If John Waver went full Bush in 2003

In two previous articles (see below) I detailed how John Waver would have handled an appropriate response to 9-11 in George Bush's place and secondly, had he been stuck in the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, how he would have reconstructed Iraq's political system.

http://jwaverterror.blogspot.com/2017/03/if-john-waver-had-been-george-w-bush.html
http://jwaverfpolicy.blogspot.com/2017/04/if-john-waver-had-done-iraq-war.html

This article will go a step further and detail just exactly what sort of neo-con "bad war" John Waver would have done in 2003, had he enough malicious intent.

Firstly, in 2003 and beyond, John Waver would have never invaded Iraq. Though anti-Israel, Saddam's Iraq was a secular country which protected its Christian minorities, had its Kurdish territory taken away from it and was under crippling sanctions following the Gulf War. Further, any nuclear reactors that were found had been bombed by the Israelis, so the threat from Saddam's regime was not much greater to the Middle-East than the threat of Qaddafi's or Assad's.

A much more tempting target for John Waver, in a moment of malicious intent in 2002 - 2003, would have been a land war with Iran. This is not to be confused with regime change, in which the Khamanei regime in Tehran were overthrown and replaced with a US puppet - a greater scale Iraq. John Waver would have, under almost no circumstances, engaged in a regime change policy in Iran.

Consider the map below. The south of Iran dominates one half of the Persian Gulf, through which go the majority of the world's oil exports. A US occupation of southeast Iran from the Strait of Hormuz to the Iranian-Pakistani border in the south, to the Afghan border in the northeast would guarantee that Afghanistan, the US' newest ally, were no longer isolated in Central Asia but instead connected to the wider Middle-East.


(taken from Premium Times)

Such an occupation of southeast Iran would have been as bloody as the Iraq War - if not bloodier - but the strategic results of such a campaign would have been more equally in the favour of the US and Israel than the Iraq War. The Iraq War, along with the conflicts in Libya and Syria, did benefit Israel much more than it did the United States. The Afghan war, conversely, more largely benefit the United States than Israel. This solution sidelines that tension to a larger extent.

Connecting Afghanistan to a sea route that is not dictated by Pakistan, China, Russia or the Iranian regime would have meant greater support from US allies for Afghanistan. Though the "democratic project" from southeast Iran and Afghanistan would have infuriated Pakistan, the Gulf states would be forced to invest in it to keep Iranian influence contained. Should this "limited" Iran war and Afghan war fail, Iran would fill the vacuum and the Gulf states would be no better off.

Lastly, such an intervention would have benefit Israel and the US more equally. Suddenly for Israel, Afghanistan's stability (a security threat for the United States) would be tied to its own: as with the Gulf states, American withdrawal from Afghanistan and/or southeast Iran would impact its own ability to hold back the rogue regime of Iran. With a sea route for Afghanistan through southeast Iran, covert Israeli-Afghan relations could be more easily established in the image of Saudi Arabia's own covert relations with Israel - and this would be given more chance of diplomatic success with Afghanistan than with US-allied Iraq of today.

Afghanistan, therefore, would be integrated into the US' sphere of influence decisively, and that influence would be close to the borders of Russia and China, to keep the US' stance as a world power beyond question. Instead of aimlessly landing the majority of its 9-11 fury in Iraq and undermining the war in Afghanistan, as happened in 2003 - 2011, this "limited" Iran war would enormously assist with stabilization efforts not only in Afghanistan, but also in defeating many differing forms of terrorism across the region.

Such a war would keep the US committed beyond question to its new sphere of influence, and may even dissuade the US foreign policy establishment from further wars in countries like Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Neo-conservatism only works when building on one's own strategic interest. A "limited" Iran war would build on the Afghan war, and sufficiently distract the US from making erroneous blunders of a different kind in neighbouring countries.