|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Plus
ça change, plus ça devient le même. French proverb During
the presidential campaign, many believed Trump when he said that he would
combat jihadism and defend Israel. I was always skeptical. But how to reason
from the evidence? What policies will be diagnostic of Trump’s direction? In
a Foreign Affairs piece published
before Trump took his oath (Part 1),
I wrote that if Trump were to: 1) dry off and block the
channels that supply jihadists with weapons; 2) support the Rojava Revolution in Syria; and 3) expose the
ties between PLO/Fatah and Iran we
would know that the new administration really means to oppose jihadism and
protect the Israeli state. I
believe that Trump is already showing his colors, and that he will do none of
these things. But that is for a later article. For the purposes of this
piece, let us give Trump the benefit of the doubt and ask ourselves: What is
a reasonable prior? In other words, even supposing that Trump really had meant what he promised, what was
the probability that he could get it done? That
probability depends on the ideology
and structure of the US system.
Formally and officially, the president calls the shots. But reality might be
different. How to know this reality? We must study the past. At
HIR, to free ourselves from the public apologetics of those who make of this
planet a chessboard, we try to find patterns in the history of their behaviors—their public policies—which
may allow us to infer intentions and goals (‘ideology’). At the same time, we
wish to produce a reasonable model of the institutional articulations
(‘structure’) that may explain why certain policies are tenaciously
consistent over long periods of time. In
this article—Part 2 of the series—I shall point out the tenacious
consistency: a US policy tradition in favor of jihadism. In Part 3,
I explain how what seems ‘pro-Israel’ isn’t always. In particular, I will
focus on the Trump-Netanyahu summit, which has been interpreted as a
‘pro-Israeli’ development. (I think it is pro-Iranian.) In Part 4,
I explain how the pro-jihadi and anti-Israel tradition is the product of an institutional
engine—a bureaucratic machinery—whose moving parts will seem peculiar to any
who thought the US system was democratic. In Part 5
I examine who makes foreign policy for Trump. By comparing them to top
officeholders of past administrations we can discover whether the Trump team
really does have a different bias or if it is just one more incarnation of a
trans-generational team. With this machinery exposed, we may evaluate the probability
that Trump can modify the pro-jihadi tradition (even assuming he wants to). In Part 6
I address the interesting question: Why all that Mexico-bashing? Is it really
necessary? It is, indeed, if the US power elite is to adroitly manage the
psychological warfare game they are engaged in. The bullying of Mexico is a
symbolic tool that allows the US bosses to push around the world system by
using the levers of political grammar.
The variegated examples of Trump’s seemingly erratic behavior, I will show,
coalesce into a coherent and purposeful plan. In Part 7
I shall do my best to explain why it makes sense for the US power elite to
want to strengthen jihadism. This will require bootstrapping some important
history that, unfortunately, is not usually taught in school. But
first things first. I proceed, below, to examine the longstanding pro-jihadi
pattern in US foreign policy. A pro-jihadi tradition? This
argument is perforce a polemic, for US officeholders repeat endlessly to the
media that they fight jihadism. My
readers are thus placed on notice and advised to scrutinize my claims; I urge
them to try and refute me, in fact, for this is what science requires. Any who
wish to refute the claim that the US has had a pro-jihadi tradition will do
well to study the case of Iran. Why? Because: 1) ever since Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979, the
Iranian ayatollahs have pushed an imperial jihadism; 2) in their speeches, these ayatollahs have repeatedly
promised, as part of their jihadist program, a great genocide of the Israeli
Jews; and 3) US officeholders traditionally and publicly call Iran
a dangerous ‘enemy,’ and Israel a close ‘ally’ and ‘friend.’ Thus, if we wish to find a US policy that will not favor the growth of jihadism, we
should look for it here. We should look for it, especially, among the
policies of those presidents who so loudly railed in their speeches against
Iran. For example, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Jr. Ronald Reagan President
Ronald Reagan always had a double identity. On the
one hand, he was a movie star, soon identified with ‘the Gipper’ (a college
hero he played on the big screen in 1940), and voted fifth most-popular actor
of his young generation. On the other hand, he was always a political
creature: from 1947—right when McCarthyism was starting, he was president of
the Screen Actor’s Guild and a
secret FBI informant tasked with fingering presumed ‘communists’ in
Hollywood.[1] Later, from 1967 to 1975, he would be governor of California.
