The Dangers of US Foreign Interventionism
North Korea is at it again...testing missiles, reviving their uranium enrichment program, weaponizing their plutonium to make nukes, and threatening retaliation against anyone who tries to stop them. Once again the US, through the auspices of more UN resolutions, is attempting to impose its will upon the North Koreans. At this moment and for the mean time in the near future, the Obama Administration is pondering on what to do to get the North Koreans to stop building nukes, stop testing missiles, and come back to the negotiating table.
This international crisis appears to be the test that then-VP candidate Joe Biden referred to on the campaign trail that the world will test President Obama in the first 6 months of his administration. President Obama has said repeatedly that his election brought about change and, presumably, that would mean a change in foreign policy from that of the Bush Administration. While the tone and style of the Obama foreign policy may be an improvement from the hostile approach of the Bush foreign policy, there appears to be no substantive difference. Both of them support some sort of American interventionism on the Korean Peninsula for various military, economic, moral, and macho-grandstanding reasons. In reality, there is almost no real difference between Bush's and Obama's position on the issue because they all involve some sort of interventionism on the part of the United States. In fact, when you compare Bush's and Obama's overall foreign policy stances they both involve heavy amounts of US foreign intervention through various groups like the U.N., NATO, EU, WTO, etc... Both want to maintain the American imperial empire by keeping foreign military installations from the WWII, Cold War, and post-9/11 era including, but not limited to: Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, UAE, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Italy (about 700 foreign military installations in total). They both include possible military actions inside Pakistan and Iran. They want to maintain permanent WWII and Cold War era military alliances such as NATO and SEATO. They support polices of nation building inside of Iraq and Afghanistan. They both support the use of economic sanctions against nation-states they feel are misbehaving and not cooperating with the US or the UN. Essentially when it comes to foreign policy you can refer to both of these Presidents as O'Bush. Both of them are interventionists through and through.
Neither of the two major political parties, for the most part, has learned any of the lessons of the past when it comes to foreign policy. Foreign affairs is similar to the free-market in the sense that the more the US federal government gets involved in it the more it comes back to bite us in the ass. Foreign interventionism is the bailouts and stimulus packages of foreign affairs; except, we are already paying for it dearly with more to pay still.
Recent and current foreign policy related issues such as: the Iraq War, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, genocide in Darfur, the Gulf War, the Taliban, Iranian hostage crisis, Saddam Hussein, genocide in Iraq, Al Qaeda expansion, Islamic fundamentalism spreading, embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, USS Cole bombing, and even 9/11 can be traced back to one big and illegal foreign policy blunder by the US federal government? I guarantee 99.9% of Americans have never heard about this incident because the government doesn't like to admit its mistakes and when it does things that are illegal and in violation of the Constitution.
The incident I'm referring to happened in 1953, and the incident was the clandestine mission by the CIA called "Operation Ajax" to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran. No, that was not a typo...in 1953 Iran was a functional, albeit young, democracy. Surprised?
Now why would our government, the alleged messengers of freedom and democracy, violate international law and the Constitution by deposing a democratically elected government? Well ladies and gentlemen the answer is simple and not surprising...OIL. Yes, oil was a sticking point in our foreign policy even in the 1940's and 1950's. It's not really much more complicated than that in this case.
Here's a brief background on the geopolitical situation over there:
Mohammed Mosaddeq, the Prime Minister of Iran, led the charge to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which was a British owned oil company. The move to nationalize the oil in Iran was a very popular thing amongst the Iranian people, but as you can imagine the British were not too thrilled about this move. Iran, until recently then, was a British colony, and the British government wished to maintain their de facto colony inside Iran. The idea to throw a coup d'état in Iran was thrown around the British government, and, originally, the British asked President Truman for aid in this matter but he refused. Then in January 1953 the British caught a break under President Eisenhower with the appointment of John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State.
