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CAYMAN ISLANDS – Grenada and Panama are renown for many things, prominent among them, successful American attacks and invasions, that led to regime change. In the case of Grenada, American forces blunted the force of visiting Cuban troops and rescued many of their medical student citizens. It was also the benchmark on the termination of the Cuban communist influence in the region.
Many in the Caribbean were and are grateful.
The modern Cuban influence has been mostly limited to medical missions before having to recently return to an emaciated country due to American pressure.
Some defeated Cubans ended up in Angola while many former officials of the Maurice Bishop killing regime, fled both North and South, including to the Cayman Islands, over forty years ago.
For as much as these were popular but smaller victories by the American government, their attempts at larger incursions failed miserably, and expensively, in the post World War 2 period.
Korea like Vietnam were the subject of major American intervention with no result except Korea remains divided and Vietnam was reunified.
Lesser countries influenced by the USA such as Guatemala ended up being a recurring decimal of military rule before a semblance of democracy with criticism of human rights abuses by U.S. trained officers. The American influence in Nicaragua has their former foes quietly laughing from the shadows, at this latest cardinal error.
The American experiment in Angola with local and South African forces also failed.
These setbacks might have given many large powers such as Russia reason to pause, which they eventually did in Afghanistan. There is sound military reasoning behind no recent Chinese or Russian attempts to invade other countries preferring satellite operations or interference gestures.
The greatest example of recent American imperial foolishness is Afghanistan, where despite much resources and soldiers returning in coffins, the United States government attempted to persist for many years, before an ugly withdrawal.
Mothers, fathers, wives, children or relatives of dead or injured service members still wonder why today and try to vote sensibly.
Of the many lessons, 51% of the Afghan population of women and many men were unable to resist a culture of Islamic governance that is ubiquitous to that region. Many of these men and women of the then liberal Afghan army fled, sometimes hanging from the planes of departing Americans.
Sometimes an idea or book like the Bible is bigger than the strongest country.
The citizens of America must have viewed this as a wasted effort requiring a careful vote, until now.
There is a clear lesson here and America must be prepared not only to fight a guerrilla army but a regional guerrilla army, should they attempt to invade Iran and pay in blood for every inch of ground. It will not be a political transaction.
They would also be throwing the dice on the real nuclear capability of Iran.
Think massive Fallujah in Iraq battle, for years. Bombing some cultures into the Stone Age plays into their hands to become the most fundamentalist, just like the Taliban.
The stalemate in Ukraine war would be another example. Gaza is still not submissive or governable.
The fishermen of Dutch Harbor, Alaska or New Bedford, Massachusetts or Miami, Florida should save their old nets. Their military will need them when confronted by the flocks of lethal Iranian drones that await them.
Tricking smaller forces like the Kurds, betrayed many times before, will be no more than a sleight of hand as well as substantial elimination of a long lasting, proud army of resistance to the Iranian government.
It can only be hoped that the current American conflict with Iran has some understandable basis and not a mere political diversion. It would not be the first time.
There are many Caribbean descendants in the U.S. armed forces, most of whom joined for a golden American passport amidst a government revulsion of any immigration, including for their many relatives.
All that glitters is not gold.
It could lead to cemetery filled with the posthumous grants of United States citizenship.
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