Regime Change - What America Has Wanted In Every War, But Now Dithers In Iran

The war against Germany with its panzers, blitzkriegs, storm troopers and hegemonic intentions was really about regime change, getting rid of the genocidal, expansionist maniac Hitler. It was the Nazis with their torchlight parades, Gestapo, concentration camps, and intimidating Anschluss across Europe that were the problem.  Not Germany the country, the historical entity, the national unit in the center of the continent but Adolph Hitler, monomaniacal dictator, international brute, and threat to world polity. 

The war in Korea, a sorry case of too little too late, was a war of which Clausewitz and Machiavelli would never have approved. It was a war of petty pace and hesitation, a war America should never got into, but if it had, it should have used all the force at its command to defeat the enemy. Regime change to get rid of the Communist government which like all Communist governments had vowed to bury us. 

General MacArthur wanted real regime change - to destroy the far more dangerous, territorial, and politically ambitious state, China.  Cross the Yalu River, he said, and get rid of the Red Menace once and for all.  We have the arms, the bombs, and a heroic, courageous, well-trained military.  Strike while the iron is hot. 

Yet President Truman hesitated then acted, removing MacArthur from command, and sending a message to China that a negotiated peace might be in the offing. 

Ever since the Russian Revolution in 1917, Soviet intentions have been clear.  Like Islam,  Communism was destined to become a world caliphate.  Winston Churchill warned of the menace immediately after the Soviets marched into Berlin at the close of WWII, and successive American presidents built up their forces during the Cold War.  Churchill, like MacArthur wanted regime change - rid the world of the Communist government and remove the hateful ideology behind it before it caused trouble. 

In Vietnam, the United States fought North Vietnam and its Communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, a man like Hitler and Stalin who despite his claims of nationalism wanted to spread his ideology throughout Southeast Asia.  As a result of what the West saw as his regional ambitions, American strategists named it The Domino Theory.  Unless the regime in Hanoi was removed and Communism expunged from the politburo, it would spread to Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and beyond. 

George W. Bush declared victory when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad.  The United States assumed it had effected a regime change, and now Iraq would join the commonwealth of peaceful democratic nations.  No such luck.  Removal of Hussein simply removed the sworn enemy of far more radical Islamist movements. 

The Taliban in Afghanistan were a nefarious, radical Islamist, poppy-growing regime that threatened the region and like North Vietnam was intent on spreading its theocratic nationalism far and wide.  The regime must be overthrown and a peaceful, democratic one should replace it.  Again, no dice.  Regime change is not easy when the enemy has popular and international support, is well dug in and financed. 

The United States for decades has tried to topple the Communist Castro regime in Cuba.  Not only was it an ally of Russia and a depot for Soviet missiles aimed at the US, but is was ambitiously aggressive in spreading its noxious ideology through the region.  The Castros would not be content until Communism reigned throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America. It has been over sixty years and the Communists are still in power. 

Similarly, the US has tried mightily to rid the world of the Communist Kim family of North Korea, a permanent, persistent threat to America's staunch ally in the south and the rest of North Asia. There could be no accommodation with dictators, and the Kims must go, Korea unified in one peaceful, democratic nation. Again, fat chance.  The Kims have ruled North Korea with an iron had for decades and will continue to do so. 

When the opportunity arose to rid the region, America's backyard, Donald Trump acted and effected regime change in Venezuela.  Dictator Maduro was gone, the oil was ours, and the threat of aggressive socialism erased. 

Now we come to Iran where the American war started off with the clear intention of regime change, and within a few days of the first bombing the Ayatollah was killed, and the son of the former Iranian shah announced his willingness to return and to return his beloved country to a monarchist democracy.  Yet this particular regime was unlike the others the US had encountered.  

It was in principle led by its theocratic mullahs, but the real power and authority lay with the Republican Guards a force like the Viet Cong which were paramilitary, well-armed, and dispersed throughout the nation.  Regime change would involve getting rid of them, and that turned out to be impossible. 

So President Trump, faced with harsh reality and the knowledge that instituting regime change in Iran was not going to be easy if not impossible, stated that the war was not about regime change.  However, since all wars are about that, he could not come up with a viable objective.  What would constitute victory?  He had no answer. 

Yet he, his war room generals, the CIA, Israel and Mossad all knew that there was only one end to the conflict - the removal of the Islamic, expansionist, genocidal regime and replacing it with a secular government which willingly fit within the non-aggressive, democratic international union.  There was no room in the Middle East for a theocratic regime, especially a radical Islamic one which has vowed to establish by force of arms a Muslim caliphate. 

Now that the war has been engaged, the US cannot simply declare victory and leave.  Iran is still strong enough to do its will in the Strait of Hormuz and send missiles and drones across the region.  American bombing has not removed the regime, i.e., the IGRC, the Republican Guards, nor is it likely; so the US has turned to financial and economic sanctions to...what? Effect regime change?  