Now you're probably wondering why this is an American problem since it seems to be a purely British and Iranian affair. Well maybe it is more complicated than just oil after all. We all know that this is the era of the Cold War and that the US was in a political chess match with the USSR with the world as their game board. Iran was a strategically located country for the US because it shared several borders with the Soviet Union (modern day countries of Turkmenistan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan). A cooperative Iran would give the US another potential launch pad and strategic location for a retaliatory strike against any future attack by the Soviet Union or for a preemptive strike by the US. There were a few problems for the US in terms of cooperation from Iran since the so-called pro-Western Prime Minister was assassinated a few months earlier and soon afterward there was a strong demand for nationalization of oil companies in Iran with support from so-called pro-Soviet political party factions within the country.
Now as for the British getting an important ally in US Secretary of State Dulles...Dulles is what you'd call a "hardliner" when it came to the Soviet Union. He was vehemently anti-communist, built up strong support for NATO, and supported countries and groups fighting communists around the globe (for example the French in their war in Vietnam against the Viet Minh). He thought basically in black and white...either you're with us or you're with the communists (sound familiar...?). In his mind, Dulles didn't believe that the situation in Iran was its own unique dilemma but rather a small battlefield in the war against the communists. He jumped on the British offer for regime change in Iran like a kid on candy at Halloween. For the first time in history the CIA would be used to openly topple a foreign government (Guatemala, South Vietnam, and others were soon to follow).
Operation Ajax: The plan was quite simple really. The CIA sent in Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (ironically Kermit was the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt who many consider the father of American imperialism and interventionism) to bribe military officers and political leaders to support a coup to reinstall the Shah as an autocratic leader. It took only about 3 weeks but they got enough political leaders to support it and enough military personnel and anti-communist guerillas to surround Tehran and seize control of the country. Those 3 weeks would soon prove to be the biggest mistake, in my opinion, in American foreign policy history. It would set off a chain of events that we are still dealing with today and will continue to deal with for at least the next 100 years.
Aftermath: The Prime Minister was deposed and put on "trial" and the Shah was installed as the dictator of Iran. As promised, Iran would ally itself with the US against the Soviet Union and, as a bonus; US oil companies would get more stakes in Iranian oil. In exchange the US provided arms and modernized the Iranian military so the Shah could suppress his dissenters through force. For about 25 years the Shah would become a brutal dictator and create a fertile ground for religious extremists and anti-US sentiment to grow. Eventually that sentiment became too strong for the Shah to contain, so he fled to Egypt and eventually the United States to escape the Iranian (Islamic) Revolution perpetuated by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.
The Islamic Revolution would dramatically alter history's course of events. Two immediate and major things happened: The Ayatollah himself said he wanted to spread his Shiite Islamic Revolution around the globe and Iranian students seized the US embassy and took those inside as hostages for 444 days (Ronald Reagan took office the day they were released). Now the latter of those two you'd think would have the greatest impact and it did when it came to immediate US-Iranian relations (US and Iran broke off diplomatic ties and have never been restored to this day); however, it was the former that would have the most severe consequences. The statement by the Ayatollah to spread the revolution to rest of the world scared two countries the most: Iraq and the Soviet Union.
***First lets discuss Iraq and then we'll get back to the Soviet Union***
During this time Iran's neighbor Iraq was going through several transitions and military coups. Eventually a man by the name of Saddam Hussein seized control of the Baath Party (Iraq's dominant right-wing political party) and eventually established himself the dictator of Iraq. Iraq is a country with a majority of its people part of the Shiite or Shia sect of Islam, just like Iran. Unlike Iran though Iraq has a huge number of Kurds (an ethnic group found in modern day Turkey, Iraq, and Iran) and Sunni Muslims as well including Saddam Hussein himself (Sunnis make up about 90% of all Muslims and Shias about 10%). Saddam feared an uprising by the Shia majority in his country inspired by the Islamic Revolution of Iran, so that, along with the weakening of the Iranian military by the Ayatollah, led Saddam to launch an invasion of Iran.
