-Caveat Lector-
~~for educational purposes only~~
[Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]
A History of Folly
by Adam Young
"How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic
countries there is vitriolic hatred for America?
I'll tell you how I respond: I'm amazed. I just
can't believe it, because I know how good we
are." --President George W. Bush
Before we celebrate the bombings of Afghanistan with hope of their
expansion to other countries, let's pause and take a look back
on the past fifty years of U.S. folly in the Middle East.
1949--Syria
Defeat in the war against Israel discredits the ruling
French-allied civilian regime. American agents and
interests take the opportunity to provide support to
Colonel Husni az-Zaim in a coup against the civilian
regime. American agents call az-Zaim "our boy" and
"Husni," but when they arrive to inform the new dictator
whom to appoint as his ambassadors and cabinet, az-Zaim
orders them to "stand at attention" and to address him
as "His Excellency." Syria turns against the U.S. and
descends into a series of coups and counter-coups and
police-state government by quasi-military regimes.
1952--Egypt
American influence and assistance backs the conspiracy
of Gammal Abdel Nasser's Free Officers to oust the
Egyptian royal family, the British post-colonial client
regime in Egypt. The U.S. expects Nasser to support
Washington's anti-Soviet alliance in the Middle East,
dubbed the Baghdad Pact, but he turns against the U.S.
U.S. agents support Colonel Mohammad Naguib's attempt
to overthrow Nasser, as well as later assassination
attempts.
In 1956, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
rescinds pledges of foreign aid for the Aswan Dam
project. In response, Nassar uses this as a pretext
to nationalize the Suez Canal, and uses its toll revenue
to fund the dam. Britain, France, and Israel in response
launch a joint invasion of Egypt with plans to occupy
the Suez Canal. Arab support for the U.S. reaches its
highest point when President Eisenhower, out of a
distaste for European colonialism and European
intervention in the Middle East, pressures the invading
forces to abandon their invasion of Egypt.
1953--Iran
After the government announces plans to grant the Soviet
Union a territorial oil franchise in Northern Iran, modeled
on the British one in the south for the British-owned
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a local leader named Mohammed
Mosaddeq leads the successful popular movement to oppose
the grant to the Soviets and pushes further to nationalize
all foreign oil facilities. Mosaddeq's popularity and
influence increase to the degree that the shah appoints
him prime minister. Faced with economic and political
turmoil, the shah attempts to remove Mosaddeq but is met
with mobs and mass public demonstrations, causing the shah
to flee the country. The CIA then backs Mosaddeq's
opponents, who then overthrow his administration and
sentence him to house arrest for the rest of his life.
The shah is restored and becomes America's best friend
and now controls the nationalized British oil facilities
as well. Eventually, opposition to the shah's autocracy
and U.S. political domination, as well as the Savak--the
U.S.-trained Iranian secret police--grows into a
nationalist revolution to oust the shah and the West,
and in 1979, Iran too turns against the U.S.
1958--Iraq
In opposition to the British-client Iraqi regime, and in
opposition also to Nasser's growing influence in Iraq,
the bloodthirsty Colonel Kassem spearheads the
American-supported military coup to overthrow the Iraqi
royal family. The king and crown prince and most of the
royal family are executed, and the prime minister is
murdered by a mob. Years later, after Kassem has alienated
all his allies except the Soviet Union and is overthrown
and executed in 1963, United States support swings to a
small group called the Ba'th Socialist Party. After many
twists and turns, coups and elections, coups and revolutions,
Saddam Hussein emerges as president of Iraq in 1976 after
leading the coup that, with American insistence, installed
that regime in 1968.
1958--Lebanon
After the Iraqi monarchy is overthrown, the president of
Lebanon requests U.S. military intervention to save his
tottering regime from insurrections of United Arab Republican
sympathizers. U.S. Marines arrive the next day in Beirut.
Lebanon enters into a thirty-five-year period of instability
and civil war.
1969--Libya
In 1959, oil is discovered, which transforms the country. To
elbow out the British, American support flows to a young
reformist colonel in the Libyan army, Muammar al-Khadafy,
who, once in power, turns against his U.S. sponsors, under
the pretext of Western exploitation of Arab oil. He
confiscates and nationalizes oil facilities and assets,
including those of the local Jewish and Italian communities.
1980--Iraq
With the Islamic revolution in Iran, the U.S. tilts toward
Iraq and Saddam Hussein as its proxy against the Iranians.
Iraq and Hussein become America's front line in its attempt
to crush the Islamic revolution in Iran. Armed and financed
by Uncle Sam, Saddam invades Iran in 1980. The war would
last for eight years and kill nearly a million people. Iraq
is given advice and intelligence from the CIA and the
Pentagon, and U.S. and British administrations provide
Iraq with chemical and biological weapons-making knowledge
and materiel to use against the Iranians. We all know how
this turned out, but this time was different. The U.S.
turned on Saddam.