Punitive financial pressures against Russia in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine have had no effect whatsoever and both Russia and China, seeing the defeat and humiliation of the US in their geopolitical interest, continue to give arms and money to the mullahs and the Guards. 

Regime change was always the American objective in Iran, and everyone in Washington looked forward to have the Iranian Prince Pahlavi sitting in the imperial palace in Tehran; now America will have to keep up the pressure and see what happens. 

Clausewitz is turning over in his grave at such a dithering, confused, illogical strategy of war.  If there was no clear path to victory - regime change and total American occupation - then why begin the war in the first place?

The war goes on inconclusively, and meanwhile Iran's allies who need Persian oil and an ally in the Middle East keep providing it with the arms, financial resources, and materiel they need to keep the Americans at bay.  It is an unwinnable, not just because the US has no definition of victory, but because it has sorely misjudged Iran's resilience. 

Like the war in Ukraine we are in it for the long haul. 

Donald Trump's Lover - Paris Comes To Washington, No More Cowed, Uxorious Husband

Former President Joe Biden left office a bumbling neurasthenic, old man who could barely add 2+2 let  alone conduct the affairs of state.  He looked befuddled, empty, a deer in the headlights, confused and distant, no match for Trump. 

 

Although the perks of office were there for the taking, and he, like Kennedy, Johnson, and even Nixon before him, could have had any woman he liked, for the night, a series of cinq-a-septs or even more, he demurred, or more likely had no intimation of the joys of sexual renewal at eighty. Of course he had none of Kennedy's youthful charm and vigor nor Johnson's Ok Corral shoot-'em-up machismo, but there was some sexual affordability to the presidency after all. 

Yet Biden was hemmed in on all sides.  His juices were running thin and he was chattel to the feminist wing of his party - the vixenish women who disavowed heterosexual sex as antiquated and so yesterday.  There was no way that he could - even if he had the gumption - have a sexual liaison with a young, straight white woman. 

Biden's progressive shills might have approved had he gone gay, or shown some interest in the new crop of transgender women recruited for government service; but Biden was just a worn out, demented straight guy who had felt his oats decades ago, had vague recollections of perfume and fellatio, but was at sixes and sevens now.  Sex? What was that other than a notch on the gender spectrum.

Henry Kissinger, a saggy, jowly, ugly Jew famously remarked that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.  His physical grossness was no barrier to bedding starlets, ingenues, and sophisticated matrons. In fact every president in American history had a paramour.  Jefferson squired British colonial royalty and Beninois slaves, Hamilton in keeping with his patrician reserve kept only the best and the brightest New England debutantes.  

 

Woodrow Wilson, James Polk, and Chester Arthur never spent a night alone - gave their wives notice they would not be there for tuck-in and cuddles, and were cared for, serviced, and anointed with oils by their lovers but not Biden, Dr. Jill was there in the wings, a censorious, thuddingly ordinary and penitential presence, keeping her man in line.  Not that she cared if he bedded other women - God knows she did yeoman's work just getting him to perform his husbandly duties.  She was only concerned for his political rectitude. After all, a second term was in the offing and America was still a sexually conservative country. 

Despite Jill's efforts to prop Joe up and offer him to the public, Kamala Harris, that shrewish harridan from California, had the upper hand as Vice President, and even with every ounce of wifely ambition that Jill could muster, Old Joe went under the wheels of the bus. 

This is neither here nor there in terns of presidential sexual dalliance  Only to state that Old Joe even with the perks of office at his fingertips, never pushed the button.  LBJ used the Secret Service as pimps.  He gave the his menu choice of the night - Arabian queens, Turkish delights, Iowa cornflower ingenues - and there they would  be within the hour.  Kennedy never had to call,  Women were lined u;p in the West Wing. 

'Mr. President' offered a close aide of Biden, 'mightn't you consider taking advantage of the...advantages of high office?' citing the example of French President Sarkozy who kept his mistress in the Elysees Palace, or former French President Francois Mitterrand whose lover and bastard daughter stood arm in arm along with his legitimate family at his grave. 'You, Mr. President, especially at your august age, need not deprive yourself.'

By this time, however, Biden had lost interest in everything let alone fancy liaisons a la JFK. He was content to get through the day, sign a few executive orders, have a nice Philly cheese steak, watch the Phils and turn in early. 

Now, his successor, Donald Trump, had squired beautiful women for decades.  He was Kissinger's ideal - a man of power, wealth, and fame - but who, unlike Joe Biden never lost an opportunity to cash in.  He sponsored beauty contests and slept with the winner.  He was the central character of The Apprentice and took both winners and losers to bed. 

