American neo-conservatives and regime change
- By Zhao Jinglun
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 13, 2014
The American neo-conservatives' first experiment in regime change was the Iraq war. As early as 1998, the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) called for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Bill Clinton resisted it, but George W. Bush embraced it. It was a war as much for Israel and Saudi Arabia as for the U.S. as neo-conservatives are staunch supporters of the hard line Likud Party of Israel.
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U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland feeds cookies to Ukraine protesters. |
Their point men in the Iraq war were Dick Cheney in the White House, Gen. Patraeus in the field, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith in the Pentagon; with Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) pushing hard for the "surge."
They did accomplish regime change, and toppled Saddam Hussein, but utterly failed to "democratize the Middle East." Instead, at the huge cost, they greatly sharpened the struggle between the Shiites and Sunnis, and destabilized the Middle East.
Responding to the call that "real men go to Tehran," Dick Cheney and other neo-cons pushed the case for the U.S. military to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities to spark regime change in Tehran -- also as much for Israel and the Saudis as for the United States.
They also wanted the United States to bomb Damascus and bring about a regime change deposing Bashar al-Assad.
Both were thwarted when Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened, first by brokering a deal for Syria to give up its chemical arms, and then by working with Obama to hammer out an interim nuclear deal with Iran.
So Putin has become the neo-conservatives' most wanted man. And their most recent move is to engineer a regime change in Kiev -- a direct challenge to Russia.
