Reference News Network, March 17 report: The UK's The Guardian Weekly published an article titled "From Bush to Trump: The Risks, Lessons and Legacy of U.S. Interference in the Middle East" on March 13. The author is Patrick Wintour. The following is an excerpt:

This is the third Gulf War since the end of the Cold War, and also the nth outbreak of conflict. It can be said that this conflict is the most dangerous, far-reaching, and chaotic one among all conflicts.

The destruction and chaos affecting the entire region have raised a question: why have successive U.S. presidents repeatedly claimed to end U.S. interference in the region, yet are repeatedly dragged back into it.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has attempted to overthrow a government in the Middle East every ten years, and almost every time, as the unexpected consequences eventually emerged, the situation for the involved country and even the United States itself became worse.

Now Donald Trump is embarking on another regime change, this time in Iran. The timeline of operations has been extended, and people increasingly feel that Trump is gambling with the fate of a country he knows almost nothing about.

Repeated Intervention in the Middle East

The first Gulf War from 1990 to 1991 had some controllability in terms of scale, objectives, and duration. After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, George H.W. Bush relatively easily repelled Iraqi forces and maintained general support from the Arab League.

This lopsided situation is very similar to the current situation in Iran. Arab scholar Azmi Bishara called this a "war where one side has no risk and the other has no hope."

But this war did leave a legacy. Kurds and Shia Muslims learned the risks of being used by the U.S. president, as they were incited to rise up against Saddam, "taking control of their own destiny," only to find that when they were suppressed, old Bush stood by. Kurdish people in Iran may have already learned this lesson.

Secondly, this war brought 500,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East, as Mark Lynch wrote in his book "The Destruction of a Region," these troops "never truly returned in a symbolic sense, military bases in the Gulf, Levant, and southern Turkey are scattered like islands, aimed at dual containment of Iraq and Iran."

The bases currently under attack by Iran have become "the infrastructure of American hegemony."

In the second Gulf War from 2003 to 2011, George W. Bush believed that Saddam must step down, based on the assumption that he possessed weapons of mass destruction. This at least gave the United States a seemingly clear war goal, although this goal was built on a major intelligence failure, and no one was held accountable for it.

Whether Washington launched the war based on lies or miscalculations, the United States lacked sufficient understanding of the country it invaded and the forces it would unleash after toppling the regime.

The optimism bias regarding the consequences of the war was so deep because the desire to go to war was equally strong. In February 2003, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told members of the House Armed Services Committee during a congressional hearing that Iraqis "would welcome us as liberators... the idea that our military intervention to overthrow one of the most brutal dictators known to all Arabs would create more enemies is nonsense."

Recently, John Sawers, former head of British MI6 and the UK's special representative in Baghdad in 2003, described the situation after the invasion as "complete chaos."

"There was absolutely no planning for the post-war situation," he said. "Americans stayed behind tanks and armored vehicles, wearing sunglasses and heavy helmets, with no contact with Iraqi civilians. They simply assumed that once the U.S. overthrew Saddam, Iraqi exiles would return to take over, and everything would go smoothly. But that was not the case."

The Idea of Regime Change Is "Completely Wrong"

Philip Gordon, former national security advisor to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, pointed out in 2015 that the U.S. idea of regime change was fundamentally flawed.

He said, "When someone suggests that if the U.S. 'does it right,' it can solve the Middle East problem, think about Iraq, where the U.S. intervened and occupied, resulting in a costly disaster. In Libya, the U.S. intervened but did not occupy, resulting in a costly disaster. In Syria, the U.S. neither intervened nor occupied, yet it still resulted in a costly disaster." In fact, he wrote a book detailing how the U.S. failed to foresee the inevitable chaos after the fall of regimes. War can topple a regime, but it cannot build a cohesive society.

However, the debate before the Iraq War had at least one significant feature, which was that the debate was quite thorough. In contrast, before the attack on Iran, the Trump administration promoted deception and surprise attacks.

As early as 2002, many State Department officials warned about the potential costs of the war. They were right. According to different estimates, the war probably cost the U.S. $2 trillion, gave rise to the Islamic State terrorist organization, and caused 150,000 to 1 million deaths. Tony Blair's insistence on linking the invasion to a new process for the Palestinian issue went unheeded, and the issue remained unresolved until 2023.

Now, looking at Trump's "epic fury" operation, compared to 2002, there is now only complete chaos.

Based on his experiences across the Middle East, Sawers warned that there is a "dangerous possibility: regimes may decay or collapse, lose control over parts of the region, and the country may split into multiple regions with local governments often based on ethnic divisions. If the country collapses, it will essentially become a failed state. The experience of the past 40 years tells us that such states become centers of terrorism, smuggling, arms trafficking, drugs, and various forms of criminal activity."

But the danger lies in the fact that this has become an American action, rigidly focused on destroying the threat posed by Iran. Those who advocate for a show of force know little about the forces that might emerge after the destruction of the Islamic Republic of Iran. During the march to Baghdad in 2003, General Petraeus asked a famous question: "Tell me how this will end?" This question is just as relevant today as it was then. (Translated by Shen Danlin)

This photo was taken in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, on March 14. (Xinhua News Agency)

Original: toutiao.com/article/7618136577251787300/

Statement: The article represents the views of its author.