“Iran-backed militias turn to drone attacks, alarming U.S. forces in Iraq” bellows the headline in the Washington Post. Louisa Loveluck and John Hudson unload a pulse-pounding narrative that is heavy on atmosphere, speculation, and innuendo, but short on, you know, facts, not to mention casualties. Because all this shrieking about those devilish Iranian devils and their devil drones is based on two little drones whose “attacks” resulted in zero casualties, yet left White House and military officials “very upset” and “deeply concerned”, forcing them to put in a “long night of deliberations” before deciding to do, well, nothing.
The story rambles on and on, remarking on how terrible it would be if these things, you know, killed someone, particularly an American, which would be pretty horrible, though we could prevent that by doing what we are, presumably, doing in Afghanistan, that is to say, bringing our troops home, after wasting their lives in two decades of fruitless, counter-productive combat, waged entirely to salvage the “honor”—and careers—of important people who don’t like to admit that they were wrong.
One could point out that there is no proof the actual government of Iran has done anything here: it is just “Iranian-backed militias” who are, we are told, without any proof, the cause of all this mischief. The heavily implied agency of Iran is simply intended to further encourage the Biden administration to do little or nothing to reverse the deliberately destructive Iranian “policy” adopted by Donald Trump and his minions to wreck the possibility of a reduction of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East—for Trump, with all his shockingly sensible impulses to get out of Iraq (since we weren’t stealing their oil), eagerly followed the lead of both Saudi Arabia and Israel in waging a relentlessly aggressive policy against Iran, creating entanglements that would, of course, guarantee the “necessity” of a massive, unending presence by the U.S. military in the Middle East, where for the past 20 years we have done so much damage and so little good.
Afterwords—Special Naval Addition
In an “Exclusive” the Post doesn’t have, Politico offers some more Iranian-flavored speculation, to wit: “U.S. monitoring Iranian warships that may be headed to Venezuela”. The Post does bring us the very bad news that the Biden administration is explicitly continuing the Trump administration’s brutal and counter-productive sanctioning of Venezuela, aiming deliberately at, yes, regime change, which has brought us from one disaster to another throughout the 21st century, in a surprisingly level-headed piece by Karen De Young, “Biden has limited options to foster change in Venezuela as Maduro remains firmly in power”.
Thanks to all this American “toughness,” Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro’s concentration camp of a country is an even greater hellhole than it would be than if we just let the suffering Venezuelans alone. But apparently the Venezuelan lobby in Florida is too potent to be ignored, and once more U.S. foreign policy is shaped, not by the interests of the American people, not to mention the interests of the Venezuelan people, but by the political demands of a small but potent pressure group. The almost surprising good news is that Biden does have the courage to return to the relatively “open” U.S. policy towards Cuba initiated by President Obama but furiously reversed by Donald Trump. “Courage” on a foreign policy issue by a Democratic president! Pinch me, I’m dreaming!
It’s “possible”, though I think not much more than that, that Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran and his opening to Cuba caused so much irritation among right-wing supporters of “tough” policies on both that it cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election. However, there is no doubt that our overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, of which Hillary was so proud—“smart power at its finest”—did cost her the election. As I’ve said before, the relationship between war and politics is simple: lose a war, lose an election; win a war, lose an election. But politicians can never process this. The endless frustrations and compromises of “politics” causes them to dream of “absolute power”. If you can just kill your opponents, how can you lose? And, anyway, it would certainly be a lot of fun!
