Miscalculations

Born in Jamaica, West Indies to a Jamaican mother and Cuban father, raised middle class and going through life’s struggles, I have the advantage of seeing from different perspectives but I’m rambling. I love politics, have done so since I was in junior high (middle) school. I say all this because contrary to popular beliefs, intelligence and wisdom is not determined by how many degrees one has and I’ve arrived at this conclusion due to the many missteps and miscalculations of our country’s foreign policies, no matter which parties’ man is sitting in the Oval office.

The countries of interest for this article are Iraq and Iran. See, before the quagmires that President Obama has to contend with became open, festering sores, our policies contributed to the putrid stench that is now present in the international community. Prior to the 21^st century, our government had illicit affairs with both countries. The Shah of Iran was a despot whom we supported but the people weren’t happy and when Saddam usurped the former ruler of Iraq, we didn't make too much noise. When Ronald Reagan was in the office, we were very cozy with Saddam. Why? Because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, an Arabic proverb which really applied here, came about due to the uprising in Iran to get rid of the U.S. supported Shah. Citizens, mostly college students, took over the American embassy. It was so bad in that country that the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini returned shortly after taxpayers’ money was used to get the Shah, his family and cohorts out of Iran. Although President Carter sent in a covert team to free the hostages, the mission failed and thus he lost the presidency to Reagan. Now, back on track, as I aforementioned President Reagan’s administration climbed into bed with Saddam, who even took a picture with Donald Rumsfeld. We got in bed with Saddam because of the actions of the Iranians and both the U.S. and Iraq hated Iran; therein lays the punch line for “politics making strange bedfellows”. When President Bush’s administration invaded Iraq, without just cause as the 9/11 was perpetrated by mostly Saudi (allies?) citizens, they took away the stop gap in keeping Iran under control. Saddam loved power and had no problems flexing his military muscles but it was also ideological as well as Saddam was Sunni and Iran is mostly Shiite. It was no surprise about Saddam’s sadistic ways, he was our sadist but because of an alleged rumor, that Saddam had put a hit out on Daddy Bush plus the fact that during the Clinton administration, conservative think-tanks were plotting how to invade parts of the Middle East, for oil of course, we invaded. This can be verified via ABC’s Nightline when Ted Koppel was the moderator. GW and daddy’s cohorts, (one can’t have missed the fact that from Dick Cheney to everyone in Bush’s cabinet, all formerly worked in Daddy Bush’s administration as well as Reagan’s) decided they would flex their muscles and take Saddam down. Now, mini-me Napoleonic Ahmadinejad is flexing what little muscles he has. If you can go back a little, you will notice that “mini-me ” or Iran wasn’t doing much before as they feared Saddam, everyone did and with just cause; he had his own son-in-laws murdered for going against him. If I may ramble a little here, no matter how vile Saddam was, he was murdered by his enemies within his country and the Bush administration. Why is it murder, you ask? By international law, even if there were WMD’s found in Iraq, there is an order one is required to follow and it wasn’t. Enemies or not, both Bush and Saddam were leaders of a nation and it should have been addressed through that channel as Saddam stated. The most heinous criminal in this country receive better treatment than what Saddam received. No matter one’s political point of view, the law is the law, international or otherwise and the Bush administration broke the laws on so many levels but the murder of Saddam was another tool for the extremists to use and recruit. I will say this, Bush well learned the ways of the CIA, as his dad headed the agency back in the day. The invasion of Iraq and the murder of Saddam is the flip side of the coin in what this country tried to do during the Kennedy administration with Fidel and the Bay of Pigs incident. They had to do it like this, with everything going so viral and Saddam being the hard-ass he was, the CIA could never get close enough. Those who opposed Saddam and saw Desert Storm as a way of usurping Saddam got some support from daddy Bush but in the end he left them flapping in the wind and ultimately to their death.

Writer Barbara Tuchman, said, “war is the unfolding of miscalculations” and due to the many Laurel & Hardy type bumbles our policies have created, this is our fate, another fine mess.