There is no question that senior officials in the Obama administration are attempting to design and implement American foreign policy to the best of their abilities in order to protect American interests abroad and in order to protect Americans at home. For the past several years, however, there has been a disconnect between the focus of American foreign policy in the Islamic world and developments in the Islamic world.
The precipitating event that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan was obviously the horrific al Qaeda perpetrated terrorist attacks that occurred on 09.11.2001. The wisdom of the US decision to invade Afghanistan in 2001 and begin a thirteen year occupation will be debated for the next one hundred years by historians and foreign policy professionals. On the surface, the US goal of helping the Afghans create a liberal capitalist constitutional democracy appeared unrealistic to many Realpolitik foreign policy practitioners.
The US plan to invade and occupy Iraq was actually initiated in the months following the first Gulf War in 1991. US General Wesley Clark, in his famous speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, described a conversation he had with Paul Wolfowitz that occurred in the months after the end of the first Gulf War. During his conversation with Paul Wolfowitz, Wesley Clark said that Wolfowitz told him that the lesson he learned from the first Gulf War was that the US could use military force to depose former Soviet puppet governments in North Africa and the Middle East and Russia would not react because it was so weakened from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
General Wesley Clark’s speech at the Commonwealth Club can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8
As it turned out, the terrorist attacks that occurred on 09.11.2001 provided a pretext for George Walker Bush and his Neo-Conservative handlers to begin to implement their long cherished goal of using the US military to depose former Soviet puppet governments in North Africa and the Middle East and then replace them with US puppet governments. During a meeting held at the White House on the evening of 09.11.2001, George Walker Bush met with Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Richard Clarke, US counter terrorism adviser to the White House. Richard Clarke said that during that meeting Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld both pushed George Walker Bush to immediately implement the plans to invade Iraq, depose Saddam Hussein and install a US puppet government. Only Colin Powell advised against attacking Iraq without any provocation, due to his concerns that the Arab world would react negatively to the US attacking another Arab country without any provocation.
An interview with Richard Clarke elaborates upon the George Walker Bush administration decision to invade Iraq without any justification or provocation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwh8YZkKgSM
(Note: 01.03.2016 … George Tenant, in his recent memoir titled “At The Center of the Storm”, describes passing Richard Perle as Perle was leaving the White House on 09.12.2001. As Tenant was entering the White House and as Perle was leaving the White House, Tenant said that Perle shouted to Tenant that “Saddam Hussein will pay for what he did to us yesterday.” Tenant said that he was both startled and alarmed at Perle’s assertion, because Tenant felt strongly that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the terror attacks that occurred on 09.11.2001. Clearly, many high level officials and many high level advisers in the G W Bush administration were looking for a viable excuse to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. BTW, I was very impressed with the down to earth and readable writing style in Tenant’s book. It was a fascinating read for me.)
Most people would say, “Well, the past is the past. We need to address the problems that face America today.” The problem, of course, is that US foreign policy leaders are still attempting to resolve problems from the past that have no resolution. The trillions of dollars of US taxpayer money spent post 09.11 on the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq are “sunk costs” that cannot be salvaged or recouped in any form. US foreign policy leaders in the Obama administration are still attempting to create a constitutional democracy in Afghanistan and in Iraq, when there is no possibility of a self sustaining constitutional democracy emerging in Afghanistan and Iraq within the next several decades.
While the Obama administration is spending approximately $100 billion dollars per year to prevent the complete disintegration of Afghanistan and Iraq (ooops, too late) with the justification that the US needs to prevent radical Islamists from establishing new safe havens in Afghanistan and Iraq from which they can attack Western Europe and the US (ooops, too late), radical Islamists have already established other safe havens in Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Chad, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, eastern Lebanon, Syria and northern Pakistan. Both al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists based in Yemen and in northern Africa were implicated in the recruitment, training and terror attack planning that resulted in the terrorist attacks that occurred in Paris last week.
The US attempts to destroy radical Islamic threats to the Western world by dropping tens of thousands of smart bombs and Hellfire missiles on radical Islamists throughout the Islamic world in the past thirteen years have only expanded the number of hard core radical Islamists from several hundred to several hundred thousand. It is not an exaggeration to state that there are now radical Islamists intent on attacking Western Europe and the US who are living in and operating from nearly every country in the Muslim world, stretching from Morocco to the Philippine Islands.