In 1979 he began competing for the presidency. The media
impact of his campaign was so extraordinary that we are still talking about
it. That Reagan charisma—amazing.
The press and the public fell in love with the ‘Great Communicator.’ As
1979 was ending, as luck would have it, an impressive geopolitical backdrop
unfurled for Reagan to stride before and play the role of a lifetime. In
Iran, where the Islamic Revolution had just succeeded, followers of Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini in Teheran punched the air with their fists, cursed ‘Great
Satan’ (the US), burned the US flag, and took the entire US embassy hostage.
It had all become quite difficult, it seemed, for President Jimmy Carter. The disembodied voice of the Washington Post roved over this drama on December first: “Reagan
Finding It Hard to Restrain Himself on Iran Issue.” Under this heading, the Post assured us that Reagan wished to
be cautious so as not to derail Carter’s negotiations in favor of the
hostages, but Reagan was so mad at
Iran, and so mad at Carter, that he
could not contain his anger. It was just too much. Anxious
to “make the Iranian issue a major theme of his political campaign,” and
“talking more and more forcefully about [it]” and about “the subject of
American retaliation against Iran,” Reagan garnered “the heaviest applause”
when accusing that the “Carter administration policies of ‘weakness and
vacillation’ ” had been responsible for the hostage fiasco. He looked the
part of a macho, “impatient warrior,” and the crowds ate it up: “Another
applause line,” wrote the Post, “is Reagan’s declaration that he
would make the United States respected once again ‘so that no dictator would
dare invade a U.S. embassy and hold our people hostage.’ ”[2] By
similarly accusing Obama for his handling of Iran, and promising to “make
America great again,” Trump also got lots of applause on his presidential
campaign trail. What can we infer? Let us ask, first, what Reagan did. The
day of his inauguration, Reagan presided over what the New York Times called the “Largest Financial Transfer in
History,” a hostage-rescue payment prepared by Carter: 8 billion dollars.[3] And right away, the Iranians used
that money to… buy US weapons! “While
president Reagan publicly denounced the Iranians as part of a ‘confederation
of terrorist states,’ US officials were secretly arranging the first arms
sales to Iran.”[4] When
this became public it was called ‘Irangate’ or the ‘Iran-Contra scandal’
(because the Reagan team, diverting some funds, was at the same time
financing, arming, and training the Contras, a Nicaraguan terrorist group).
Caught red-handed, Reagan hotly denied this was a rescue payment
for new hostages now taken in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a creature of Iran. Not
at all. They had merely tried to moderate (yes, moderate) the ayatollahs with… weapons. The weapons were a…
gesture.[5] Reagan must have reasoned (unaccountably) that this
sounded less ridiculous than “I made another rescue payment.” But then he
thought about it. No, he said, the first thing was a lie. Yes, I made another
hostage-rescue payment. And
the truth? It was worse: a congressional investigation, years later,
documented that secret arms sales to Iran had begun, rather hurriedly, in
1981, right after Reagan was sworn in—in other words, before the first hostage was taken in Lebanon in 1982.[6] Did
the US power elite simply mean to strengthen the ayatollahs? The
presidency of Bush Sr.—Reagan’s former vice-president and his partner in the
Iran-Contra doings—would provide evidence consistent with that hypothesis. I don’t
mean that James Baker, Bush’s Secretary of State and responsible for his
foreign policy, reportedly said “Fuck the Jews!” in a private conversation.[6a] Those are just (alleged) words. I mean that the Bush
administration’s actions were
consistent with the intention expressed in that reported vulgarity. In
the first year of Bush Sr.’s administration, a CIA operative, working from
the important RAND Corp. think tank, published a study claiming that the only
way to ‘solve’ the Arab-Israeli conflict was to force the handover of Judea
and Samaria (‘West Bank’) to PLO/Fatah.[6b] In other words, ‘peace’ meant giving Israel’s militarily
strategic territories to the
group which had created Ayatollah Khomeini’s Israel-bashing, would-be
genocidal regime.
