There are terrible regimes all over the world. Most of them are in nations that confine the suffering to their own people. It’s sad, but we’re not about to start military action to change anything. The risks are too high, the costs too expensive, and the possible benefits to us too remote.
After 9/11, we realized that some people in far-off places wished to hurt us very badly and had actually done so. The rationale for invading Afghanistan was not the Taliban themselves, although they were theocratic tyrants. It was that they harbored al Qaeda and would not surrender them. We invaded but failed to get Bin Laden for a long time, and somehow the mission turned into regime change. However, attempting regime change made sense in at least one way: without getting rid of the Taliban government, wouldn’t the same thing just repeat itself?
Afghanistan proved very resistant to fundamental change. One big reason was cultural, although it wasn’t the only reason. To effect that sort of change was probably impossible, and it was certainly impossible without an enormous and long expenditure of time, money, and troops. We finally gave up, in particularly ignominious and costly fashion under Biden (or his controllers).
Iraq was somewhat different. There was a strongman tyrant who seemed to be developing nuclear weapons in defiance of an agreement for inspections post-Gulf War. It apparently was a pretense of Saddam Hussein’s, although we have argued about what the US knew and didn’t know in the leadup to the war. The Iraqi people were more sophisticated than those in Afghanistan (a low bar) and some pundits in the US argued that there was more appetite for democracy there and that it would be successful and Iraq would become an ally. Again, we can argue – and we certainly have – about to what extent the war had achieved at least some elements of success before Obama’s pull out, but I don’t think we would disagree about the fact that it left the vast majority of Americans on both sides with a strong aversion to wars with “boot on the ground” in order to effect regime change.
Which brings us to Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran. And Trump.
Trump had criticized the Iraq War greatly. So far, he seems to have approached things differently. He determined that Venezuela not only was headed by a tyrant, but by one that hadn’t been properly elected, and – this point is key – the regime was a sort of linchpin in a current axis of evil.
Trump’s approach to Venezuela was and is creative; I don’t need to describe it here except to say it involved a single audacious raid which brought Maduro here to stand trial, and a way to make his successor dance to our tune, for now. The plan is also to institute fair elections that will lead to better things for the people there, but for now that’s not happening. It has led, however, to a domino effect that has effected the energy supply of other problematic countries.
In Cuba, nothing new seems to have been done except the disruption of Venezuelan oil shipments, but this may be having the desired effect on the rulers of a country that was already having severe economic problems:
Cuban President Miguel Di?az-Canel on March 13 confirmed his government is holding talks with the Trump administration, in the latest sign that the communist-run nation is open to signing a possible historic economic deal with the United States.
Di?az-Canel made the announcement in a video broadcast on national television and he also spoke in a subsequent press conference, where he addressed Cuba’s energy needs amid a U.S. oil blockade, saying no fuel has entered Cuba in three months. He said the talks with the U.S. have reached initial phases only.
Iran is very different. The mullahs have been at war with us for 47 years and shout “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” It’s an enormous country under the rule of clerics who believe it’s their duty to start an Armageddon that will end with their triumph over the Muslim world and ultimately the rest of the world, and the coming of the Mahdi (I wrote about this belief system in this post). They are deadly serious about this.
Trump has decided they were too close to obtaining weapons that could further hurt Israel, Europe, and the US, and that something had to be done about this. He worked alongside Israel to degrade some of Iran’s nuclear capabilities and air defense system last summer, but some capacity remained and the mullahs got right back on that nuclear/ballistic horse. Negotiations to change this situation failed completely when the mullahs made it clear they would abandon none of their goals.
And so the joint US/Israel air campaign began. A huge number of Iran’s regime leaders have been killed – with no US boots on the ground – but there are others willing, for now, to take their place. Trump says their weapons, launchers, and nuclear capacity have been further degraded. We could declare victory and leave – except for the regime change question. If the mullahs stay in place, the Iranian people will continue to suffer, but the leaders will also set about trying to re-arm. Again and again, like some Terminator horror movie. It will take longer than before, and they are weaker and poorer than before. But their belief system does not allow them to be practical and give up.
Is regime change therefore necessary? Is it possible? What would effect it? I’m not going to tackle that in this post, which is already long enough. But I think everyone agrees that if it could happen and something better were in place, it would be a good thing.
Another thing on which we can probably agree is that Iran is a big country with a somewhat decentralized system of tyranny in which the IRGC and the Basij (their enforcers) are the main mechanism by which the crackdown on the Iranian people is accomplished. These two entities must be defanged, and at the moment there are many reports that a program of drone attacks is starting to do that. I hope they’re true, because this is of the utmost importance in further weakening the regime:
