A Personal History of Regime Change, Memory, and the Myth of America the LiberatorI’m against regime change—whether it comes by bombs, drones, NGOs, IMF leverage, or the velvet glove of democracy promotion. I oppose it when it’s loud and violent. I oppose it when it’s sly and nudged. Be it the softish regime change of Ukraine or the hard ones in Syria (won’t work), Libya (yikes), Afghanistan (nope), and Iraq (yikes!), it all feels like one coherent doctrine masquerading as a series of noble mistakes.Remember General Wesley Clark? He said there was a plan to take down seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. It wasn’t a theory—it was a blueprint. Not for democracy, but for collapse. A strategy of managed entropy. A doctrine of rubbleization.Let me take a stand. Not a shrug. A belief.Saddam Hussein was the hero of the Iraq War. His sons were monsters, his regime brutal—but Iraq was sovereign. It had schools, water, food, borders, pride. And he held it together. With force? Sure. But what else binds together a British-imposed puzzle of tribes and sects?The West loved Saddam in the ‘80s. He was a darling of the CIA. Then we turned. We shattered his country. Turned it into a sandbox of sectarianism, contractor enrichment, and nation-building cosplay. And we call that a lesson. No—it was a murder.Same with Gaddafi. Libya had free education, clean water, infrastructure, a plan for a pan-African currency. So we blew it up. Laughed when he was dragged through the dirt. The result? Slave markets, chaos, warlords. We still call it liberation.Afghanistan? We armed the mujahideen. They were the good guys then. Then we invaded, stayed for twenty years, and left in the night. The Taliban returned before we even finished packing.Yemen. Syria. Venezuela. Cuba. We starve with sanctions, destabilize, demonize. Obedience, not order. Broken states are easier to manage than proud ones.And yes, we provoked the war in Ukraine. We pushed and prodded until Russia, who made clear Ukraine was a red line, reacted. I believe the 2014 Maidan movement was regime change theater. Ukraine isn’t sovereign now—it’s a proxy battlefield.But here’s where belief becomes memory. I lived in Berlin once. I was 37. A 19-year-old Iranian girl was in my German class. She was luminous—black hair, brown eyes, a brilliant smile. She told me stories of rooftop sunbathing in Tehran, dodging morality police. Gave me her Yahoo email. She made Iran real.Until then, Iran to me was just “Death to America.” But she reminded me: Iran is human. Beautiful, joyous, mischief-filled, proud. The demonization is part of the war. First you make a place evil. Then you make it rubble.The devil you know is often better than the devil you invent. The Middle East doesn’t need surgery. It needs distance. These are not fragile people. They endure. They adapt. They remember.Every time we try to liberate a country from itself, we make it worse. Our “liberation” is strategy. Business. Empire in a friendlier font.I’m not hedging. I believe we are often the villain. I believe memory—especially memory of joy, of that girl in Berlin—is the antidote to propaganda.This is the record. And I’m keeping it.

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