Now this is where the US and the embassy hostage crisis would come into play. Obviously, many here in the United States were a little POed at Iran for taking our embassy workers hostage. They saw the Iran-Iraq war as our chance to get back at the Iranians. President Reagan would send a diplomatic envoy, a man by the name of Donald Rumsfeld, to meet with Saddam to negotiate an agreement between Iraq and the US to help fight the Iranians (the famous picture of Rumsfeld and Saddam shaking hands). To assist the Iraqis, the US would supply Saddam with money, helicopters, artillery pieces, satellite images of targets inside Iran, and probably the most controversial thing...chemical weapons. The Iran-Iraq war would end in 1989 killing over a million people (most of them civilians) on both sides with an inconclusive treaty resulting in essentially no gains by either side. The war left Iraq in massive debt and decimated its military, which was one of the largest in the world.
**As a side note during the 80's Saddam would use the money, choppers and the chemical weapons we gave him to fight the Iranians to commit acts of genocide against his own people (mainly Shiites and Kurds) including the infamous al-Anfal campaign led by Saddam's first cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid aka "Chemical Ali" in which about 200,000 Kurds were slaughtered between 1986-1989 using methods such as chemical warfare and concentration camps**
Saddam would then turn his attention to his neighboring Sunni-dominated Arab countries Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia funded Iraq heavily during the Iran-Iraq war because of the shared animosity towards the Iranian regime. In Saddam's mind, however, he was defending the entire Sunni Arab world from the radical Shia Islamic Revolution and that his neighbors were the ones who owed him a debt that he would make them pay by force. At this point the CIA was sent to Kuwait to assure the government there that the US would support them against any Iraqi invasion (this was due to the large military build-up along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border). In August of 1990 Iraq would invade Kuwait and would soon make the biggest mistake of the decade...they seized the Kuwaiti oil fields (yes oil rears its ugly head again). This would be the beginning of the first Gulf War. When Saddam launched his invasion of Kuwait the Arab League had asked the UN and other Western powers to stay out of this and not intervene because they viewed it as a purely Arab/Middle Eastern affair. Apparently, the Arab League just didn't know how much influence oil had on US foreign policy. Saudi Arabia, an autocratic repressive monarchy, struck their own deal with the United States to allow American troops on Islamic holy lands to defend the Saudis against potential Iraqi invasion. President George H.W. Bush called "Operation Desert Shield" as a "wholly defensive" campaign against Iraq. Of course this "wholly defensive" mission would soon become very offensive in the succeeding "Operation Desert Storm". Saddam's weakened military would be quickly crushed but not before killing about 300 US soldiers, Saddam firing SCUD missiles into Israel, and the burning of Kuwaiti oil fields by the retreating Iraqi army.
**According the Department of Veterans Affairs about 200,000 US veterans of the Gulf War were rendered permanently disabled (over 25% of the US forces involved in Desert Storm) through various physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wounds...the unseen casualties of war**
Now there was another serious consequence to our intervention in this purely Arab affair, but neocons will never admit to it. As I said under this US-Saudi pact US troops would set up military bases inside of Saudi Arabia (the heart of the Islamic world with the holy cities of Mecca and Medina located in its borders), and, as neocons are frequent to point out, the US military is mainly made up of Christian soldiers. Now Christianity and Islam historically don't have a pleasant relationship with each other going back to the Crusades starting in the late 11th century and continuing to Western imperialism in the early 20th century. Many Islamic conservatives saw the presence of Western Christian troops on Islamic holy soil as blasphemy, unacceptable, and as a new crusade by the US. Muslims began protesting the presence of US troops on Islamic lands; among them include the wealthy heir of a Saudi construction company named Osama Bin Laden, who had just come back from fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan (another consequence of the Islamic Revolution in Iran that I'll get to in a bit). To this day our bases and troops in Islamic holy lands are a major recruiting tool for terrorists and extremists...being free and prosperous is not!
