IRAN - AMERICA'S NEXT STEPS

 

[Published in the Sunday Guardian of India: After Iran: America’s Next Steps]

What happens after the shooting stops?

This is Washington, DC’s main topic of conversation in the wake of Epic Fury annihilating Iran’s leadership.

The answer is fundamental to the balance of President Donald Trump’s Administration.  What follows removing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro?  What is next in Iran?  What happens if the Cuban Communists fall?

America has shown the world that it is the most formidable military power in history.  Unfortunately, during the 21^st Century, America has also shown its ability to lose the peace after winning the war.

With the end of the Cold War, America guiding nations toward pro-West free societies has ranged from the “good”, to the “bad”, to the “ugly”.

SOVIET EMPIRE

The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, marked the end of 72 years of tyranny for Russia and many “captive” nations.  The countries of the USSR, the Baltics, and Eastern Europe had viable opposition elements.  Most Warsaw Pact nations were viable democracies before being conquered by the Nazis and Soviets.

Credible leaders, such as Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel, were ready to step in.  Dissident movements like Solidarity and Samizdat provided a core of policy and political activists to fill the power vacuum as Eastern European leaders fell.

The United States did not “nation build”.  It offered important support to the emerging leaders who were shaking off generations of oppression.

Bipartisanship dominated this effort.  The Clinton State Department and Speaker Newt Gingrich hosted delegations from the new nations to personally see Congress in action.  Prime Ministers, General Secretaries, and Parliamentary leaders spent days being mentored by the Clerk of the House and the House’s Chief Administrative Officer on how voting, legislative processes, and constituent services could be adopted to their respective settings.

Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, under a State Department contract, held week-long training sessions for Members of various Parliaments.  Senators, Members of Congress, and the House’s Chief Administrative Officer conducted these interactive seminars to provide real world, hands-on, insights on how to effectively represent their country’s interests while managing debate and opposing views.

The European Union stepped in to help align legal practices and guide the new nations into compliance and ultimately membership in the European Union (EU).  Nonprofits, such as the Atlantic Council and The European Institute facilitated dialogue with EU leaders and regional stakeholders.  European Ambassadors, posted both the U.S. and in Eastern Europe, served as coaches and mentors to their counterparts.

The key to this success was allowing each nation to evolve at its own pace based upon its own unique identity, history, and culture.  Adoption of “best practices” and “lessons learned” were offered but not mandated.

The only failure was Russia.  While Duma Members enthusiastically participated in Harvard’s courses, they could not anticipate that Boris Yelstin’s alcoholism and complicity in corruption would lead to the deal that brought Vladimir Putin to power.

AFGHANISTAN

The successes of Eastern Europe were totally lost on the Neo-Conservatives (NeoCons) that dominated the inner circles of President George W. Bush.

Afghanistan was a feudal society, divided among villages elders, clergy, and warlords, all owing titular loyalty to the Shah. 

Mohammadzai tribal leaders ruled Afghanistan for 155 years. The last Shah was toppled in a Soviet-backed coup in April 1978.  What followed were years of unrest.  This included civil war, the assassination of the Soviet puppet leader, and the full-scale invasion and occupation of the country by Soviet troops in December 1979.

A long guerilla war was waged by the pro-West Northern Alliance and Islamist factions known as the Mujahideen.  Eventually, the most radical of the factions, the Taliban, dominated the Mujahideen.

The Soviet withdrawal on April 14, 1988, left an uneasy coalition government between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. The leader of the Northern Alliance was assassinated days before the 9-11 attack on America.  These events consolidated Taliban control but also led to the United States toppling the regime in December 2001.

The U.S. chose to “nation build”.  Ignoring history and culture, Bush officials installed Hamid Karzai in December 2001, after the Taliban government was overthrown.  Karzai had been the CIA’s “paymaster” for moving funds to Afghan guerillas.  He would prove to be corrupt and untrustworthy, selling the country’s mineral rights to China for $40 million to his overseas bank accounts.

Bush officials prevented the reemergence of the traditional feudal society and refused to bring back to Shah’s family for national unification.  Instead, they attempted to establish Western Democracy with a tight timetable of before the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. The fact that it took Western Europe over 600 years to evolve from feudalism to true representative government was lost in the arrogance of occupation.

