Regime Change, Name Change and Political Gain

I’ve decided to post an article written by Scott Ritter tonight. Initially I was checking the news to find on the 15 December the US formerly ended its war in Afghanistan. I looked for meaningful news coverage and couldn’t find what I was looking for. My feeling was to keep looking as I followed a thread. I Googled Scott Ritter to find that he was arrested and convicted in a sex sting. I had forgotten about that. I immediately thought of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Then I thought is it true? I read a response Scott Ritter made indicating he had been smeared. I don’t know the truth of the matter, but I do know I spent several hours in a hotel room with him and never felt any sexual moves toward me. I found him respectful. I can only go on my experience.

I recall his talk at the University of Melbourne about US policy, the war in Iraq and Australia’s involvement, as explosive. I had the opportunity to be invited to dinner with Scott, some peace activists and union people. I was there as I wanted to interview him for my radio program. I found him intellectually very engaging and highly intelligent. He was open minded.

I wondered at the world of intelligence, or as Andrew Wilkie stated ‘spooks’, such a world I have no idea about. I thought of the innocence of average people like myself, so removed from these worlds of smoke and mirrors, subterfuge and intelligence gathering. I felt myself to be naive. That night when he walked me to his hotel room for an interview, he looked around, I innocently thought of him being a tourist here in Australia. It was later that I realised he was checking for other ‘spooks’ watching. Such is his world, constantly vigilant. Yet where he differed is that he questioned what is normally not questioned, I heard conscience and responsibility in his words. He felt what was happening was wrong.

He evoked in me questions about what is true democracy and citizenship rather than consumerism. He evoked questions about what are governments doing in our name. He conveyed information to the public which raised questions about the illegality of governments, notably the US and by implication, Australia in this case. I noted his courage in speaking out, and how articulately he spoke. He was clearly an analyst, that was revealed in the clear way he explained his experiences and the facts he relayed with ease. I’ve never heard such an intelligent speech, I actually respected intelligence people that night as I saw their skills and training through his eyes.

In my view, I feel intuitively truth must arise and I sense more people are going to speak up. Many are aware of the times we are moving through and the necessity to face the past to create a new future. Many will be fearful of the pandora’s box opening, but indeed it will. The times are a changing as Bob Dylan sang.

Here is an article I saw tonight, it was written by Scott Ritter 28 August 2011. I can certainly see why he would be perceived as a threat. Yet in truth your enemy is your friend. Hence, there is no enemy, merely differences providing context to reality. I remember telling him ‘Scott there is no enemy only what is in our minds’.  Moreover, Scott may be in jail perhaps it is an opportunity where he can become centred. We cannot wage peace we can only be peace. As Eckhart Tolle says and many others state – all is illusion, stillness speaks. Answers will be found there.

When I think of the violence Scott and many other soldiers have talked about and the many wars to remove despots, to occupy countries or favouring one side over another, I turn to nonviolence, as I see no sanity in violence. Some believe there are causes for which they will kill and indeed they do, I always remember Gandhi’s words “…there are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no cause that I am prepared to kill.” Moreover, he said “they may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me-then they will have my dead body, not my obedience.” For Gandhi peace was non-violence and truth. When the world comes to a still point, moving out of the ego and mind games for self gain, then real peace falls like a ripe fruit, from a tree of real knowledge. This will be the moment of truth for the world. We will discover ourselves in the other.

http://ustourofduty.org/realintelligence/

Scott Ritter, author of Target Iran, Waging Peace and Iraq Confidential, was one of UNSCOM’s most senior weapons inspectors in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, after having served for eight years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. As a Marine, he conducted arms inspections in the former Soviet Union, and provided analysis of Iraq’s missile capacity to General Schwarzkopf in the 1991 Gulf War. Nation Books is the publisher of Target Iran, Iraq Confidential, and Waging Peace. “The most important thing to know about Scott Ritter is that he was right.” – Seymour Hersh

http://ustourofduty.org/realintelligence/?p=222

The apparent imminent collapse of the regime of Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi has led to a reevaluation of the Obama administration’s policy of back-seat multilateralism with regard to America’s involvement in the implementation of an international response to the violent suppression of Libyan anti-regime demonstrations. The resilience of the Qaddafi regime in the face of incessant NATO aerial bombardment, combined with a seemingly disorganized, fractured and poorly trained rebel force, had many observers predicting that the situation in Libya was in danger of sinking into a stalemate which would divide it politically, and effectively remove Libyan oil from the global market for some time to come. As such, the recent dramatic advances of the Libyan rebels who, under the cover of NATO airpower launched a rapid series of ground attacks, sweeping aside forces loyal to Qaddafi, found the rebellion in control of much of the Libyan capital of Tripoli almost overnight. For an administration battered by the two military conflicts it inherited from the Bush presidency, Iraq and Afghanistan, the apparent victory in Libya provides a much needed political and psychological boost which paves the way toward potential future engagement in other “Arab Spring” nations, such as Syria.

President Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya represented a policy which originated from the interventionism of the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9/11. This policy was driven by a perceived need to “forestall or prevent” hostile acts against America and its allies by eliminating specific threats, including through preemptive action if necessary. While the Bush administration noted that the United States would “constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community”, it was emphasized that America would “not hesitate to act alone.” This notion of unilateral preemption became the centerpiece of the new “Bush Doctrine”, and has been closely associated with the US-led military intervention in both Afghanistan and Iraq. While the “Bush Doctrine” proved to be very effective at achieving regime change in targeted nations, it was significantly less so when it came to engendering the kind of lasting peace and stability such intervention inherently promised. As a direct result of these acts of preemptive intervention, America has become embroiled in long-term military occupations and expensive nation-building exercises which have proven politically unpopular at home.

The Bush Doctrine was derived from a foundational concept built around the notion of “new reality”, in which the United States, due to its overwhelming military, economic and political strength, possessed a unipolarity of power which allowed it to hold sway of much of the world. From the perspective of its adherents, this unipolarity liberated policy makers from the traps of “old reality” – a fact-based world based upon historical precedent which future events were predicated upon, allowing them to freely maneuver in an environment of “new reality”, where the United States used its overwhelming power and influence to shape events in a manner which best suited American policy objectives, ignoring counter arguments based upon previous experience and any extrapolation thereof. “New reality” took the United States into Afghanistan and Iraq, where the limits of unipolarity were fully exposed, preventing America from entering into further debacles in Syria and Iran. “New reality” enabled the United States to embark on superficial exercises, such as ejecting the Taliban from Kabul, or driving Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athists from Baghdad, but no amount of ideological posturing on the part of American policy makers could make the realities of Iraqi secular strife, or Afghan tribal conflict, disappear. Failure to factor these historical realities into an overall post-intervention plan doomed both ventures from the start, and has overwhelmed subsequent policy revisions with the harsh reality of unintended consequence derived from unrealistic expectations born of poor planning.

The Obama administration has felt the consequences of policy failure brought on by “new reality”-based intervention. While post-9/11 domestic political reality precludes an honest assessment of the current objectives being sought in Afghanistan, President Obama had, during his campaign for office, made it clear that the Iraq War was very much an elective war, and not a conflict thrust on the United States by necessity. The lesson which seems to have been learned from the ongoing debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, seems founded on the limits of American unipolarity, and not the fact that any intervention must incorporate the historical realities of the given situation. While President Obama, in his June 2009 speech in Cairo, gave lip service to the notion of American non-intervention in the affairs of the Muslim world, the fact is American policy objectives under President Obama toward critical Middle East states such as Syria and Iran remain fundamentally unchanged from those inherited from the Bush administration.