Now after Iraq had invaded Kuwait, Osama Bin Laden (OBL) had offered his troops, a group called Al Qaeda (Arabic for "the base"), to the Saudi royal family to help them in case of Iraqi invasion. When the Saudis decided to decline his offer and instead rely on US and Western troops, OBL viewed it as an outrage and personal insult. He began publicly denouncing the Saudi monarchy and in 1992 the Saudis revoked his citizenship and deported him to Sudan. In Sudan he began building up his terrorist organization and associating himself with Egyptian hardliners such as Ayman al Zawahiri (OBL's current second-in-command). OBL used Sudan as a staging ground to launch attacks against American interests all over the Middle East and around the world. The United States soon put so much pressure on the Sudanese government forcing them to deport him to Afghanistan in 1996.
**The Arab dominated Sudanese government currently provides the US valuable intel on Al Qaeda's network in Africa and around the world since they hosted OBL during the time he built his militia into a global terrorist organization. Now the Sudanese have threatened to cut off all intel reports and stop cooperating with the US in the War on Terror if the US, UN, EU, or anyone else attempts to stop the Sudanese government from committing genocide in Darfur against ethnic Africans**
Now why would OBL go to Afghanistan? Well Afghanistan is where OBL underwent a transformation from a quiet and pious boy into a rugged Mujahedeen warrior fighting the Soviet invasion. It's where he was educated and mentored in the Islamic art of theology and defensive jihad (an Arabic word literally meaning "struggle" but has become slang for "holy war") by Abdullah Azzam, an influential Palestinian scholar in Pakistan. Most importantly though Afghanistan was under the control of militia group called the Taliban, who had a strict interpretation of the Koran (the Islamic holy book), were oppressive and brutal, and shared OBL's ideology that Sharia law (Islamic law) should be implemented worldwide. The Taliban were led by a man known as Mullah Mohammed Omar, and the Taliban seized control of most of Afghanistan in late 1996. The Taliban and Al Qaeda would join forces and allow another staging ground for OBL to launch attacks against America such as the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole bombing, hotel bombings in Saudi Arabia, and of course...9/11
Wait a second...how on earth did a terrorist group essentially seize control of almost an entire country? Well this is where the Islamic Revolution of 1979 comes back into play...remember when I said that Ayatollah Khomeini's declaration to spread the Islamic Revolution beyond Iran's borders scared two countries in particular...Iraq and the Soviet Union. We've already discussed how it impacted Iraq and the subsequent events that occurred because of it, so now let's get back to the Soviet Union and their involvement in Afghanistan...
In the late 1970's the government of Afghanistan was a quasi pro-Marxist regime making it a natural ally of the communist Soviet Union. The USSR had sent military advisors and equipment to assist the Afghan government because during that time a low level Islamic-orientated insurgency called the Mujahedeen rooted in Pakistan was starting to cause trouble for the Afghan government and in turn the Soviet government. Even before the Islamic Revolution in 1979 the Soviets had been making plans to intervene in Afghanistan on behalf of the government there. At this point in time President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order (extended by President Reagan's administration) to provide funds and arms such as propaganda tapes, stinger missiles, automatic weapons and anti-tank weapons to the Mujahedeen and other anti-government insurgencies in Afghanistan (thus getting the US involved in another conflict). Then the Islamic Revolution occurred in Iran (Afghanistan's and the Soviet Union's neighbor) in March 1979 and in December of 1979 the Soviets decided to invade Afghanistan to prevent the Islamic Revolution from further inspiring militants to join the Mujahedeen. Unfortunately for the Soviets their invasion of Afghanistan ended up doing that anyway and then some. There was a call to arms in the Arab world to fight a defensive jihad against the Soviet invasion. Many young Muslims, including OBL, answered that call after almost a decade the Soviets were eventually defeated and forced to retreat. Incidentally the Soviet failure in Afghanistan has been equated to the US failure in Vietnam because it depleted their resources, bankrupted their treasury and caused regime change to occur in the Soviet Union (some argue that the Afghan disaster is what caused the Soviet Union to crumble). Of course with the Soviets retreating and Afghanistan's government severely weakened there was a huge power vacuum that someone had to fill...and someone would.