Billions of dollars poured into the country for training and infrastructure, much of it wasted and defrauded by contractors and Afghan elites.

The weakened local communities depended on NATO and U.S. forces to keep the peace, while Western values and processes were force feed to the populace. This became fertile ground for the Taliban to arise and win. Karzai stole the 2009 Presidential election against several credible opponents. His crumbling credibility, rampant corruption, and suppression of dissent placed Afghanistan in a death spiral. 

In September 2014, Ashraf Ghani, one of two opposition candidates in the 2009 stolen election became President.  It was too little too late.  The Taliban were dominating the battlefield and ultimately the negotiations for retaking power.  Their forces rolled into Kabul on August 15, 2021, after a disastrous withdrawal of American forces.

IRAQ

In 2003, Bush’s Neocons waged a war based on highly questionable intelligence.  They proceeded to line their pockets with billions in bogus contracts while wrecking the country.

The U.S. likes to establish highly centralized governments.  This ignores the federal system and local governance that made America a success.  Partly, centralization is lazy.  Having everything inside the highly fortified Baghdad “Green Zone” meant diplomats, bureaucrats, and contractors could avoid learning anything about the real situation and not leave the comforts of Western food and entertainment.

Unfortunately, this was the recipe for disaster.  Rulers, going back to 1639, understood that Iraq was three separate nations: the Kurds in the north; the Shiites along the coast; and the Sunnis in the center. The British bundled Iraq together after the First World War to consolidate their hold through a puppet King.  This fiction fell apart in 1958 when the Ba’ath Party took control and continued to rule a contrived unitary state.  Saddam Hussein emerged as dictator in 1988.

The 2003 war toppled Hussein, ushering in twenty years of waste, fraud, abuse.  Instead of pursuing a federal system, Bush occupation officials forced a strong unitary state.  It was inevitable that the three historic areas would bridle at this contrivance. 

The most tragic were the Kurds.  They had enjoyed semi-independence with the establishment of a “no fly zone” over their region since the 1991 war.  They had oil and a strong traditional governance structure.  They reached out to Western companies to help develop their lands and were crushed by the U.S. State Department.

One example says it all.

Kurdistan is populated by small villages isolated in deep valleys by high mountain ridges.  These small villages enjoy ample water as each is situated by small streams. This was ideal for deploying small immersible turbines that could generate electricity for each village. A U.S. firm had the proven technology, and a strategic partnership was forged to bring electricity throughout rural Kurdistan.

Enter the U.S. State Department.  Bush officials halted the partnership asserting that only electricity generated by hydroelectric dams on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers would suffice.  They declared that decentralized electricity would weaken the Central Baghdad Government.  The Kurds and their U.S. company pointed out that (1) there was no plan to create hydroelectric dams to serve the entire country, (2) a network of power lines and substations would be easy targets for sabotage and impossible to defend, and (3) the region was subject to earthquakes that would disrupt a centralized grid.  The Bush bureaucrats refused to listen and stopped the project.  To this day, these villages are without electricity.

THE FUTURE

Venezuela has a viable opposition movement that had the last election stolen.  It has a Nobel Prize winner, María Corina Machado, as its titular head.  Trump seems content to let Interim President Delcy Rodriguez do the heavy lifting of steering the country back to credibility.  Her public statements distance her from “Washington’s Orders”, but her actions display begrudging cooperation.  Behind the scenes “carrots and sticks” are probably guiding the relationship. What happens next is going to be driven by internal forces, with the U.S. incentivizing a pro-West and free society outcome. Iran has a viable opposition inside and outside the country.  This includes the extensive Iranian diaspora residing in the United States and other countries.     The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) was formed in 1981.  It is a 460-member coalition “committed to a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic”. The NCRI’s mission is to “hold free elections within six months of the fall of the theocracy and to ensure a peaceful transition of power to elected representatives”. Just as Epic Fury started, Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the NCRI, announced the formation of a Provisional Government by the NCRI to transfer sovereignty to the people of Iran and establish a Democratic Republic based on a long established ten-point plan. The Ten-Point Plan was presented by Maryam Rajavi in December 2006 at a session of the Council of Europe. The NCRI’s plan for the future is, “a pluralistic republic based on the separation of religion and state, gender equality, the abolition of the death penalty, peace, coexistence, the elimination of double oppression against Iran’s ethnic and national minorities, and a non-nuclear Iran”. This well-organized effort, along with the possible symbolic national leader, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, could quickly fill the void as the current regime is toppled. There truly is hope after the bombs…as long as Trump and his team learn from the past.

