Bush vs. The Axis of Evil - TL
Bush Versus The Axis Of Evil
In 1998, in response to a terror attack in Tanzania, the US successfully bombed Bin Laden's hideout in Sudan in 1998, killing him. However, despite getting rid of one head of the Islamic fundamentalist hydra, new heads emerged on it, and …
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While we wait for the update, what tropes do we add to this page here?
Maybe "Chaotic Evil" for Kim.Bush Versus The Axis Of Evil
In 1998, in response to a terror attack in Tanzania, the US successfully bombed Bin Laden's hideout in Sudan in 1998, killing him. However, despite getting rid of one head of the Islamic fundamentalist hydra, new heads emerged on it, and …
While we wait for the update, what tropes do we add to this page here?
On that note "Know When To Fold Em", "Pragmatic Villainy", and "Villain with Good Publicity" all fit TTL's Assad and his regime.
This is the bagillionth time I'm bringing this up but I would really wanna see what is going on in Israel/Palestine. The Second Intifada should be right around the corner at this point.
This would make a nice interlude post for Sorairo to tackle, now you mentioned it.
And since Israel "withdrew" from Gaza (they're still regulating everything else like trade, electricity, etc), I would especially want to see what'll happen there.
I especially look forward to how Hamas (despite the current "Current Politics" essence as of 2024) is doing in this alternative War on Terror.
My guess is that this will evolve in a way that can be described as "we better should not ask about".
Can't imagine things being too different. Though seeing more and more supporters either turning their backs on Palestinians or being obliterated means that they could get really desperate. And on the flip side you have the right-wing Israelis who'll see Iran's destruction as a sign to push further in the West Bank. Only the Taliban might given Palestinian groups support, and I can't imagine it being much considering sooner or later the US will make Pakistan rein them in (which will further the conflict between the two).
Yeah this can't be good.
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Only Ehud Barak who can saved them at this point.
He'll be powerless in the overwhelming face of massive anti-Palestinian racism.
Let's think positive: just maybe Bush's blunders will weaken groups which have traditionally supported Israel unconditionally, such as the Evangelicals. Furthermore, the destruction wrought in the Middle East might just make people more sympathetic to the Arabs, as Americans may blame themselves for how things went down.
Yeah, it's unlikely, but a man can hope.
A lot of Israelis, meanwhile, are going to be emboldened to pull a Leeroy Jenkins if they think the US may not have control of the situation for long.
And the Wellstone Administration, assuming he wins, would probably not be fans of Israeli actions against the Palestinians.
Or perhaps Wellstone decides that the best way to fulfill "our sacred commitments abroad," while reducing military spending and eliminating the draft, is to offload more of those tasks onto its allies... which essentially means telling Israel "Do what you want, we'll pretend we don't see or hear anything at all."
(I have nothing against Wellstone, I'm actually not sure who he is, but I can see American politicians agreeing to something like that)
Without You
Without You
Extract from ‘The Second Korean War: The Key to Understanding the War on Terror’ by Bosun Choi
Extract from ‘The Second Korean War: The Key to Understanding the War on Terror’ by Bosun Choi
On June 8th, Bush had made his final warning while ordering the Joint Chiefs of Staff to come up with a list of appropriate targets. Bush’s primary concern was minimising civilian casualties in such an event, something the Joint Chiefs had met with increasing frustration, arguing they were still being deterred instead of Kim. Anything within eyesight of the Russian or Chinese border was ruled out, so the idea was to place it not too far from the effective frontlines. Finally, after much convincing, it was agreed to have a gravity bomb detonate (choosing such because it was feared the Chinese or Russians would freak out that a missile was heading for them) over the bridges and stations that connected North and South Pyongan. The ratio of civilian casualties to military advantage (this was the chief route through which Pyongyang was reinforced) was considered the most advantageous. Bush reluctantly agreed, pencilling in the morning of June 10th as the day the strike would be unleashed. Like every night of that week, he prayed, but on the night of June 9th, he prayed harder than he ever had in his life.