It is understandable that US political leaders would want to “save face” regarding the complete failure of the multi-trillion dollar debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq by spending tens of billions of dollars every year to prevent the complete and undeniable collapse of the national governments in Afghanistan and in Iraq. It is disingenuous, however, for US political leaders to justify spending tens of billions of dollars in Afghanistan and in Iraq every year using the rationale that those efforts and those expenditures will help ensure that Western Europe and the US are not attacked by radical Islamists operating from bases located in those countries. Radical Islamists who are intent on attacking Western Europe and the US are still operating in large safe havens in Afghanistan and in Iraq, in spite of the enormous expenditure of blood and treasure by the US in the post 09.11 era.
There has been a failure in the Obama administration to acknowledge that the global war on terror has entered a new unanticipated phase, now that there are more than ten countries located in Africa, the Middle East and SW Asia where radical Islamists are openly operating from territories that they have captured and dominated within those countries. The disconnect between dropping a few hundred smart bombs and Hellfire missiles on radical Islamists in Syria, in Iraq and in Afghanistan every month and what is actually going to be required to control and contain the threat to Western Europe and to the US from the proliferation of several hundred thousand radical Islamists operating from more than ten countries in Africa, the Middle East and SW Asia is too great for even the most capable Washington DC spin-meisters to ignore.
End Note (01.18.2015) : There was an article in The Boston Globe today regarding the consequences of the Sykes Picot Accord. Most Americans do not know that France and England at the end of WW1 secretly negotiated the creation of the nation states in North Africa and in the Middle East that resulted in the arbitrary drawing of national boundaries in North Africa and in the Middle East. The national boundaries of the new nation states did not take into consideration the ethnic background and religious sect affiliation of the people included in the new nation states. Apparently there was no limit to the arrogance and ignorance of the European colonial powers at the end of WW1. The URL of The Boston Globe article is: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/01/18/terrorism-paris-sydney-legacy-colonial-blunders/oEY5qPo1uGRIZDC8UfNEyH/story.html
End Note (11.15.2015) : When I wrote this blog post in January 2015, it was already evident that the Obama administration wanted to publicly minimize the threat to Western Europe and the US created by the spread of ISIS affiliated militias and terrorist cells throughout the Islamic world. The Obama administration had hoped to be able to expend its dwindling political capital on domestic issues that it still has not been able to address during the past seven years. Even the best of intentions can be overwhelmed by unforeseeable events. In the aftermath of the recent ISIS attacks in Paris, the Western media has been loudly beating war drums demanding mobilization of Western military forces to initiate an all out war on ISIS. Unfortunately, even the mobilization of Western military forces to wage war on ISIS will be “too little too late”. There are a few simple reasons why the US and Western Europe have already lost the war against Islamic jihad. The first reason is that Western European governments that are members of NATO have demobilized their military forces and they are completely reliant on the US military for defense against Russia and other potential foreign enemies. Remember the NATO campaign to remove Qadaffi from power in Libya? The US had to rush munitions to its NATO allies that were bombing Libyan government targets, because the Western European NATO allies ran out of bombs only four weeks after starting the campaign to oust Qadaffi. Libya is a relatively weak country with fewer than ten million people. If the Western European NATO countries could not militarily defeat a buffoon dictator like Qadaffi without being resupplied by the US, the Western European NATO allies will be of little assistance in a future global war against ISIS. The American people have been exhausted by the multi trillion dollar debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Niger, Chad, Mali, etc. that have unfolded in the post 09.11.2001 era. The US war in Afghanistan is already the longest war in US history. Do American political leaders think that the American people will support, or even have the psychological motivation and physical energy to support, a new multi decade long campaign to defeat ISIS in more than fifteen countries that range from Western Equatorial Africa to Eastern Equatorial Africa, from Morocco to Egypt in North Africa, from Yemen to Turkey in the Arabian peninsula, and from Afghanistan to Pakistan in SW Asia?? If the US spent several trillion dollars in the last fourteen years in the failed attempt to defeat radical Islamist militants in Afghanistan and in Iraq, how much money will need to be spent over the next several decades to defeat ISIS over a geographical area that is literally several times larger than the continental United States?? The US casualties in Afghanistan and in Iraq in the post 09.11 era totaled seven thousand dead soldiers and more than one hundred thousand wounded and permanently disabled soldiers. Does the American government actually think that the American people have the motivation, will and stamina to support a prolonged military conflict against ISIS that will result in hundreds of thousands of additional dead and wounded Americans and and that will require most working Americans to accept a reduction in their standard of living and an increase in their federal income taxes?? Or will most Americans decide that it is more cost effective to build Donald Trump’s wall at the American border?? Even if Mexico does not pay for the wall at the US – Mexican border, most Americans will likely support a Fortress America policy rather than a global American war against radical Islam. … Just my thoughts. What do you think??