse that will ensue in order to
move on to the task of creating a better circumstance."
(Emphasis added.) Observe the hubris in assuming that chaos can
be limited, that is, managed. (For more on these papers see Dan
Sanchez's writings
here and
here.)
If this is not enough to make sense of an otherwise seemingly
senseless U.S. policy in the Middle East, we may also mention an
earlier paper,
written in the early 1980s by Oded Yinon, a journalist who had
been in Israel's foreign ministry. This paper saw the Arab world
as a "house of cards" ripe for "dissolution" by Israel and the
United States:
Lebanon’s total dissolution into five
provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world
including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and
is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria
and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue [sic]
areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the
Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the
military power of those states serves as the primary short
term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its
ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as
in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi'ite
Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo
area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its
northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state,
maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in
northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee
for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that
aim is already within our reach today....
Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will
assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the
more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as
in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces
along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman
times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist
around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and
Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and
Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi
confrontation will deepen this polarization.
Inter-Arab confrontation promoted by the
United States and Israel -- let's recall here Israel's
medical care for al-Qaeda fighters -- would suit
expansionist Israelis who have no wish to deal justly with
the Palestinians and the Occupied Territories The more
dangerous the Middle East appears, the more Israeli leaders
can count on the United States not to push for a fair
settlement with the Palestinians. The American people,
moreover, are likely to be more lenient toward Israel's
brutality if chaos prevails in the neighboring states. Chaos
would also undercut Hezbollah, which repelled Israel's last
invasion of Lebanon, and Hamas, which refuses to disappear
despite savage Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
The success of radical Islamists in the wake of
the destabilization of Iraq, Libya (home of
Benghazi, a
source of arms thanks to the CIA), and Syria came as no
surprise to people in the know. Indeed, a
2012 Defense Information Agency report, widely circulated
through the upper echelons of the U.S. government, noted that
U.S. policies to "isolate the Syrian regime" -- such as
funneling arms indiscriminately to rebels -- were enabling the
emergence of a "Salafist principality" (i.e. an
Islamic state), a development (the report said) that would
be viewed favorably by the West and its regional allies. Since
that time, U.S. policy in Syria, and Yemen (i.e., the backing of
Saudi Arabia's brutal war and starvation blockade), have worked
to the advantage of al-Qaeda affiliates. Not coincidentally, in
both cases the targets are interests that get support (in widely
varying degrees) from Iran. This helps us understand why the
Obama administration condemns Russian President Vladimir Putin
for directing airstrikes against Islamists seeking to overthrow
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
As a recent Israeli ambassador to the United States,
Michael Oren, put it, "The initial message about the Syrian
issue was that we always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always
preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad
guys who were backed by Iran." (Emphasis added.) Hence the
suggestions, most notably from retired general and former CIA
chief David
Patraeus, that the U.S. government side with al-Qaeda's
Nusra Front in Syria -- its "moderate" elements of course --
against the Islamic State. (Nusra also opposes the Assad
government.)
This is not to say that the neoconservative-Likud alliance is
the only force driving U.S. policy. It is well known that Saudi
Arabia and the other Gulf states (which are no threat to Israel)
wish to throttle Iran, perhaps fearful that a U.S.-Iran detente
could be in the offing. Regime change in Syria would suit the
Saudis' anti-Iran, anti-Shi'ite agenda, which is another reason
why arms, money, and fighters have flowed so freely to the Sunni
rebels in Syria. (If bona fide moderates there be among the
rebels, their chief role has been as arms conduits to the
jihadis.) The U.S. government, it hardly needs saying, does not
wish to alienate its Arab allies, as long as their interests do
not conflict with Israel's.
Thus we need not puzzle over a lethal and
self-defeating U.S. policy that appears more aimed at Iran and
its allies rather than at the radical jihadi network that
perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. government should not be
intervening in the Middle East at all, but working with Israel
and corrupt Arab states in order to create an instability that
serves Islamist interests is simply crazy.
Sheldon Richman - Writer, Editor, Legal
Polycentrist, Grouser, Flosser
http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com
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