AFGHANISTAN's TRAGIC LEGACY

 

[Published in the Sunday Guardian of India - 9/11’s prologue and epilogue - The Sunday Guardian Live]

For those old enough to remember, 11 September 2001, 9.03 a.m. is burned into our collective memory. It was at that moment that United Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

For the first time since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Americans were collectively experiencing horrifying carnage from a coordinated attack on their soil.

The final accounting was devastating: 2,977 killed and over 25,000 injured. The death toll continues to climb as first responders and building survivors perish from respiratory conditions caused by inhaling the chemical-laden smoke. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in human history.

The 911 attacks were central to Osama bin Laden’s goal of luring infidel governments into “long wars of attrition in Muslim countries, attracting large numbers of jihadists who would never surrender”. Bin Laden believed this would lead to economic collapse of the infidels, by “bleeding” them dry. Bin Laden outlined his strategy of “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy” in a 2004 tape released through Al Jazeera.

The driving force behind Bin Laden’s strategy was Wahhabism, a strict, anti-Western version of Sunni Islam.

It all began with the Saudi Royal Family’s ties to Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792). Wahhab envisioned a “pure” form of Islam that purged most worldly practices (heresies), oppressed women, and promoted violence against nonbelievers (infidels), including Muslims who differed with his sect. This extremely conservative and violent form of Islam might have died out in the sands of central Arabia were it not for a timely alliance with a local tribal leader, Muhammad bin Saud.

Bin Saud led a minor tribe, until he and Wahhab realized the power of merging Sunni fanaticism with armed warriors. Wahhab’s daughter married Saud’s son, merging their two blood lines to this day. The House of Saud and its warriors rapidly expanded throughout the Arabia Peninsula, fueled by Wahhabism.

In the early 20^th century, Saudi leader, Ibn Saud, consolidated his permanent hold over the Arabian Peninsula. Control of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest sites, gave the Saud family the power to promote Wahhabism as the dominant interpretation of Sunni Islam.

In the mid-1970s, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia used the flood of oil revenue to become the “McDonalds of Madrasas”.

Religious schools and new mosques popped up throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, designed to spread the cult of Wahhabism. Pakistan became a major hub for turning Wahhabi madrasa graduates into dedicated terrorists.

Wahhabi terrorists built a diffused terrorist network. Then some decided to exploit the perpetual bloodfest in Afghanistan.

In 1973, a military coup deposed the last king of Afghanistan. In 1978, Soviet-backed guerrillas killed the military leaders and seized control. This ignited an Afghan civil war, which pitted proxy forces against each other. These forces were backed by Pakistan, China, Islamists (known as the Mujahideen), and the Soviets.

During 1979, the Soviet puppet leader was assassinated and another installed. On 24 December 1979, the Soviet Union took direct action by invading Afghanistan, killing their most recent puppet President, and bringing over 100,000 military personnel into the country. A vicious war erupted between the Soviet military and various Afghan guerrilla factions. Over two million Afghans died.

The Reagan Administration supported the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgents, primarily aiding the secular pro-west Northern Alliance. Arab nations supported the Mujahideen. Osama bin Laden entered the insurgent caldera as a Mujahideen financier and fighter. The Soviets, realizing their occupation was failing, removed their troops and equipment in 1988, leaving behind another puppet government.

After the Soviet Union withdrawal, calls for reunifying Afghanistan by re-establishing the monarchy and strengthening regional leadership went unheeded. Installing a faction-ravaged parliamentary system only led to a new civil war.

