The Devil You Know

One of the unpleasantries of meddling in the governance of a nation you oppose – literally fomenting a regime change – is that the replacement government may or may not be either grateful or consistent with the very reason you helped overthrow the old government in the first place. Iraq is a classic example. In the 1991Desert Storm operation in the Gulf War, U.S. President George H.W. Bush very intentionally left a malevolent Sunni dictator – Saddam Hussein – in power in Iraq. Allied forces stopped short of deposing the regime, knowing that Hussein represented an anti-Iranian minority faction (traditional Sunnis accounted for about 20% of the population) that would place a hostile military between the Shiite-leaning Syrian leadership (the Assad family) and the virulently anti-American Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran.

The day H.W.’s son, George W. Bush, deposed Saddam Hussein and replaced the regime with a majority-rule government, the pro-Iranian Shiite majority (representing 60% of the population) began a process which is just culminating (after our forces have gone) in a realignment of Iraq into the Iranian camp, a horrible we never intended but literally placed in motion. A few years earlier (during the 1980s), as we funneled high-tech weapons to Afghan mujahedeen (through Pakistani Intelligence Service) in order to destabilized our Soviet enemies (and the Soviet Union did topple), little did we know that those same well-armed rebels would take over Afghanistan and create the staging area for a new wave of anti-American terrorism that produced the deadly 9/11/2001 attacks on the United States. We called it “blowback.”

We’ve spend most of the post-WWII era backing just about any national leader, regardless of corruption or repression, that opposed our enemies du jour. Now, as some of those governments topple, a particularly interesting rising phenomenon most recently exemplified by the Arab Spring at its aftermath, we are faced with replacement regimes that don’t particular fit with what we thought those revolutionary regime changes were going to produce. Witness for example that rather significant majority of Muslim extremists who now control the Egyptian parliament, as that Egyptian government has now arrested and is trying 16 U.S. citizens for crimes in connection with operating pro-democracy movements in Egypt with foreign funding, something they have done for years, without government authorization. “The Egyptian prosecution’s summary of the case …focuses largely on the testimony of their accusers, with evidence primarily limited to proof that their organizations used American and other foreign funds on payrolls and rent.” New York Times, February 20^th.

Or look at the chaos in Libya, a nation where a brutal dictator was crushed by armed rebellion with massive military support from the West, including the U.S. The ruling council that has replaced the ousted regime has simply not been able to co-opt the local militia that still dominate their regional bases of operation: “The Libyan government has been unable to control groups of armed men, many of them former rebels who fought to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi last year and who now commit crimes with impunity, operate detention facilities outside the reach of the law and regularly engage in torture and revenge attacks, according to a report by Amnesty International released on [February 16^th].” New York Times, February 15^th. According to CNN.com (February 16^th), “Detainees at 10 facilities used by militia in central and western Libya told representatives from Amnesty International this year that they had been tortured or abused. Several detainees said they confessed to crimes they had not committed in order to stop the torture, Amnesty International said…. At least 12 detainees held by militias have died after being tortured since September, the human rights organization said, adding that authorities have not effectively investigated the torture allegations.” The new government couldn’t even proceed with scheduled trials of some of these Qaddafi regime perpetrators because the militia simply wouldn’t turn them over for prosecution.

We want regime change in Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, to name the obvious, and indeed ending repression and human rights abuses must always remain an international priority. But what we get once a government topples may not be a kinder, gentler state and seldom will carry the pro-American banner high above. Very few elected officials on earth today can generate massive waves of popular support by backing any meaningful American policies these days, and even as we deploy American arms and munitions to crush dictators, we are still viewed with distaste and as bullies, ready to use force to implement policies that we favor… at the moments we choose to favor them.

If we truly want to fight for human rights, we can never “go it alone” and should seldom dominate the military forces that may be used to implement regime change. We don’t need American boots on the ground to take and hold governments while we install our view of what the correct form of government and leadership should be. If you think we’re good at it, look at the now fiercely pro-Iranian regime in Iraq and the mega-corrupt Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan. We really need to understand exactly how to maximize American policies and values around the world without blowback, resentment or the creation of new enemies we just didn’t expect.

I’m Peter Dekom, and wouldn’t it be nice if American policy-makers would actually look at the relevant cultural, religious and historical patterns of countries we seek to change before we deploy our forces and spend billions and billions of the most ineffective dollars imaginable