Andrew Bacevich on the failure of US policy in the Middle East

Andrew Bacevich reminds us of the chain of events he related in his America's War for the Greater Middle East (2016) in a current essay, Trump’s Suleimani Strike is More of the Same Old Losing U.S. Game Plan in the Mideast Quincy Institute 01/04/2020:

The purported objective of the [US strategic] game [in the Middle East], which dates to the enunciation of the Carter Doctrine way back in 1979, is this: the use or threatened use of U.S. military might to impose order on the Persian Gulf and its environs. Ideally, that order would include respect for the values that Americans profess to cherish, among them democracy and regard for human rights. Minimally, it would permit the free flow of gulf oil to nations that rely on it to fuel their economies (our own not among them, given recent increases in U.S. domestic oil and gas production).

Yet since 9/11, U.S. military exertions in the region have destroyed what little order once existed there. In place of order, today there is anarchy: civil wars, failed states and terrorist organizations that did not even exist when the American “Global War on Terrorism” commenced nearly two decades ago. Iraq itself, today host to pro-Iranian militias and targeted by U.S. airstrikes, embodies that failure nearly 17 years after its supposed liberation. [my emphasis]

Commenting on Bacevich's 2016 book, Marwan Bishara wrote (America's war for the Greater Middle East Aljazeera 08/04/2016):

For Bacevich, US wars in the Middle East are driven not only by oil and the military industrial complex. He sees a collective illusion or naivete leading to more of the same blunders and mistakes.

And he shows how despite the proven failures, US leaders and strategists have continued to use the same Washington playbook.

Among others, ignoring the simple lesson that starting wars is nothing like ending them, and what Washington portrayed as military victories or "missions accomplished" have consistently mutated into different sorts of prolonged conflicts.

The victory against the Soviets in Afghanistan later revealed itself as a major loss. For Washington, Soviet withdrawal meant that the US won, but that was a short-sighted reaction. The first Afghan war paved the way towards a second one in 2001.

Bishara also takes note of the wide-reaching nature of Bacevich's criticism of US policies in that region:

Bacevich doesn't spare any of the politicians or generals involved in making the case for war. From Carter to Barack Obama through Ronald Reagan, Clinton and both the George Bushes, and from the performances of former generals Wesley Clark to David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal and numerous others, Bacevich shows how the US political and military leadership has consistently overpromised and under-delivered. [my emphasis]

Here is Bacevich doing a presentation on his 2016 book, Andrew Bacevich ─ America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History 04/27/2016: