We were talking about the turn of the new millennium and how brief it seemed between now and then. The tumult of current events seems to overshadow all the things in between. We lose perspective. We count the current presidency in days and forget that history is actually composed of decades, at least. We tend to forget. We tend to forget. Some people just never do know.
Where to begin without covering a thousand pages with fact and conjecture? I think a lot of things we face today began with the Reagan administration so let's go back 30 or so years to the flagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers. I can see a lot of eyes glazing over but ya gotta start somewhere and nothing happens overnight.
The flagging of the Kuwaiti tankers was seen as supporting Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. What it really was, was the rental of the US military by the Saudis and Big Oil. It was also a genuine mistake that, as predicted, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and decades of regional instability. I could tell you about millennia of hatred between the Arabs and the Persians, read Iranians but all that would do is point out the common American mistake of having no clear idea of what actually motivates most of the rest of the world. We paint, haphazardly, with a broad brush of willful ignorance usually dipped in simple greed. We faithfully imitate the British Empire, right down to the willful ignorance and the greed.
Old habits die hard. During the Cold War, there was a default justification for interference in things that actually weren't our business. After all, we had the geo-political thingy to consider. In most cases, it's easy to see now that was just nonsense. That was then, this is now. The important thing to understand is; at no point in history have the affairs of Iraq had any impact on the peace and security of the United States. The only duty of the government of the United States is to address things that actually affect our peace and security. Violating that dictum negatively affects the peace and security of the United States and the World. We sure have proved that.
The flagging of the tankers and, by the way, giving the Iraqis nerve gas, convinced them we were allies. Silly boys. They actually came to the Bush people and asked if we'd mind if they took over Kuwait. The response was, " Local issue, why would we care?" That's a fact. You can look it up. So, the Iraq touring company went to Kuwait and were really surprised when we demanded the show close on the road.
Only 9% of the American public opposed the first Gulf War. A friend of mine who happened to be a veteran asked me what I thought of it at the time. I observed it was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen but now we were committed, we had better win. It was something new. We were no longer constrained by the Soviet threat. The Russians were incapable of response or meaningful opposition. The men of the Bush 41 administration, steeped in the Cold War, were simply not up to the challenge of a free hand.
We didn't win by any American definition and Bush 41 paid an immediate price for that in the following election. It wasn't the "economy, stupid" as Bill would have us believe. It was, just as Cheney and company thought. Bush Sr was seen as weak and ineffectual for leaving Saddam Hussein in place.
There were two other elements that weren't discussed. The Soviet Union was as dead as Casey's nuts but a large portion of their remnant economy depended on arms production and export. The Iraqis had the world's fourth largest military armed to the teeth with Russian weapons. Russia and the United States were the leading arms merchants to the world. The whole thing was an advertisement for the Russian 'brand X' against the American brand. That didn't work out so well for the Russians.
The other thing that went unnoticed was instead of addressing some Cold War related, geopolitical aim we were suckered into supporting Saudi regional aims that had absolutely nothing to do with our peace or security. That was a monumental mistake which is still playing out in deadly fashion.
That sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Well, as I've said before, most conspiracies are really confederacies of dunces. This is not an exception to that rule.
I'm trying to call to mind the proximate casus belli for our invasion of Iraq either time. Oh, that's right. There were none. Both times it was an irrational act. In point of fact if we were going to attack some country other than Afghanistan for 9/11 it should have been Saudi Arabia but realistically the only goal was to kill Bin Laden and smash Al Qaeda. It's part of our willful ignorance that we don't understand the importance of faction and Islamic regional sects. We don't know these things because we insist on being lumbering fools.
I'm going to be blunt. Cheney and company thought the reason they lost power to Clinton was the failure to remove Saddam. They were right but that doesn't mean they were justified. At that time GW's presidency was on the rocks. He was known to be an ineffectual minority, illegitimate President lacking in gravitas. He did get his tax cut. Without the 9/11 attacks, he certainly would have been a one-term president. Our outrage was co-opted. To this point at least a million innocent people have been murdered and a volatile region of the world has been plunged into chaos that will last for several generations. Guys like Bolton see this as driving the eventual agenda. That's outright bullshit and will see no more success than that kind of thinking ever has. He's wrong and it will lead to further chaos.
Why bring this up? Well, it's fun to point out I was right. Everyone likes that. Trump is doing terrible things to us domestically and that is certainly dangerous but at this point, it seems temporary.
It's good to remember that he hasn't murdered anyone, at least not in great numbers. It's really doubtful if he'd be allowed to employ the military. His criminality, so far, has been strictly domestic. The public is making a list and checking it twice to make sure his predations are immediately repealed.
Our public life moves slowly. That's a good thing. Education will triumph over ignorance and racism will be forcefully corrected. Classism will be addressed. We will learn to not judge progress by only success for the wealthy. The coming, decade-long, prosecutions will inform the malefactors.
We will emerge on the other side imperfect but having progressed. That's the idea.
The kids are pissed. They can't understand why anyone would tolerate this bullshit. They'll calm down but they won't forget.
Now, a year after I wrote the above, Trump is being allowed to dabble in foreign policy. It's an unmitigated disaster as anyone could have foreseen.
Two years later Trump's incompetence has killed at least 100,000 U S citizens.
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