Albert Camus once wrote: “When a war breaks out, people say: ‘It’s too stupid, it can’t last long.’ But though a war may be ‘too stupid,’ that doesn’t prevent its lasting.” While he was writing in 1947 (just two years after what most would consider the cessation of the least stupid war in human history, at least from the perspective of those preventing a continental takeover and genocide), he seems to perfectly sum up what would be considered an aversion to becoming entangled in a “quagmire.”
While seeming to intone a viewpoint of pragmatism, logistics, and not having an “exit strategy,” the “quagmire” trope has come to signal a seemingly continuous drudgery of bloodshed and carnage.
It may seem premature to write about the nature of war in a piece of writing centered on the pullout of the Iranian nuclear deal. However, when the bombers begin their flight routs over Tehran and the American president gives a press conference assuring the Iranians that their “time of liberation is at hand,” such melodrama won’t seem as unwarranted.
I’m in agreement with David Rieff that the sentence most commonly attributed to George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is, in Rieff’s words, “far too celebrated and, insofar as it was meant as a generalization, demonstrably false.” However, when the past and present begin to resemble themselves, it is difficult not to take notice, particularly when these two time frames have a common actor.
As a general principle, history may not repeat itself ad infinitum. However, long-term foreign policy strategies don’t begin and end after one invasion, overthrow, or “promotion of democracy.” A war with Iran is coming.
In thinking on the Santayana quote, I’m reminded of the interview with General Wesley Clark, in which he recalls being told by a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “…we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” This would lead me to believe that we’re not remembering history, but rather are still in the midst of it. The invasion of Iran makes sense given the narrative of US intervention in the Middle East; perhaps, years from now, we’ll look back at our long-term engagement in the Middle East with the same kind of skepticism that we hold about Vietnam. But Vietnam is over.
Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council, took what one could view as a theatrical approach regarding the recent decision by US leadership to breach the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Parsi states: “If we now, six months, nine months, 12 months from now, end up in a military confrontation with Iran…we should remember that conflict was started yesterday, when Donald Trump decided to cheat on this nuclear deal and pull the United States out of it.” Analyses like these don’t come out of thin air; had there not been another, well-referenced invasion of a Middle Eastern nation by the US in recent history, claims of impending war could be justifiably disregarded as hysterical. However, this is not the case. The buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq has a rich and well-remembered history, one which remains instructive to this day.
How many examples of doublespeak could be recalled from the short time frame from 2000 to 2003? Probably as many as could be pulled from 2016 to today. While reviewing the history of the Bush administration’s public statements regarding its attitudes toward Iraq, “self-contradictory” is a fair characterization that chaotic and senseless time. Dick Cheney stated in 2000 that the US cannot act as “an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments” less than six months before Cheney established a task force to explore parts of Iraq which would be best suited for oil extraction. The opportunity to extract, of course, would not have been available had the United States not run willy-nilly into Baghdad and taken down its government.
This type of obfuscation was commonplace. The executive branch seemed to oscillate between reassuring the population that war would (probably) not be necessary (“We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq”), to the assurance that the war would go just fine once it commenced, as embodied in the infamous “liberators” talking point. (This made more sense once it was revealed in 2004 by Bob Woodward that Bush had spoken of a “war plan” for Iraq as early as November of 2001).
This same type of nonsense can be found in our present situation regarding Iran. On January 22nd, General Mattis stated that the United States doesn’t “invade other countries…we settle things by international rule of law.” This belief, based on a questionable understanding of history, is not shared by fellow cabinet member John Bolton, who believes that the “declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullah’s regime in Tehran.” One of these viewpoints will inevitably strangle the other, and, as stated, I know which one I would put my money on.
In his official announcement of American violation of the Iran deal, President Trump claimed that there was now “definitive proof” that Iran lied about the humanitarian nature of its nuclear program. This “proof” comes, of course, largely from the April presentation by Benjamin Netanyahu making identical claims. The information provided by Netanyahu, it must be noted, was largely viewed as “nothing new” and “didn’t appear to present any concrete evidence Iran was violating the nuclear deal.” If the repetition of already well-known information can be sold as Iran cheating on the deal, then that’s what will be done; anything to build the case for war.