By September 1994, the grisly chaos, and US ambivalence about Afghanistan, opened the door for the Taliban, graduates from Pakistan’s Wahhabi madrasas, to begin their crusade to take control of the country. By 1998, the Taliban controlled 90% of Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden, and his Al-Qaeda warriors, made Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan their new base of operations. In exchange, Bin Laden helped the Taliban eliminate their remaining opponents throughout Afghanistan. Bin Laden completed his end of the bargain on 9 September 2001, when Al-Qaeda suicide bombers disguised as a television camera crew blew up Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic, pro-West leader of the Northern Alliance.

Two days later, Bin Laden set his “lure”, with the hijacking of four planes and turning them into guided bombs headed to New York City and Washington, DC.

Osama bin Laden’s “lure” strategy worked. 911 pulled America into Afghanistan.

The recent horrors prove Bin Laden’s strategy continues to shape events.

THE ROAD TO 911

[Part of Constituting America’s 90 Day Study - Days that Shaped America]

For those old enough to remember, September 11, 2001, 9:03 a.m. is burned into our collective memory.  It was at that moment that United Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. 

Everyone was watching.  American Airlines Flight 11 had crashed into the North Tower seventeen minutes earlier.  For those few moments there was uncertainty whether the first crash was a tragic accident.  Then, on live television, the South Tower fire ball vividly announced to the world that America was under attack.

The nightmare continued.  As horrifying images of people trapped in the burning towers riveted the nation, news broke at 9:37 a.m. that American Flight 77 had ploughed into the Pentagon.

For the first time since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Americans were collectively experiencing full scale carnage from a coordinated attack on their soil.

The horror continued as the twin towers collapsed, sending clouds of debris throughout lower Manhattan and igniting fires in adjoining buildings.  Questions filled the minds of government officials and every citizen:  How many more planes?  What were their targets? How many have died?  Who is doing this to us?

At 10:03 a.m., word came that United Flight 93 had crashed into a Pennsylvania field.  Speculation exploded as to what happened.  Later investigations revealed that Flight 93 passengers, alerted by cell phone calls of the earlier attacks, revolted causing the plane to crash.  Their heroism prevented this final hijacked plane from destroying the U.S. Capitol Building.

The final accounting was devastating: 2,977 killed and over 25,000 injured.  The death toll continues to climb to this day as first responders and building survivors perish from respiratory conditions caused by inhaling the chemical-laden smoke.  It was the deadliest terrorist attack in human history.

How this happened, why this happened, and what happened next compounds the tragedy.

Nineteen terrorists, most from Saudi Arabia, were part a radical Islamic terrorist organization called al-Qaeda “the Base”.  This was the name given the training camp for the radical Islamicists who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani, was the primary organizer of the attack. Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi, was the leader and financier. Their plan was based upon an earlier failed effort in the Philippines.  It was mapped out in late 1998.  Bin Laden personally recruited the team, drawn from experienced terrorists.  They insinuated themselves into the U.S., with several attending pilot training classes.  Five-man teams would board the four planes, overpower the pilots, and fly them as bombs into significant buildings. 

They banked on plane crews and passengers responding to decades of “normal” hijackings.  They would assume the plane would be commandeered, flown to a new location, demands would be made, and everyone would live.  This explains the passivity on the first three planes.  Flight 93 was different, because it was delayed in its departure, allowing time for passengers to learn about the fate of the other planes.  Last minute problems also reduced the Flight 93 hijacker team to only four.

The driving force behind the attack was Wahhabism, a highly strict, anti-Western version of Sunni Islam.  

The Saudi Royal Family owes its rise to power to Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792).  He envisioned a “pure” form of Islam that purged most worldly practices (heresies), oppressed women, and endorsed violence against nonbelievers (infidels), including Muslims who differed with his sect.  This extremely conservative and violent form of Islam might have died out in the sands of central Arabia were in not for a timely alliance with a local tribal leader, Muhammad bin Saud.

