Regime Change?

Mass gatherings of Iranians filled the streets of Tehran and other major cities - Image courtesy newsgram 

Given the current US intervention in the Middle East, gentle reader, maybe it's time to  conduct a quick and dirty review of American attempts to create regime change.

Let’s go back over fifty years to the war in Vietnam.

The 1956 Geneva Accords provided for elections to unify Vietnam. 

The Americans dismissed this agreement and no elections were held. If they had been, Ho Chi Minh would have won in a landslide, which the Americans understood, and was the reason they welched on the agreement.

The war ground on for another twenty years, killing millions of Vietnamese, fifty seven thousand Americans and over five hundred Australians before the country was unified in 1975.

The regime that landed there was not what the Americans wanted.

Then we could look at Iraq.

The 2003 American shock and awe exercise ended in an ISIS caliphate which lasted until 2019, the lead up to which killed hundreds of thousands of  Iraqi casualties, killed 4492 Americans and left Iraq in a divided mess from which it is slowly emerging.

Then there was Afghanistan. The Americans came and went (and we lost 47 Australian diggers in the process) and the country is now run by a thuggish quasi theocracy which has returned it to the Middle Ages.

So forgive me if I am unimpressed by Trump telling anyone who will listen that he is going to save the Iranian people and deliver them democracy.

I’ve heard it all before….