Though the Chinese did not know for sure when the Americans would drop a nuclear device, the urgency with which they did everything in their power to prevent it happening was so intense that one would almost swear they were the ones about to be nuked. President Hu personally spoke with Kim Jong-Il over the phone in what one Chinese witness recalled as “A very masculine conversation”. The South Koreans had been completely cut out of the negotiations for now, as Beijing and Kim’s base (everyone knew he was lying about being in Pyongyang) screamed back and forth with each other. Then, finally, Kim said something that left Hu stunned. As the same staffer recalled, “It was like he had a stopwatch, counting how long he could play around with us until he got to the point.” It took another hour of confirming Kim was serious, and that if it was possible that Kim could ‘leave’ Pyongyang in time, before Hu responded with overwhelming relief. The moment the call ended, Beijing urgently contacted Washington.
As Bush recalled, “I had literally just finished my final prayer to God, begging him not to make me do this before Ari [Fletcher] came in the room and said, ‘We did it! We did it!’ I ask what in Sam Hill he’s yelling about and he tells me the Chinese got Kim to stand down as leader.’ I was taken away I ran into the Oval Office in my pyjamas trying to work out what the heck just happened, and then about five minutes after he said that, I realised that, or at least I choose to believe that it was those prayers to God that saved me from having to do that.” With mere hours to spare, the bombing run was called off just as the pilots were preparing in Inchon - Japan was considered too sensitive a place to launch a nuclear device from. Thus, to this day, the last nuclear detonation in hate remains in Nagasaki in 1945, despite the world’s best efforts since then.
At the same time, a Chinese plane had flown into an undisclosed location in North Korea, gathering its passengers and promptly flying off again. Within hours, the plane had landed in China, and out stepped Kim Jong Il, his surviving three children Kim Jong Un, Kim Yo-jonh and Kim Sol-song, along with his lover Ko Yong-hui. To the shocked eyes of the world, Kim stepped off the plane, surrounded by Chinese soldiers and began to read from a piece of paper as casually as if he was reading a newspaper to someone across the room. He announced that he had ‘Taken asylum’ in China, and that North Korea had served its purpose in ‘Breaking the American world order’. To that end, he called upon China to ‘prevent further bloodshed’, announcing that he gave permission for China to send troops into North Korea and that all North Korean troops should surrender to ‘comradely Chinese forces’. Pointedly, and much to the anger of the West, Kim never technically called upon North Korean forces to surrender against UN or ROK forces, meaning that isolated attacks continued for weeks, though long term it made no difference as by now most North Koreans had lost their fear of the Kim regime. Crucially, the South Korean hostages would be ‘transferred to Chinese authorities’, giving a happy ending to at least one side of the monstrous conflict. Kim declared that he had paved the way for future generations to ‘overthrow the American world order’, and that he could ‘retire in satisfaction’. With that, unable to conceal a smirk, Kim walked off into a shabby car surrounded by Chinese soldiers. It would be the last time Kim Jong Il was seen in public for half a decade.
Ultimately, the reason for Kim’s action was simply that he knew he had reached the end of the line, and China was willing to do anything to prevent Americans on the Yalu. With Kim understanding that his country barely had a functioning army left, he knew his best chance at survival was to take advantage of Chinese desperation. Notably, Kim decided to only save several of his family members, leaving the entire remainder of the North Korean elite behind and stranded. Kim’s most sycophantic subordinates were reportedly laughed at by Kim when they begged him to join him in exile in China. China would immediately contest the ‘Asylum’ claim, saying that they had ‘Placed the Kim family under house arrest for their actions in the Korean Peninsula, in return for the preservation of thousands of South Korean children’s lives and a speedy end to a war that has already caused so much suffering and death’.
