Michael's Corner

In what was dubbed “Operation Cyclone,’” the U.S. furnished the Mujahedin with the weapons and cash they needed to resist the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; Iraq fired SCUD missiles that they acquired courtesy of the Soviets at the U.S. for intervening in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; the U.S. coughed up a billion or so greenbacks and equipped the Iraqi army to shoot the Iranian army, doubtless in an act of spite over the mullahs hijacking the revoluton, deposing the Shah and for the Iranian hostage crisis being supported by, you guessed it, the Mujahedin.

I challenge anyone to make that make sense. I was once fond of saying that the Middle East was where logic went to die. Nowadays, the place where logic goes to meet its demise seems to have an ever-expanding border; it encroaches on landmass more swiftly than Ken Griffey Jr. once covered center field.

One can only speculate how many foreign policy decisions were made based on faulty intelligence or on intelligence deliberately presented in a faulty manner due to the influence of an unelected power structure. The Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria initiatives all went sideways. I watched the bodies of dead American soldiers, dragged through the mud of Mogadishu while tied to jeeps. I heard a president utter the words “Mission accomplished,” months into a war that would endure for a decade and beyond. I heard a presidential aspirant swear that “day one,” he would shut down Guantanamo Bay, but then saw a view of the world when it was his turn to sit below the Sword of Damocles. Later, he would dismiss ISIS as a “JV Squad.” Months before Russia invaded Ukraine, there was a moment when diplomacy could have prevailed but was willfully ignored. So the U.S. has a checkered past concerning its foreign policy. Doubtless, she’s in good company.

And then came Trump. I can’t think of anyone else who could have broken through and smashed “the duopoly.” He defeated the Democrats and sent the Republicans to the corner for a timeout. How did he do it? Trump, for all his warts, of which there are too many to mention, is a savant at game theory—it’s his one superpower, and he grasps it at a level very few do. So what could have hastened a cunning gamesman to commit what seems like an egregious political blunder? What was the “no new wars” president shown that precipitated an Iranian initiative—something Charlie Kirk, who had the President’s ear, had strongly opposed? Like most American presidents, Trump has made his share of missteps, but not the sort that could be politically ruinous for him specifically.

And so it makes me wonder: is there a reckoning on the horizon (North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran versus the United States, Israel, and the collective West), and, if so, who wants it? Who benefits? Must we spill every drop of the bad blood leftover from the 20th century before we achieve a new paradigm in the 21st? Can we reconcile Malthusian concepts without playing a heartless game of musical chairs? And last but not least: how deep is the deep state? I, for one, would like to know what country I’ve been living in since November of 1963, a time when the richest, most powerful country, with superior intelligence agencies, lost its president to an assassin’s bullet without a satisfactory explanation as to how or why.

That’s a lot of questions and no answers. Meanwhile, I’ll reserve my judgment on this newest Iranian initiative. But I can’t help thinking that as the knuckles of Americans and some abroad are turning white, somewhere, some are smiling… and profiting.