Immediately, Bush got busy forcing the Israelis to negotiate with PLO/Fatah. And he succeeded: from
his efforts emerged the ‘Oslo Process,’ which would bring PLO/Fatah—Iran’s ally—into Israeli
territory. George Bush Jr. Another
whose mouth ran away from him against Iran was George Bush Jr. In his 2002 State
of the Union address he defended his country’s honor, so injured by that
comic-book epithet: ‘Great Satan.’ The comeback? Iran would be included in
the ‘Axis of Evil.’ Great drama. But what did Bush Jr. do? Bush invaded Iraq—Iran’s
rival. The officially given reasons to invade Iraq lie in general
disrepute, and to this day the real reasons remain a mystery. Those who would
solve this mystery should pay attention to the interesting ‘detail’: to
invade Iraq, Bush allied with Iran.
This was barely reported. But the Financial Times did publish an article about how Iran assisted the US destruction of Iraq.[7] And the International Herald Tribune (which is to say, the New York Times) another on how Washington repaid the favor by bombarding Iranian dissidents—enemies of the ayatollahs—who had their bases in Iraq. US troops then chased the survivors by land.[8] By
2006, the Guardian had concluded
already that Bush’s invasion of Iraq had been a great gift to Iran, for it
had turned Iraq almost immediately into Iran’s westernmost province.[9] This has now reached its ultimate
conclusion: Iranian officers—with the
blessing of US generals—are leading the Iraqi armies.[10] So the entire military infrastructure left by the US in Iraq
was in reality for… Iran. ‘Great Satan’ and the ‘Axis of Evil’—a match made
in heaven! As these
two examples show, it is perfectly possible for a US leader to denounce
loudly the ayatollahs whilst benefiting them with expensive policies (costing
billions of dollars). In
their speeches, the presidents have been, now more bellicose, now more complacent
(or, in Obama’s case, frankly obsequious), but whoever follows the money will
see that, since 1979—for almost 40 years—be they Democrats or Republicans, every single president has implemented
policies to benefit the ayatollahs. We
document that here:
And it ain’t just Iran—the pro-jihadi pattern is quite
general.[12] This history makes it somewhat risky to say, based solely on
Donald Trump’s bellicose speeches, that he will execute a genuinely
anti-Iranian foreign policy. On the contrary, before venturing any such
opinion, it may pay to ask ourselves why
such a consistent pro-jihadi pattern, for almost 40 years, has even been
possible.
One hypothesis says that the United States is governed by a
power elite organized in the manner of a political cartel, so that, despite
the alternation of the two big parties, some important policies never vary.
This hypothesis predicts that Trump—even should he want to—will find it
impossible to change these policies, because he is not the one holding the
reins. We shall consider evidence to evaluate that hypothesis in Part 4. But before we do, up next (Part 3),
I shall insist that recent developments have not contradicted HIR’s model.
And for this purpose, what better issue than the recent Trump-Netanyahu
summit?
[1] Fried,
A. 1997. McCarthyism, the Great
American Red Scare: A Documentary History. New York: Oxford University
Press. (pp.125-26) [2]
“Reagan Finding It Hard to Restrain Himself on Iran Issue”;
The Washington Post, December 1, 1979, Saturday, Final Edition, First
Section; A9, 742 words, By Lou Cannon, Washington Post Staff Writer [3] “Largest Financial Transfer in History”; New York Times; Jan 25, 1981; by
STEVEN RATTNER; pg. E3 [4] Kornbluh, P., & Byrne, M. 1993. The Iran-Contra Scandal: The declassified history. New York: The New Press. (p.xviii) [5] Kornbluh,
P., & Byrne, M. 1993. The
Iran-Contra Scandal: The declassified history. New York: The New Press.
(pp.xvi-xviii) [6] The arms transfers, the New
York Times explained, began “in 1981,” which is to say, “before the Iranian-sponsored seizure of American
hostages in Lebanon began in 1982…” (my emphasis). Astonishingly,
instead of putting the obvious hypothesis on the table—that the US had a
policy, even then, to strengthen Iran—the New
York Times ducked: “No American rationale for permitting covert arms
sales to Iran could be established.” So they sent the weapons… just because? This is “the newspaper of record”? And
who was the journalist? Seymour Hersh. SOURCE:
The Iran Pipeline: A Hidden Chapter/A special report.; U.S. Said to Have
Allowed Israel to Sell Arms to Iran, The New York Times, December 8, 1991,
Sunday, Late Edition - Final, Section 1; Part 1; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign
Desk, 2897 words, By SEYMOUR M. HERSH, Special to The New York Times,
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 [6a] “James Baker’s Second Act?”; Frontpage;
10 October, 2006; by Jacob Laksin [6b] Fuller, G. E. 1989. The
West Bank of Israel: Point of No Return?