Within twenty minutes of Kim’s speech, Chinese soldiers at the Yalu finally got the all clear to begin their march into North Korea. Meticulously planned for months, the only question being if they would have to fight America while they were at it, the North Koreans were ordered to open the borders and let the Chinese tanks in. Mercifully, the emaciated border guards seemed more than willing. The Chinese army rolled down North Korea at the end of tanks, their biggest resistance throwing back villagers begging for food. The Chinese had made little provision for food and so little in the way of humanitarian work was done. Chinese soldiers would recollect ‘I wondered on some occasions if the Americans really had dropped a nuclear bomb on the Koreans - the country looked like it had seen an apocalypse visited upon it. It looked like what the world would look like after a nuclear war. Villages depopulated, skeletons on the road, people staring blankly back at you, not sure if they were hallucinating from hunger.’ The other major obstacle was just getting around the roads given the extensive American/Korean/Japanese bombardment. However, one thing that was obvious was that the North Koreans did not want the war to continue. Liberated from Kim’s edict, surviving soldiers threw down their weapons to the Chinese at every chance they got. One Chinese soldier recalled, ‘How am I supposed to react when I see a twelve year old boy with bandages meekly hands over ‘his’ pistol? Or when he asks where he has to go since his whole family was dead from war and famine? You tell me.’ Roughly 200,000 fresh Chinese troops had poured into the peninsula, and only five would die from fanatical North Korean guerilla attacks who thought that the radio and TV broadcast of Kim from China was fake.
Despite the predictions of mass suicide, North Koreans were now mostly free of the Kim propaganda delusion. As one North Korean recalled, “I remember hearing Kim’s announcement on the radio with my family. Once it was done, I slowly turned to the portrait of both Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung that we had in our house. I remember slowly, gently placing my hands on the portrait of the son, almost like I was afraid it would break in my hands. And then, with a force spiralling up through me that I didn’t know even existed, a force that must have always been there but now finally pronouncing itself, I raised the portrait and smashed it with my full might onto the chair. The glass had cut my hands and I was bleeding onto the floor, my wife and child were horrified, and I just looked down at what in days gone by would have been a death sentence not just for me but for them. Instead, I just looked at the torn shreds of Kim’s face … and I just laughed. I laughed hysterically, like a madman. He had destroyed our country, destroyed our lives, destroyed millions of lives, doomed us to occupation, he had robbed us, raped us, starved us, beat us, deceived us, and took everything we had and could have had. But when I saw his face ripped up on the floor, seeing him in this pathetic, undignified way, I simply was so taken aback by this image that all I could do was laugh. Then my wife slowly joined in, laughing as hard as me, before grabbing the picture of the elder Kim and smashing it three times against the wall with all the might her body had left. Both bleeding, both laughing hysterically, we collapsed to the floor, our son looking at us in confusion, not sure what was going on. Thank God he didn’t know. He doesn’t remember what it was like to grow up under the Kim era - the kaleidoscope of unending agony that it was. The one that ended with him fleeing and us still trapped. It was a joke, and we were laughing. The Kim era is over, but until my generation reunites with the Father in Heaven, the trauma will never be over.”
The Chinese knew exactly where the internment camps that housed the missing South Korean children (and indeed Japanese and Korean hostages) were. It was one of the first targets they went to, going to the front of the gates and demanding entrance. Some of the camp commanders had committed suicide knowing the retribution they would get. At the Onsong Concentration Camp, the world’s press would get the first insight as to what they were like. The outside of the camp contained the mass graves of the former political prisoners who inhabited the camp, some who had been born there following their parents' being caught reading a Bible or listening to Rock and Roll - many of the older kids had been forced to fill in the graves. Once the doors were open and Chinese troops saw inside the cell, one could scarcely conceive of a way to hate the Kim Dynasty more, but now they could. As one journalist recalled, “You don’t forget seeing an eight year old boy handcuffed to a radiator with two black eyes. You don’t forget the smell of a room no bigger than a classroom with a hundred kids pressed against each other, some wearing the same clothes they were kidnapped in a year ago. You don’t forget seeing cigarette burns on a ten year old girl’s face. And most of all, as a parent, you don’t forget the utter hatred you feel towards whoever did those things.”