1983--Lebanon
With the country invaded by Israel and under threat of Syrian
domination, American Marine "Peacekeepers" are shipped to
Beirut. Opposition to their presence leads to the suicide
bombing of the barracks. Some 309 Americans are killed,
including the CIA's Mideast staff. In 1985, Lebanese CIA
agents detonate a truck bomb in Beirut in an attempt to
assassinate Sheikh Fadlallah, leader of the Hezbollah
faction suspected of blowing up the American barracks two
years earlier. Eighty-three civilians are killed and 240
wounded; Sheikh Fadlallah walks out of the mosque fifteen
minutes later.
1986--Libya
In retaliation for the terrorist bombing of a Berlin nightclub
that killed a U.S. soldier, President Reagan bombs Libya,
causing 130 deaths, including civilians near the French
embassy. Khadafy's own residence is targeted, killing his
adopted infant daughter, in an attempt to assassinate him.
Libya is deliberately chosen as the target because it lacks
defenses against air bombing. A few months later, the U.S.
admits to arms-trading with Iran, a state that the U.S.
openly calls an instigator of "international terrorism,"
and one that is an ally of Libya. Arab cynicism about U.S.
intentions and trustworthiness could only increase. The
bombing of Pan Am 103 is considered revenge for these
attacks on Libya.
1991--Iraq & Kuwait
After the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Gillespie, informs
Saddam that the U.S. would have no opinion on Iraq's
occupation of its "nineteenth province," the U.S. seizes
the opportunity to justify its post-cold war internationalism
by dubbing Saddam the "new Hitler." After mass slaughter and
defeat, crippling sanctions and daily bombardment follow to
persuade the Iraqi people that perhaps they would be better
off without Saddam. Other observers, however, believe that
the sanctions exist to prop up the price of oil.
1995--Afghanistan
The U.S. covertly aids the Taliban militia in its drive to
end the post-Soviet-Afghani civil war. The U.S. sides with
fundamentalist forces in Afghanistan--but not in Egypt,
Algeria, or Saudi Arabia, where they are tortured and
suppressed--in a foreign theater of the U.S. drug war.
The U.S. government and the fundamentalist opposition to
drugs would conjoin in an alliance to drive out Central
Asian opium production.
1996--Iraq
President Clinton instructs the CIA to support and aid the
Iraqi opposition forces in an operation to finally do away
with Saddam Hussein. Iraqi exiles and refugees are trained
and armed in the northern no-fly zone to descend on Baghdad.
Sympathetic army generals within the regime are cultivated
to assassinate Hussein, and efforts to destabilize Iraq
begin--such as random car bombings as well as bombings of
civilian public places.This plot collapses, however, as
Saddam's spies have infiltrated the Kurds. Many Kurds back
Saddam and turn on the U.S.-Kurdish faction. CIA agents in
Kurdistan run for their lives, abandoning allies and tons
of equipment and documents, and the network within Iraq is
exposed and eliminated. This catastrophic failure leads to
the firing of CIA chief John Deutch. Commentator Eric
Margolis dubs this "Clinton's Bay of Camels," after JFK's
Bay of Pigs fiasco.
1998--The Sudan & Afghanistan:
President Clinton, in the midst of impeachment, rocket
attacks camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in
the Sudan, ostensibly to punish suspected terrorist Osama
bin Laden for his involvement in the bombing of two American
embassies in Africa. After 1945, the U.S. schemed to eject
the bankrupt British and French colonial empires in the
Middle East--to elbow out Soviet influence, but, more
likely, to secure political control over its oil. America's
Oil Raj, as some commentators call the interdependent network
of political, monetary, and military relationships--mirroring
Britain's collection of territories and petty kingdoms on
the Indian subcontinent--consists of the old imposed
artificial colonial client states created by Britain and
France. Outside of this "Oil Raj" exists a trade-sanction
regime that the U.S. maintains on Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen,
Libya, Algeria, the Sudan, Afghanistan, and, until recently,
India and Pakistan--all some of the poorest places in the
world.
The Cycle Continues
The U.S. sends billions in financial and military aid to
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan each year to prop up these
regimes against "fundamentalist" popular Islamic movements
(which are the only way dissent can be expressed in these
regimes, since Islam is the only thing these rulers can't
outlaw). The U.S. also gives political support to corrupt
and oppressive dictatorships, such as exist in Algeria and
Tunisia. Everywhere, the U.S. favors and aids the status
quo of political repression and dictatorship. This hypocrisy
is what fuels Arab and Muslim anger.
Foreign Affairs commentator Eric Margolis
<http://www.foreigncorrespondent.com/> noted recently the
continuing cycle of American political involvement in the
Middle East. He points out that in nearly every decade since
the mid-fifties, a president of the United States has faced
a challenge of a Muslim peril, an Arab or Muslim bogeyman
that is everywhere and nowhere--Nasser, Khomeni, Khadafy,
Saddam, and, now, bin Laden. And every time, the results
have been the same: U.S. demonizes this single man, only
to watch him grow into a popular hero of the Arab masses--the
Arabic or Islamic David that dares to stand up and confront
the U.S. oil dominion over the Arab world and the economic
and political distortion that the US leaves in its wake.
Now, the cycle is beginning again with Bill Clinton, George
W. Bush, and Osama bin Laden. And it has been reported that
in the Middle East over the past few years, Osama has become
the most common name for newborn boys.
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