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The case against aimless
anarchy
By Ehsan Ahrari
America's neo-conservatives are being derided in
Europe and different circles in the United States as the
neo-McCarthyites of the 21st century. But let's give
them the benefit of the doubt and say that they might be
articulating America's continuing frustrations with
global terrorism. Where the rest of us in the United
States part company from the neo-cons is the fact that
they want to use the September 11 attacks as an excuse
for colonizing the world of Islam under the euphemism
"regime change". The rest of us, on the contrary, worry
about the long-term implications of regime change in
different Muslim countries for America's presence in the
region. The purpose of regime change may not be the
creation of Pax Americana or a new imperium
that even I, at times, have suggested as a reason. But
in the final analysis, America is not about colonizing
anyone. To the extent that all systems created by human
beings reflect the frailties, limitations and
imperfections of our knowledge at any given time, the
American political system may be described as the best
in the world. However, such a description still leaves
one with the question, what is the purpose of creating
aimless anarchy in Muslim countries?
If the Bush
administration wants to create a mess in Afghanistan and
move on and let the international community clean up
after it, one wonders about the purpose behind that
exercise, other than creating anarchy and chaos. That is
also not part of the American character. To the
contrary, during the Cold War years, the US has helped
create highly organized and industrialized societies in
Japan and Germany and in the rest of the Western Europe.
This is in contrast to the communist behemoth, the
former Soviet Union, which created nothing but pockets
of poverty, human misery and deprivation in Eastern
Europe in the name of communist egalitarianism.
Today's Afghanistan is still a place where the
authority of the government of President Hamid Karzai
does not reach much farther than the outskirts of the
capital Kabul. Lawlessness is the order of the day in
Iraq, with little indication that the American occupiers
will have any luck in controlling the situation in the
near future. That's one of the reasons why the Muslim
masses are confused. What is driving the America of the
21st century? Middle Easterners have a powerful sense of
history. As ancient peoples, they have seen many
hegemons come and go. They will also live through the
US's seemingly purposeless hegemony, for that's what it
appears to be.
If the US is not interested in
enslaving the world of Islam - and I, for one, believe
that it isn't - then why create a mess in Afghanistan,
and move on to create another one in Iraq? Why didn't
the US stabilize Afghanistan before dismantling another
regime in Iraq? The pattern seems to have been not just
established, but it also continues. Now, while the chaos
emanating from the US invasion of Iraq is worsening, the
Bush administration is egging on the Iranian youth to
overthrow the reign of the ayatollahs in Iran. What's
the purpose? Is it because it does not want to see a
nuclear Iran, or does it want to get even with the
Islamic rulers for rubbing its face in the dirt by
taking its diplomats hostages in 1979 for 444 days? The
answer is not clear.
However, there are avenues
to apply pressure on Iran. The international community
is already speaking about it with a clear voice, through
the pronouncements of the International Atomic Energy
Agency - the nuclear watchdog agency of the United
Nations - and through the unequivocal demands from the
European Union that Iran had better come clear about its
nuclear programs. If the purpose of encouraging
instability in Iran is to bring back the monarchy - the
newest claim seems to be installation of a
constitutional monarchy - it is only an attempt at
recreating the conditions for history to repeat itself,
a la the 1953 Central Intelligence Agency-managed coup
that brought to power Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah.
What happened to Iran for several decades after that? No
one in the Bush administration seems to remember. No one
seems to care. It is purposeless hegemony, once again.
Watching the aging "Iran watchers" of the
Washington area pontificate on numerous talk shows on
Iran, I wonder why the US media are speaking to them,
and not to the younger generation of Iranians who know
what they want from their religious establishment back
home. Almost all of the aging "specialists" are the "has
beens" of Reza Pahlevi's corrupt and brutal rule. They
have been hibernating in the suburbs of Washington,
waiting for just such a moment when Iran edges closer to
chaos, so that they can consult with the Washington
neo-conservatives to propose a "legitimate" alternative
to the ayatollahs. No one seems to remember what
happened to their Iraqi counterparts - the Iraqi
National Congress and its fellow travelers - after the
US invasion of Iraq. If the Iraqi expatriate community
was so in tune with the Iraqi people, why, at least,
aren't some of them in power or speaking today for their
countrymen, who daily demonstrate their anger toward the
US by killing some unfortunate American GI who happens
to be pounding the ground in the streets of Iraq?
One of the saddest realities of today's Middle
East is that all the corrupt anachronistic monarchs and
dictators are eagerly seeking the approval of the Bush
administration, which seems to be driven by the hubris
of purposeless victory in Afghanistan and Iraq, and
getting focused on the next potential target of regime
change. Those autocrats know how malignant their ruling
style has become for the standards of living of their
unhappy people. They seem to have run out of all the
tricks in the book. Now they seek the favor of the US,
if nothing else, only to prolong their rule by a few
more years, possibly a decade. They figure that if they
can hang on long enough, they may be able to ride out
this storm created through the exercise of purposeless
hegemony.
As bad as the government of the
ayatollahs is portrayed to be - and, indeed, it has some
serious problems - Iran has been more of a fledgling
democracy under their rule than it had been under the
reign of Reza Pahlavi. If only the ayatollahs can get
smart and put their economic house in order, contain the
power and influence of the hardliners, certainly do away
with their henchmen - the religious vigilantes - and
further pluralize their polity, their country might be
saved from the miseries and human suffering stemming
from another potential cataclysmic political change.
Iran is also creating problems for itself by
seeking to become a nuclear power. All explanations
about the supposed peaceful intent underlying its
nuclear program sound hollow when one examines the
ambitious nature of its nuclear plan, and, more to the
point, its desire to develop long-range missiles. At
least for now, like Pogo's famous cartoon strip, Iran
appears to be saying, "We have met the enemy and he is
us."
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an
Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic
analyst.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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