The concept of “definitive proof” in the face of doubt isn’t new. Dick Cheney stated in 2002 that there is “no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends…and against us.” He later went on to say that “We do know, with absolute certainty, that the is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.” Donald Rumsfeld claimed that “There are Al Qaeda in Iraq” and that “the link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq is not debatable.” Given statements like these, it’s no mystery as to why nearly 90% of Americans believed Saddam was aiding terrorists with plans to strike the United States.
Another oft-relied upon tactic by the Bush administration was Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile, and his cohort “Curveball”. This pair of Iraqi dissidents gave information to the Americans regarding the activity of the Iraqi government which, coincidentally, fit perfectly well with the Bush administration’s agenda (namely that Saddam had a “mobile weapons lab” which was able to avoid inspection, as well as biological and nuclear weapons production). Despite Curveball being considered “probably a fabricator” by both British and German intelligence, his word was considered gospel by the White House. Similarly, Chalabi was given direct access to Department of Defense officials, and his reports flowing “from the Pentagon directly to the Vice President’s office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals.” This despite Chalabi’s elaborate claim that Iraq had trained militants to hijack airplanes had been found to be false.
Similarly, certain groups of American political power have taken a liking to Amir-Abbas Fakhravar, an Iranian dissident which, as reported by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “has an uncertain reputation among Iran-based activists for exaggerating his political power…Activists are concerned about the creation of an Iranian version of Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi. American support for controversial figures such as Fakhravar could send the wrong message to the Iranian people and increase their suspicions.” This fear may not be unwarranted; the objectivity with which bits of intelligence and information are selected has always been questionable.
In the runup to the Iraq war, not only did Washington cherry-pick its information, but it also put direct pressure on American intelligence to find a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. This practice, too, is repeating itself. Ned Price, a former CIA analyst, reported last August that “I have heard this from members of the intelligence community – that they feel like they have come under pressure” to find a justification for leaving the Iran deal. Price continues: “They told me there was a sense of revulsion. There was a sense of déjà vu. There was a sense of ‘we’ve seen this movie before’.”
All of this will typically culminate in, at first, the arming of militant opposition groups. In 2000, Congress approved the Bush administration’s request for a doubling of funding for anti-Iraqi opposition groups. President Trump has pursued a similar path, increasing funding for Iranian opposition groups by at least $1 million since his inauguration while Obama had spent nearly twice as much since 2014. This is a multi-million dollar increase in funding for an already well-funded propaganda and intelligence campaign against the Iranians.
According to Seymour Hersh, the two groups who receive the lion’s share of this aid are Jundullah and Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), the former of which is suspected of having Al-Qaeda links and studied at the same Wahabi/Salafi madrassas some of the most radical of Islamic radicals. These two have been responsible for a slew of car bombings and murders of Revolutionary Guard members for at least a decade.
While the height of US support for Jundullah peaked during the Bush Administration, MEK was delisted by the State Department as a terrorist group in 2012. Reasons for this remain murky, given that the MEK participated in the murder of Americans during the 1979 revolution and, according to the State Department (prior to the delisting, of course), “claimed responsibility for murdering thousands of Iranians they describe as agents of the regime.”
John Bolton has spoken at eight separate rallies for Mujahideen-e-Khalq, the latest of which contained this helpful insight into the mind of the President’s current National Security Advisor:
The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran. The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself. And that’s why, before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran.
Military conflict with Iran is still spoken about as the scenario which lies at the bottom of the deep end; once we’ve gone off it, it’s war or nothing. The appropriate question is when the invasion will officially begin. I’ll take John Bolton at his word; Iranian citizens should prepare for American troops on their soil by the end of 2019 at the latest.
Photo credit: Debra Sweet/Creative Commons