In the Islamic world, the US has always floundered because it has often found value in radicals/ mullahs for immediate tactical gains, but then seen them emerge as huge long-term threats.
The US deep state and policy establishment seems very fond of right-wing Islamist radicals or the ‘mullahs’. They used them to bring down Iran’s secular nationalist and democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh regime when it threatened to nationalise Iran’s oil industry in the 1950s.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used the radicals backed and sheltered by Pakistan to torpedo Afghanistan’s Saur revolution that was doing wonders for women’s emancipation and the end of clan-based feudalism.
They backed the Pakistani military using radicals to attack India or suppress the 1971 Bengali uprising.
The US brought down Saddam Hussein with a fake scare that he had developed weapons of mass destruction — the bluff was called by the BBC at some cost to its finances. The net result — the rise of ISIS in the vacuum caused by the withering away of the secular though autocratic Baath Party.
The US-sponsored Arab Spring ended Hosni Mubarak’s ‘police state’ but propelled the Islamic brotherhood to power. General Fateh Al Sisi has restored Egypt’s secular polity in the great military tradition of backing secularism in the Islamic world, but US efforts to keep the Talibans out with a parachuted liberal like Ashraf Ghani failed miserably because Washington’s regional favourite – Pakistan’s military – played both sides — supporting NATO forces with logistics and selective intelligence while backing the Talibans.
The US failures in fighting asymmetric campaigns across the world failed despite its overwhelming military power, because its deep state and military-industrial complex suffered from the: cowboy mindset’ with overwhelming emphasis on force and confused approach to politics.
In the Islamic world, the US has always floundered because it has often found value in radicals/ mullahs for immediate tactical gains, but then seen them emerge as huge long-term threats.
Osama Bin Laden’s saga comes to mind but is too well known to be recounted in detail.
