On Venezuela, Trump has lessons learned, lessons in progress
President Trump seems to have learned a lesson from history. When asked why the U.S. has left the rest of the Nicolás Maduro regime intact in Venezuela, he had a one-word answer: Iraq.
And, it is true. Not only was Saddam Hussein eliminated (by his own people) but Chief Administrator Paul Bremer also eliminated the Baathist bureaucracy and security forces, confident he could run the country with a small military footprint. We know how that turned out.
Of course, the Maduro government has driven the country into the ground, so keeping it around is a mixed bag.
However, the president seems to have forgotten another lesson from Iraq and this pertains to the situation in Iran.
President George Bush, the elder, stopped the advance of U.S. troops at the Iraq border after the liberation of Kuwait leaving Saddam in power because that is all the U.N. mandate permitted (how quaint — international law). However, he urged Iraqis, particularly the Shias in the south of Iraq, to rise up against Saddam and Bush said that the U.S. would have their backs.
They did rise up and Saddam slaughtered them, drained their marshes, and destroyed their homes and the U.S. did not lift a finger, at least not until Bush the younger finished the job.
Yet, President Trump told Iranian protesters to rise up, take over institutions, and that help from the United States “was on its way” — until it wasn’t. And protesters were slaughtered.
The president has asserted that pressure from America has caused Iran to call off the hangings of 800 prisoners, a number — like so many the President cites — that seems to come out of thin air. Right now Iran is a black box and we have very little sense of the death toll or what is happening in some of Iran’s more notorious prisons.
Many of America’s allies in the Middle East reined in the president, arguing that allowing the current Iranian regime to fall chaotically could create another Syria with all that that implies. These things can have far-reaching consequences. Think of the flood of Syrian refugees to Europe that fueled the rise of populist right-wing parties.
Yet, the president persists with his impulsive, threatening, bullying, “fire-ready-aim” foreign policy, and we are all along for the ride.
There is another aspect to the Iran story that concerns the tools at a president’s disposal. For generations, the Voice of America Farsi Service has broadcast real news to the Iranian people. However, the president signed an executive order last March to shut down VOA
(quickly challenged in court) but VOA’s thousands of employees were put on administrative leave — essentially paid millions of dollars to do nothing,
Now, Administrator Kari Lake is trying to recall members of the Farsi Service to return to work to get information into Iran (yes, the internet is shut down and there is jamming, but there are ways to get VOA through). Seems the president did not understand that in a propaganda battle you need more than Truth Social, which, by the way, is not in Farsi.
In like manner, if the president were interested in trying to help a nation such as Venezuela make a transition to an actual democracy, he might want to call on a cadre of civil society experts, like those that helped the Warsaw Pact countries make the transition to democracy and, eventually, to EU and NATO membership. Those people worked for USAID. Oh-oh.
As Joni Mitchell sang, “don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone.” Of course, the president will never, ever admit that he is wrong or made a mistake.
• Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86. His book “American Dreams: The Story of the Cyprus Fulbright Commission” is available from Amazon.com.