Santa
Mónica, CA: RAND Corp. [7] “War Sirens Herald Iran's Hour of
Revenge”; Financial Times; March
24, 2003, Monday Usa Edition 1; Section: Comment & Analysis; Pg. 17; By
Khairallah Khairallah Full text: It
may be part of George W. Bush's axis of evil; some predict it will be next on
the list for US pre-emptive action; but Iran is the only one of Iraq's
neighbours that wholeheartedly supports regime change in Baghdad, even if via
a US-led invasion. [8] “U.S. Bombed Bases of Iranian Rebels in Iraq”; International Herald Tribune | New York
Times; Thursday 17 April 2003; by Douglas Jehl Full text: WASHINGTON
- Without public announcement, American forces have bombed the principal
bases of the main armed Iranian opposition group in Iraq, which has
maintained several thousand fighters with tanks and artillery along Iraq's
border with Iran for more than a decade. The
group, Mujahidin Khalq, has been labeled a terrorist organization by the
United States since 1997. But the biggest beneficiary of the strikes will be
the Iranian government, which has lost scores of soldiers in recent years to
cross-border attacks by the guerrillas, who have sought to overthrow Iran's
clerical regime. At
the same time, the attacks appear bound to anger the scores of more than 150
members of the U.S. Congress who have described the Iranian opposition group
as an organized and effective pressure point on Iran's government, and had
urged the Bush administration to strike the organization from its terrorist
list. In
the months leading up to the war, "We made it very clear that these
folks are pro-democracy, anti-fundamentalism, anti-terrorism, helpful to the
U.S. in providing information about the activities of the Iranian regime, and
advocates of a secular government in Iran," said Yleem Poblete, staff
director for the House International Relations Committee's subcommittee on
the Middle East and Asia. "They
are our friends, not our enemies. And right now, they are the most organized
alternative to the Iranian regime, and the fact that they are the main target
of the Iranian regime says a lot about their effectiveness." Defense
Department officials who described the air attacks said they have been
followed in recent days by efforts on the ground by American forces on the
ground to pursue and detain members of the group. It
was unclear whether the attacks, described by Defense Department officials,
were intended in part as a gesture by the United States to thank Iran for its
noninterference in the war in Iraq. The
United States does not maintain diplomatic relations with Iran, which is
listed on the Bush administration's "axis of evil," but American
officials are believed to have met secretly with Iranian officials in the
months before the war to urge Iran's government to maintain its neutrality. A top
military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said the United States
had "bombed the heck" out of at least two of the group's bases,
including one about 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Baghdad. The
officer said the fact that the group had been listed as a terrorist
organization by the United States gave the military little alternative but to
launch the strikes. In a
telephone interview from Paris, Mohammad Mohaddessin, a top official of a
coalition of Iranian opposition groups that includes Mujahidin Khalq,
condemned the bombing as bombing "an astonishing and regrettable act. It
is a clear kowtowing to the demands of the Iranian regime," said
Mohaddessin, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the coalition, the
National Council of Resistance of Iran. Mohaddessin
said the group had abandoned its bases in southern Iraq before the American
attack began, and had been assured by "proper U.S. authorities"
that its other camps, located northeast and east of Baghdad, would not be
targets of American bombing. An
expert on Iran, Patrick Clawson, said Wednesday that the American attacks
almost certainly represented an end to the group as a fighting force, after
the years in which it operated freely from Iraq with support from Saddam
Hussein. Clawson, research director at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, said the attack might also weaken the group's political arm, the
National Council on Resistance in Iran. "The
reason the regime has been so worried about the MEK has been the impression
that it could be attractive to those who are rejecting the regime,"
Clawson said, using the group's initials. "It's now less likely that the
MEK will maintain this image in the eyes of young Iranians as being the most
radical opponents." Mujahidin
Khalq was formed in the 1960s and expelled from Iran after the Islamic
Revolution in 1979. Its primary financial support in recent years came from
Saddam's government, but it has support from lawmakers in Europe as well as
the United States. In