Towards the end of the Soviet-Afghan war and for a few years afterwards a group of religious students in Pakistan started a movement, which called for implementation of Sharia Law in Afghanistan and Pakistan and for a strict interpretation of the Koran. This group of religious students would call themselves the Taliban, which simply means "students". Their movement would pick up a lot of steam with a few military victories on the Afghan-Pakistan border against local warlords, who essentially ruled Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out. In 1996 the Taliban would capture Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, and control all but the northern-most part of the country. The northern-most part of the country was ruled by a man named Ahmad Shad Massoud, the former Defense Minister of Afghanistan, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war, and the head of the Northern Alliance (the militia group that controlled the north of Afghanistan). Massoud had fought the Taliban to a standstill in mid-2001 and it looked to be a stalemate between the two factions. As luck would have it though for the Taliban a new ally and his Arab army arrived in 1996 and would provide key support for the Taliban regime. This ally was of course OBL. OBL had been using Afghanistan since 1996 to launch attacks against the US; he had a huge attack planned for which he would require the Taliban's help. He, of course, was planning the September 11, 2001 attacks, and knew that the US would retaliate fiercely if his plan succeeded. Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, offered OBL a deal: kill Massoud in exchange for protection from US onslaught. OBL agreed and on September 9 (two days before 9/11) two Al Qaeda operatives disguised as TV reporters blew themselves up at a news conference killing Ahmad Shah Massoud.
**After the 9/11 attacks occurred and the US invaded Afghanistan it would be the Northern Alliance that would overthrow the Taliban and assist in the hunt for OBL. Afghanistan's new president Hamid Karzai the next year would declare Massoud to be a national hero of Afghanistan and the day of his death is observed as a national holiday**
Almost 7 years later we still have not captured or killed OBL, Ayman al Zawahiri, or Mullah Omar, and now we are bogged down in a war in Iraq based on false claims of WMDs and a false connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. We are also now threatening war with Iran (the center of this foreign policy nightmare), which would open up a third front in this conflict and would most certainly bring back the draft. Now why is all of this relevant? Every single crisis and tragedy that I mentioned can be traced back to one event...the CIA's overthrow of a democratically elected government of Iran in Operation Ajax. More importantly it reflects the dangers and disasters that can and will occur if the United States continues a foreign policy of interventionism around the world. The world functioned fine before the US got involved and it will continue to function long after the US disappears. Neither of the two major parties are serious debating reform in our foreign policy to that of non-interventionist (NOT isolationist as many seem to want to falsely call it) instead of this interventionist foreign policy we've had since the late 19th century that has brought us almost nothing except disaster, debt, and death.
I just want to leave all of you something to think about before I wrap this up. This is not my own connections drawn here, but rather these are historical conclusions drawn by better men and women before me that I agree with. All of this in the aforementioned could have been avoided if we had not illegally used the CIA to topple a democratic government inside Iran, a country on the other side of the world and with no issue that was none of the United States' concern, and had instead kept our hands off of a situation we had little to no understanding of. I'm not saying we should become isolationists, but we should learn more about different areas of the world culturally, politically, economically, spiritually, etc. before we start making rash foreign policy decisions like toppling democracies and installing puppet dictators. President Obama should take a step back and realize the insanity of doing the same foreign policy tricks again and again. Perhaps President Obama will focus on a Constitutional foreign policy of self-defense...somehow I doubt it.
Categories: Foreign Policy, Globalism, US Constitution, Ethics, History, War/Military, World Affairs
Tags:
Showing comments 1—1 of 1
Posted 11/01/09 7:43 PM
Ernie Davidson
Swannanoa, NC | What an excellent article! We can only hope that someone will see the wisdom of a non-interventionist policy before more American lives are lost needlessly in unconstitutional "wars" around the globe. |
You must be a member to post comments. [Become a member]
|