The House of Saud was just another minor tribe, until the two Muhammads realized the power of merging Sunni fanaticism with armed warriors.  Wahhab’s daughter married Saud’s son, merging their two blood lines to this day.  The House of Saud and its warriors rapidly expanded throughout the Arabia Peninsul fueled by Wahhabi fanaticism.  These various conflicts always included destruction of holy sites of rival sects and tribes.  While done in the name of “purification”, the result was erasing the physical touchstones of rival cultures and governments.

In the early 20^th Century, Saudi leader, ibn Saud, expertly exploited the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and alliances with European Powers, to consolidate his permanent hold over the Arabian Peninsula.  Control of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest sites, gave the House of Saud the power to promote Wahhabism as the dominant interpretation of Sunni Islam.  This included internally contradictory components of calling for eradicating infidels while growing rich from Christian consumption of oil and pursuing lavish hedonism when not in public view.

In the mid-1970s Saudi Arabia used the flood of oil revenue to become the “McDonalds of Madrassas”.  Religious schools and new Mosques popped up throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.  This building boom had nothing to do with education and everything to do with spreading the cult of Wahhabism.  Pakistan became a major hub for turning Wahhabi madrassas graduates into dedicated terrorists.

Wahhabism may have remained a violent, dangerous, but diffused movement, except it found fertile soil in Afghanistan. 

Afghanistan was called the graveyard of empires as its rugged terrain and fierce tribal warriors thwarted potential conquerors for centuries.  In 1973, the last king of Afghanistan was deposed leading to years of instability.  In April 1978, the opposition Communist Party seized control in a bloody coup. The communist tried to brutally consolidate power, which ignited a civil war among factions supported by Pakistan, China, Islamists (known as the Mujahideen), and the Soviet Union.  Amidst the chaos, U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubbs was killed on February 14, 1979.

On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, killing their ineffectual puppet President, and ultimately bringing over 100,000 military personnel into the country.  What followed was a vicious war between the Soviet military and various Afghan guerrilla factions.  Over 2 million Afghans died.

The Reagan Administration covertly supported the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgents, primarily aiding the secular pro-west Northern Alliance.  Arab nations supported the Mujahideen.  Bin Laden entered the insurgent caldera as a Mujahideen financier and fighter.  By 1988, the Soviets realized their occupation had failed.  They removed their troops, leaving behind another puppet government and Soviet trained military.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Afghanistan was finally free.  Unfortunately, calls for reunifying the country by reestablishing the monarchy and strengthening regional leadership went unheeded.  Attempts at recreating the pre-invasion faction ravaged parliamentary system only led to new rounds of civil war. 

In September 1994, the weak U.S. response opened the door for the Taliban, graduates from Pakistan’s Wahhabi madrassas, to launch their crusade to take control of Afghanistan.  By 1998, the Taliban controlled 90% of the country. 

Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda warriors made Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan their new base of operations.  In exchange, Bin Laden helped the Taliban eliminate their remaining opponents.  This was accomplished on September 9, 2001, when suicide bombers disguised as a television camera crew blew-up Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic, pro-west leader of the Northern Alliance.

Two days later, Bin Laden’s plan to establish al-Qaeda as the global leader of Islamic terrorism was implemented with hijacking four planes and turning them into guided bombs.

The 9-11 attacks, along with the earlier support against the Soviets in Afghanistan, was part of Bin Laden’s goal to lure infidel governments into “long wars of attrition in Muslim countries, attracting large numbers of jihadists who would never surrender”. He believed this would lead to economic collapse of the infidels, by "bleeding" them dry.  Bin Laden outlined his strategy of "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy" in a 2004 tape released through Al Jazeera.

On September 14, amidst the World Trade Center rubble, President George W. Bush addressed those recovering bodies and extinguishing fires using a bullhorn:

“The nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens”

A rescue worker yelled, “I can't hear you!”

President Bush spontaneously responded: “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

Twenty-three days later, on October 7, 2001, American and British warplanes, supplemented by cruise missiles fired from naval vessels, began destroying Taliban operations in Afghanistan.

U.S. Special forces entered Afghanistan.  Working the Northern Alliance, they defeated major Taliban units. They occupied Kabul, the Afghan Capital on November 13, 2001.

On May 2, 2011, U.S. Special Forces raided an al-Qaeda compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, killing Osama bin Laden.