its most recent annual listing of terrorist groups, the State Department said
of the group that "its history is studded with anti-Western attacks as
well as terrorist attacks on the interests of the clerical regime in Iran and
abroad." During
the 1970s, the report noted, Mujahidin Khalq killed several American military
personnel and American civilians working on defense projects in Tehran, the
Iranian capital. The
decision by the Clinton administration to add the group to its list of
terrorist organizations was widely interpreted as a goodwill gesture to the
Iranian government, and its president, Mohammed Khatami, a more moderate
force than Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Group
calls for protests An
exiled Iranian opposition group said Wednesday that it would hold marches in
Washington and across Europe on Saturday to protest against attacks on its
bases in Iraq that it said killed 28 of its members, Reuters reported from
Stockholm. The
Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, political wing of the
Mujahidin Khalq, plans marches at noon local time in London, Washington,
Paris, Cologne, Brussels, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo. Leaders
of the group said 28 people had been killed, 43 wounded and others captured
in the attacks, reported to have occurred last Thursday and Friday. The
group began as leftist-Islamist opposition to the late Shah of Iran but fell
out with Shiite clerics who took power after the 1979 Islamic revolution. It
uses Iraq as a springboard for attacks in Iran and was accused by Washington,
which brands it a "terrorist" group, of supporting Saddam Hussein
before his fall. The group is said by Western analysts to have little support
in Iran because of its collaboration with Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq
War. [9]
“Iran is the true winner of that war. They
only had to sit tight and smile as the West delivered on a golden plate all
the influence Iran had always sought in the Middle East. The US and its
allies will soon be gone from Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving Iranian-backed
Shias dominant in both countries, their influence well spread across Syria, a
chunk of Saudi Arabia and other countries for decades to come. Historic
Iranian ambitions have been fulfilled without firing a shot while the US is
reduced to fist-shaking. How foolish was that?” SOURCE:
Comment & Debate: No more fantasy diplomacy: cut a deal with the mullahs:
Iran cannot be prevented from developing nuclear weapons, only delayed. We
must negotiate not ratchet up the rhetoric,
The Guardian (London) - Final Edition, February 7, 2006 Tuesday,
GUARDIAN COMMENT AND DEBATE PAGES ; Pg. 31, 1095 words, Polly Toynbee [10]
“Two to three Iranian military
aircraft a day land at Baghdad airport, bringing in weapons and ammunition.
Iran’s most potent military force and best known general — the Revolutionary
Guard’s elite Quds Force and its commander Gen. Ghasem Soleimani — are
organizing Iraqi forces and have become the de facto leaders of Iraqi Shiite
militias that are the backbone of the fight [against ISIS]. Iran carried out
airstrikes to help push militants from an Iraqi province on its border.” SOURCE:
Iran Has Never Been More Influential In Iraq”; Associated Press; 12 January 2015; by Hamza Hendawi Qassim
Abdul-zahra. [11]
“THE US AND IRAN: FRIENDS OR
FOES?” Conference presented by Francisco Gil-White; Raúl Baillères
Auditorium, ITAM; 30 August, 2016; Historical
and Investigative Research [12] De
hecho es difícil encontrar un lugar donde la política estadounidense no sea
apoyar yihadistas. En Afganistán, la CIA creó a los muyahidines, y estos
luego viajaron a todo el mundo, exportando la yihad donde quiera que hubiera
musulmanes. En Afganistán, se convirtieron en los talibanes. El gobierno de
EEUU tiene mucho tiempo aliado con el gobierno de Pakistán, un país fundado
sobre un ideal islamista. Ha estado siempre aliado, también, con el gobierno
salafí (yihadista) de Arabia Saudita, y otros gobiernos parecidos en el Golfo
Pérsico (Qatar, Kuwait, etc.) En la mal llamada ‘Primavera Árabe,’ EEUU apoyó
a la Hermandad Musulmana. En Yugoslavia, apoyó a Alija Izetbegovic, cuyo
libro Declaración Islámica hacía un
llamado al exterminio de los ‘infieles’ en Bosnia. Es un listado parcial. Por
supuesto que hay algunos poderes yihadistas contra los cuales EEUU dice—de
manera oficial—oponerse, pero los ejemplos de Irán y de ISIS son más que
suficientes para quedar generalmente escépticos. |
|
Notify me of new HIR pieces!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
%20transform%20US%20foreign%20policy%20in%20the%20Middle%20East?%20To%20get%20a%20sense%20for%20how%20difficult%20this%20might%20be,%20we%20must%20appreciate%20how%20traditional%20the%20pro-jihadi%20policy%20has%20been.%20(It%20wasn%E2%80%99t%20just%20Obama.)){kind=small}
