“You break it, you own it” — the immortal words of Colin Powell, the five-star army general and the first black American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later US secretary of state. Powell was warning President George W Bush in 2002 against invading Iraq and toppling its government.
He was also explaining why, after expelling the Iraqi army from Kuwait during the first Gulf War in 1991, the US army had stopped short of marching into Baghdad to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a menace to both the US and its allies.
“You need to understand,” Powell told his president, “if you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes ... responsible for the country? You are. So, if you break it, you own it.”
Needless to say, Bush ignored Powell’s warning — and to rub salt in the wound, sent him to the UN to present the lie of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the justification for the invasion. Powell later described it as a painful moment, a low point in his career. His prognosis, however, proved true: after Saddam was executed, his army and the ruling Baath party dismantled, Iraq descended into chaos — and an increasing number of US troops kept coming home in body bags. In a letter discovered recently, Paul Bremer, the then flailing governor of this newly acquired American colony, wrote to his wife Frances: “I am now officially the government of Iraq.” The arrogance of US power writ large.
Yet the Americans have not learned from past mistakes. Despite its military muscle, the US has often ended up with a bloody nose. In eight years of direct military involvement in Vietnam, which cost more than 58,000 American lives, the US ultimately failed to prevent communist rule in 1975. That iconic photo of a helicopter evacuating people from the roof of a CIA building captured the fall of Saigon, and the undignified end to the war. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington stands as a monument to American hubris — and stupidity. Vietnam left a scar on the American psyche. They absorbed the pain, but not its lessons.
Before the reckless adventure in Iraq, US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld had boasted that the invading US troops would be welcomed by jubilant and grateful Iraqis. While many were happy to see the back of Saddam, they had, however, not anticipated a foreign occupying force. By the time the Americans left, Iraqis had elected a government more sympathetic to Iran, the US’s sworn enemy — returning the region’s political dynamics to square one.
What is even more exasperating is the silence or acquiescence of those sanctimonious pharisees who’re always quick to preach to others about the need to abide by the rule of law.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan was equally messy, symbolised by that sad spectacle of thousands — desperate to escape the coming Taliban rule — running alongside a moving US Air Force jumbo je. The Americans had gone to Afghanistan with the express intention of expelling the Taliban, yet after 20 years of war and more than 2,000 troops dead, they retreated, leaving the Taliban firmly in charge. It was not a pretty sight.
In 1994, the US had also hurriedly left Somalia after domestic public opinion was inflamed by the gory sight of a dead US Marine being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by a jeering crowd. The template seems to be the same: America goes in with all guns blazing, but never seems to think or plan about how to get out of the morass they create.
There was no harsher critic of such a policy than president Donald Trump, who campaigned against what he called endless wars and regime change. But in just more than a year of being back in office, he has launched at least eight military actions — including strikes in Venezuela and Iran — the most of any president at this point in a tenure.
In Venezuela, they bombed the place in the dead of night, abducted its leader, colonised it and are now happily helping themselves to its oil reserves. If that’s not pure thuggery, I don’t know what is. Trump seems to be having the time of his life. The world is his oyster, so to speak. He’s frolicking around the globe, murdering and destroying at will.
Yet the attack on Iran and the killing of its leader is unprecedented. What is even more exasperating is the silence or acquiescence of those sanctimonious pharisees who’re always quick to preach to others about the need to abide by the rule of law. Not even the gruesome bombing and deaths of 168 school children seems to have shaken their consciences. Such atrocities, however, seem to be part of the fare — from the My Lai massacre of unarmed civilians in 1968 during the Vietnam War, to the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War, among others.
Trump is unmoved. He’s threatened to hunt and kill Khamenei’s successor unless it was his preferred choice. We are in unchartered territory. Yet he won’t dare put soldiers on the ground; the US public won’t have it. And they’d continue with the cowardly act of raining bombs from the skies. Asked about the economic ramifications of this war, especially the skyrocketing price of oil, Trump said it was a “price worth paying for peace”.
There’s no saviour in sight. The UN is impotent. The world is at the mercy of the American public. They’re the only ones who can stop the monster they’ve created.
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