The “Cairo Doctrine” was stillborn from the start, never being given a chance to take root as the United States pursued covert regime change policies in both Iran and Syria. Instead, the policy of the Obama administration with regard to the Middle East can best be described as representing a corollary to the “new reality” policies of his predecessor. Here, unilateralism has been replaced by a more inclusive approach which uses American power as a facilitator of multilateral leadership, as opposed to past practice which saw American exclusivity used as a means of compelling participation. The intervention in Libya represents the seminal expression of this policy corollary, in so far as the United States used its power and influence to enable NATO nations such as Britain and France to take the lead in defining a problem set (i.e., the humanitarian situation in Libya brought on by Qaddafi’s repression of demonstrators) as well as the solution — NATO enforcement of a no-fly zone used as a facilitator of rebel military capability resulting in the capture of Tripoli and the demise of Qaddafi.

The expected triumph of the Libyan rebels as a result of this policy is viewed as vindication by an Obama administration reeling from the ongoing failures of Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the multilateral NATO triumph in Libya does not, in any meaningful way, differ from the unilateral ‘triumphs’ over the Taliban in Afghanistan (circa 2001) and Saddam Hussein in Iraq (circa 2003). If recent history has provided any meaningful lesson, it is that the removal of a despotic regime does not in and of itself serve as a guarantee of success. Indeed, the ramifications of regime change void of any meaningful proactive effort at defining viable follow-on leadership are clear – chaos, anarchy, and military quagmire. By simply replacing the mechanism of regime change – multilateral versus unilateral military intervention — the Obama corollary to the Bush Doctrine, has done nothing to alter this reality. Uncertainty about the make up, character, goals, ambitions and underlying ideology of the Libyan rebels remain as much an unknown to NATO and the United States today as those of Afghanistan’s tribes in the post-Taliban period, or Iraq’s secular and ethnic components post-Saddam. Simply shuffling the deck of asymmetrical power does not alter the ground truth that the study of history, and the accompanying insights into culture, religion and traditions derived from such a study, provides. The multilateral embrace of “new reality” is as flawed as its unilateral counterpart, because both focus on the solution to a problem set that has not been accurately defined, and therefore is not being addressed.

The practice of modifying existing doctrine to reflect new reality is sound, and has been ably implemented in the past. Theodore Roosevelt’s expansion of the Monroe Doctrine is one such example. This corollary held that the United States could intervene in the economic affairs of small Caribbean states in order to stabilize them, as a preemptive measure designed to preclude European intervention brought on by the failure of these states to pay debt accrued from European powers such as Great Britain and France. But the embrace of multilateralism by the Obama administration fails as a successful corollary to the Bush Doctrine on a number of levels. The Obama Corollary does nothing to fundamentally alter what was, by any definition, a failed policy. The primary reasons for this policy failure center on the almost exclusive use of preemptive military power. The seduction of power, whether unilateral or multilateral in nature, blinded the policy makers to the need to acknowledge and embrace historical fact, and instead chase the illusion of a false “new reality”.

The limited objectives obtainable by force, such as regime change, appeal to politicians driven by the need for immediate political gain. But the long-term consequences of bad policy are as universal as they are predictable. Far from representing a vindicating victory, the Obama intervention in Libya will most likely emerge as yet another costly and prolonged military misadventure. The tribal divisions which existed in Libya pre-intervention still exist, and have been exacerbated by the elimination of a control system that had been in place for over 40 years. Void of any similarly viable post-Qaddafi control mechanism, it is very likely that Libya will explode in inter-tribal violence which will complicate any post-Qaddafi designs harbored by NATO members with regard to Libya’s oil wealth. President Obama’s Libya policy was driven by the ostensible need for humanitarian intervention; however, it quickly morphed into simple regime change, where the bombs of NATO more often than not killed the very civilians they were supposed to protect. The failure of Obama’s policy will likely resonate throughout what is anticipated to be a hotly contested re-election campaign, providing plenty of fodder for his political opponents. The ouster of Qaddafi, and the subsequent control of Libyan oil resources, will dominate the political debate, while the suffering of the Libyan people, for whom this conflict was originally initiated, will be ignored.