Former French presidential candidate, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a well-known sexual boulevardier was caught in a sting with alcohol, drugs, and high-toned prostitutes.  When accused of indecency, sexual profligacy and procuring, he demurred.  'All women look the same with their clothes off', he said. 'How was I to know they were hookers?'

 

In the Abel Ferrara bio-pic about Strauss-Kahn Welcome to New York the Depardieu character is unabashed, unrepentant and uncontrite about his sexual inclusivity. If elected to the highest office in France he would not change his ways. 

Donald Trump has never hidden his dislike for Joe Biden - in his own words 'a pussy-whipped fool with not a brain in his head' and has made no apologies for his own love of women.  The Left is apoplectic about his preferences for straight, white, attractive blonde women as White House Press Secretaries, going against the inclusive vein they had established with a black lesbian Haitian woman, 'one of us', a woman of color and non-traditional sexuality. 

They are even more at odds with the President's own personal sexual preferences.  That iconic white European statue, Melania, is one thing, but the rumors of his dalliances with the whitest of the white Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish beauties is another. 

 

Not only is the President an adulterer, a noxious, misogynistic, lying macho sod, but he betrays his wife with men's ideal. White men and all black men long for blonde, blue-eyed white women, and Trump's affairs with them confirm the age-old preference and rejection of multiculturalism and sexual diversity. 

Pharoah Jones, Sultan of Anacostia, king of the ghetto, wealthy beyond all dreams, pimp, drug impresario lord of the manner, could have any woman he wanted in his harem.  Beautiful Persia, Indian, Palestinian and Arab women were at his beck and call. But la creme de la creme, paid for in diamonds and rubies, first on the list and most generously rewarded were Scandinavians - pure white, golden hair, perfect white, silky skin.  

The blackest of the black wanted the whitest  of the white, and the President of the United States was no different.  He would one-up Putin and his Slavic beauties, Xi and his cafe-au-lait Uighur princesses.  He would be king of the hill. 

Eighty is the new fifty, the President 's young coterie shout.  There is nothing old mannish about their president.  He doesn't even take Viagra, the stud. Foreign leaders see that America and is President have got their mojo back and are to be reckoned with.  Iran? Venezuela? Side shows compared to after hours. 

Finally a man's man in the Oval Office.

Rewilding–A Romanticized Realignment With Nature

Rewilding – or realignment with nature in an attempt to recapture our native, prehistoric character – has become the subject of discussion recently. George Monbiot, author of “Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life, has written a screed about modern life’s capitalistic excesses and the importance of returning to a simpler, wilder life. We have lost our way amidst material excess, increasingly define ourselves in terms of a mass-produced commercial culture, have become manipulated by corporate forces, and have lost our freedom and individuality. 

Writing in the New York Times he said:

[Today] our working hours rise in line with economic growth, and they are now governed by a corporate culture of snooping and quantification, of infantilizing diktats and impossible demands, all of which smothers autonomy and creativity. Technologies that promised to save time and free us from drudgery… fill our heads with a clatter so persistent it stifles the ability to think.

Public spaces in our cities are reduced to pasteurized piazzas, in which loitering without intent to shop is treated as suspicious. Protest is muted by dozens of constraining laws…Political freedom now means choosing between alternative versions of market fundamentalism….

We spend hours every day watching other people doing what we might otherwise be doing: dancing, singing, playing sports, even cooking. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers/Little we see in Nature that is ours,” wrote William Wordsworth, and it is truer today than it was then.

What does Monbiot suggest? How can one recapture the primitive, primal sense of being back on the savannah?

I felt it again when stalking up a tidal channel with a trident, trying to spear flounders. After two hours scanning the sand intently for signs of the fish, I was suddenly transported by the fierce conviction that I had done it a thousand times before. I felt it most keenly when I stumbled across the fresh corpse of a deer in a wood. I hoisted it onto my shoulders. As soon as I felt its warmth on my back, my skin flushed, my hair stood on end and I wanted to roar. Civilization slid off like a bathrobe. I believe that in these cases I accidentally unlocked a lumber room in the mind, in which vestigial faculties shaped by our evolutionary past are stored.

There is a whole circus tent full of disaffected, unhappy people like Monbiot who feel that modern life has robbed them of their soul, penned up in a conformist, predictable nightmare of things, suffering dehumanizing routines, and unable to even glimpse a way out.

This, of course is nonsense. Civilization has been an enabler of personal, intellectual, and spiritual growth since Athens, Rome, Persepolis, Babylon, and Alexandria.  Great art, music, poetry, philosophy, and science are the products of wealth, privilege, and the dynamics of urban societies. 

