The U.S Takes on Another Muslim Regime. Will This End?
When did this start? It was not Thomas Jefferson against the Barbary pirates, even though they were types of Arabs. Nah, we had to fight our way through the British crown, twice, then make our way against the native Americans, and the Mexicans, and the southern rebels (ourselves), on to the Spaniards across the world, and some Filipino insurgents, and the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, and the Germans again, plus Italy (whoops!), and the land of the Rising Sun, Japan, which took us to East Asian rivals in Korea, China, and Vietnam.
Communism was a thing. The Cold War had us chasing many ghosts and demons, many of them real in Asia, Africa, Latin America. People were hotly dying in all those places over the world dichotomy.
Yes, militant Islam finally asserted itself. On us. Prompted greatly by the rise of the modern State of Israel. Judaism seated in the Holy Land did not sit well with the caretakers in Jerusalem, the soon-to-be Palestinians, nor the Egyptians, with their Muslim Brotherhood, for decades, nor the Jordanian Hashemites, blood heirs of Mohammed, nor the Syrians, long-time Damascus gate owners, in league with none other than the Godless Soviets. Were they secular communists or God-fearing Alawites, I am not sure anyone really knew. Please tell me otherwise. If you know for sure, at least reassure me it is complicated or messy.
Iran has its own purposes, which became manifest in full force in the fall of 1979. I remember that. The hostages made it huge in our mind, our Cold War consciousness. The Soviets pounded into Afghanistan, and we were awakening all kinds of militants, extremist jihadis like Osama himself.
Which came back to haunt us with the Looming Towers, thank you for writing that book, Lawrence Wright. You are a smart writer and analyst.
[I wrote this last night--Pioneer Day for me and and a few others, like Utahns--and this morning in my head upon early awaking I remembered Lebanon. And Libya in the middle 1980s. Oh, yes, other Arabs that we, the mighty U.S., have tangled with, outside of the Cold War. Like Grenada, a small conflict that overthrew some lefties in the Caribbean. Thinking of Panama, there has been a violent war on drugs, too. Existential threats to the Monroe Doctrine and U.S. interests.]
[I have to insert the Arab threats of the 1980s, beyond the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei in Iran.]
Ronald Reagan sent Navy cruisers or destroyers to fight militants in Lebanon in the 7th or 8th year of their civil war. That was a mess between many factions in and around Beirut, with the Israelis aggressively entering into Lebanon to fight their enemies, with the future Israeli primer minister Ariel Sharon being the guy known for leading that incursion against its Hezbollah and other threating neighbors. U.S. Marines were on the ground with Italian and French troops when suicide bomb trucks successfully infiltrated the barracks, leading to a U.S. and United Nations disaster.
The mighty U.S. and its devil dogs humbled by defiant, battle hardened, determined, Arabs. Militant jihadis, looking after their own interests in their own lands. Almost like the Vietnamese. Are we the intruders? Are we the bully hegemon to be chased out of unknown quarters that we believe is our duty or right to police in?
Many U.S organizations do this, covertly, overtly, sometimes hostilely while other times humanitarian. Plus all the site seeking tourists.
Meanwhile, Libya hosted Yasser Arafat, who was being hosted on the far shores of Libya, in solidarity with his cause to maintain or create the Palestinian state in and around Israel. Moammar Khadafy was supporting militant terrorists, some who did nasty things in German night clubs, or on transatlantic flights, or on a Mediterranean cruise, targeting a old man in a wheel chair...
The Colonel of Tripoli threatened his "Line of Death" outside his international shores, the coasts where perhaps the third U.S. president engaged the Barbary pirates in the early 19th century, or where U.S. troops under Roosevelt and Eisenhower kicked out the Nazis and the Italians middle 20th century, leading up to Sicily, the rest of the historic peninsula, and the heart of Europe.
Here in the 1980s Reagan sent bombers to send Colonel (never a General?) Khadafy a strong message to cease and desist from his shenanigans...
All right, does that capture the 1980s better? Maybe mention Syria... There was the Iran-Contra affair, that somewhat forced brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to reconsider his loyalties to the great U.S., while the godless Soviets in Afghanistan were being killed and supported by us, the Western capitalists, with a Wahhabi or fundamentalist like Osama bin Laden receiving our support with Stinger missiles and such (Charlie's war), and the Taliban doing its thing...
All right, back to my original narrative from last night...
Then we got Saddam, because he misinterpreted the State Department saying that oil jewel Kuwait could be his. We went there to liberate them, and got our buddy Commie killer bin Laden mad when we stayed in the Kingdom.
.
Ahh, that sunny Tuesday in September. Fateful, we say. Yes, indeed.
Fate would have it. We go to Bagram, and Kabul, and Kandahar. And much crazier, hard-to-find places. Then Baghdad, and Basra, and Mosul. Then the Syrians.
And on and on. We see the Yemenis, and the Libyans. They had their own ISIS, the Islamic State for short.
Now finally Iran.
But it is not final.
There were be more Muslim regimes to fight and search and destroy.
And it isn't always them, of course. The Russians kille their fanatics in Chechnya, or Dagestan, while the Chinese persecute, imprison, and torture (re-educate) the Muslim Uighur.
But we worry about the ones in Somalia, and perhaps the Sudan, a little, but moreso in Mali, and Niger, and Nigeria, creeping into Burkina Faso and more.
We will continue, because they do too.
No end for now.
2027 is close enough.
What will happen in ten more years? More of the same, it would seem. Different names, maybe.
Same fights.