Modern America is no different.  The Internet has given us access to every nook and corner of history, to the Pensées of Pascal, and the dialogues of Plato. Everyone can read John Gill’s 18th Century Bible exegesis, Dr. Johnson’s interpretation of Hamlet and definitive texts on Creationism. Whereas the richness of ancient and early European civilizations was restricted to a very few, now knowledge has become democratized and universal.

Social media have enabled new and potentially limitless means of communication.  Facebook and video games are but the first steps towards a completely virtual world. When the electronic synapses of the brain are linked with the circuitry of the computer, everyone’s avatar will be able to wander through the Palais de Versailles and eat in the formal dining rooms of the Sun King.  Character, personality, genetic predisposition, and fantasy will merge in an individual experience more expansive, rich, and textured than any before.

Corporate America has not been the incarcerating, exploitive demon that Monbiot makes it out to be; but the creator of wealth, innovation, and ideas.  Mr. Monbiot may wish to go naked on the plains of the Serengeti to hunt lions, but his life would be short and brutal.  He would die before thirty either eaten by the wild animals he hunted or brought down by malaria, diseases of the tsetse fly, gangrene, snakebite, or an enemy’s spear.  

Civilization – urban, densely-populated, diverse, and demanding environments have produced the greatest human achievements and will continue to do so.  Cities have always been the generators of economic and intellectual progress; and there is good reason why you can’t keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree.

The romantic idealization of nature has been around for a long time.  It does not stop with Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and Victor Hugo.  Our own Henry David Thoreau popularized the sentiment:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

Rousseau took this romanticization a step further, idealizing the ‘State of Nature’:

The natural man lives for himself; he is the unit, the whole, dependent only on himself and on his like. The citizen is but the numerator of a fraction, whose value depends on its denominator; his value depends upon the whole, that is, on the community. Good social institutions are those best fitted to make a man unnatural, to exchange his independence for dependence, to merge the unit in the group, so that he no longer regards himself as one, but as a part of the whole, and is only conscious of the common life (Emile, Or On Education)

The primitive tribes of the Amazon and South Pacific have been idealized as being closest to Rousseau’s state of nature. The wilderness has acquired a spiritual dimension in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  In both Old and New Testaments, the desert was a source of trial and inspiration.

It is natural, therefore, with such a rich literary, philosophical, and spiritual tradition to think romantically of a simpler age. As importantly human beings are conservative, self-interested, and self-protective by nature; and it is simply more difficult today to square individual needs with the competing interests of a multivariate world.

Yet for those who are not daunted by such complexity and understand and appreciate it, the modern world is indeed an intellectual and social bonanza. Of course the social media, smartphones, and phablets are used for gossip and idle chatter; but electronic networks have replaced leaning over the back fence to gossip with the neighbor. The constellation of ‘friends’ expands geometrically. Face-to-face communication has been made more efficient by maximizing time and distance through GPS and SMS.

Human society being what it is, there will always be only a relative few who use the new cyber-environment to expand intellectual, personal, and spiritual horizons while the rest use it as electronic chewing gum.  A system, however, must be judged on its highest achievement, not its lowest common denominator.

Nature has always been a safety valve for modern society. Getting away to the Hamptons is a metaphor for a modern-day nature cure – getting away from the demands of the modern world. Or a walk in the woods.

Romanticizing nature however is escapism. Mr. Monbiot betrays fears of the modern world in the opening paragraphs of his Times article. Anyone with even the least-adjusted sensibilities understands and accepts how the 21st Century works and how, in the scope of history, is no different in its social deployments, classes, and ambitions than any other. It does, however, differ qualitatively. It is simply intellectually richer and more diverse than any before it. In fact with the coming complete symbiosis of mind and machine, the seamless interface between brain and computer, the experiential world will never be the same.  It will be limitless instead of limited.

Nature is overrated and oversold, a kind of pseudo-psychological panacea for all that ails you.  Devotees say that only in peace, quiet, and solitude in the universe that God created on the second day, before he populated it, can we find out own spiritual souls.  A trip to the forest can be epiphanic, existential, and transforming.  Thoreau, John Muir, Rousseau, Ansel Adams and many others concur.  The cities corrupt, Nature heals. 

For most others, it is the bright city lights which offer the most promise.  Civilization was built with bricks and mortar.  The gardens of Versailles display classicism - the convergence of ingenuity, talent, and art.  Louis XIV wanted to display the highest form of human intelligence, the privilege of royalty, and the taming - not adulation - of nature. 

Persepolis, Rome, and Alexandria were no different - high human achievement built out of nature, not in in obeisance to it. 

Rewilding is a pastime, and expedition which will always be limited by enclosure.  Spiritual evolution as Hindus know, is a matter of a lifetime, an assiduous, persistent task towards a reward only achieved through discipline, piety, and hard work.

A walk by Walden Pond, with all due respect to Thoreau and the Transcendentalists, is nothing but an excursion around a small body of water.