As if it couldn’t get worse, confirmation soon came once the offices of one camp commandant were searched and an estimated worth of 100,000 American dollars was found. When the Chinese soldiers demanded to know where anyone in North Korea could get that money, suspecting he was smuggling over the Yalu, they heard an answer that turned their blood cold: local party officials had paid the commandant to hand over ‘suitable’ children for a night or even a week of the worst sins short of death (or perhaps including it) that a human being is capable of. Many of the soldiers having children themselves, this pushed them over the edge. The commandant was simply beaten to death on the spot with nothing but fists. Other Chinese attachments were notified of the trade and told to hand over all North Korean officials suspected of nefarious actions to South Korea. All in all, roughly 170 North Koreans would eventually be prosecuted and given either life imprisonment or death sentences after conviction (often in tandem with other charges) in relation to child trafficking at the hauntingly named ‘Child Internment Camps’.
Many North Korean officials attempted to bribe their way through China, only to find their money confiscated by the soldiers and immediately shoved at gunpoint into jail cells. Among this number was ‘Pyongyang Penelope’, whose implied calls to suicide on her propaganda broadcasts were not mimicked in the slightest by her. Claiming to have been a mere broadcaster, she protested her detainment, but was instead simply handed over to the South Koreans. ‘The Pink Lady’ as she was known by South Koreans would eventually be given twenty years in prison. Such was the indifference to which Kim treated his minions that he casually told the Chinese over the phone the name and location of the units who were involved in both the anthrax and dirty bomb attacks, who were subsequently wiped off the face of the earth by Allied air power. On at least one occasion, in Hamhung city, an escaping official was caught by the crowds while he was driving away. The crowds broke into the car and physically tore the official limb from limb. All over North Korea, officials were now wanted men.
On the afternoon of June 11th, just outside the city of Kangdong, forward elements of ROK forces would meet forward elements of the PLA. This would be no ‘Hands over the Elbe’ moment. It was cold, unfriendly, and strictly business. The Chinese considered the ROK to be the battering ram to bring American troops to the Chinese border, while the ROK considered the Chinese to have been the enablers of North Korea and, worst of all, the guys who had taken Kim Jong Il out of their grasp. It would prove the origin of one of the most tense relationships in the world today. This new de facto division of the Korean Peninsula only applied to armed forces - North Korean civilians were free to move in and out of the Chinese and ROK/UN zones, invariably to wherever had the most food at the time. On June 16th, the Korean Peninsula was declared completely occupied by both Chinese and ROK/UN forces, but that left the question as to what to do with Pyongyang.
Ultimately, given how much of a mess the city had become, it was agreed by all parties that parts of the city simply had to be left for good. Pyongyang would essentially be halved, with the city south of the Taedong river declared salvageable, but the much more thoroughly savaged northern section, where the dirty bomb detonations had gone off, was declared unlivable for the foreseeable future. Regardless, even the south part was declared too hot for now, with both soldiers and civilians made to leave the ruins of what had been the capital of the Worker’s Paradise. While today life has in some ways returned to South Pyongyang, albeit with a lot more churches, even today the northern section of the Pyongyang Exclusion Zone is just an eerie ghost-town walled off from the public. Its monuments to the Kims have been blasted from existence, its glorification of its own slavery is no more. The centre of power in North Korea, the megalopolis that stamped its foot on the face of millions of Koreans now exists only in the form of poison rubble.
On the same day that Chinese and South Korean forces met, China produced a piece of paper purportedly signed by Kim saying that he had officially dissolved the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. June 16th 2003 has consequently gone down as the day the Second Korean War finally concluded, infuriatingly with its instigator not facing justice for his crimes. For pride he had murdered hundreds of thousands thousands, got millions of his countrymen killed, a level of dead Koreans higher than all the foreign invasions and occupations of Korea put together, and reportedly when talking with Hu on that fateful phone call, he had said, “Why should I care what becomes of my people? They failed me, they’re only getting what they deserve”, before asking about whether the plane he would be taken in would have much space to put some bottles of his favourite wine. The same Chinese witness would say in relation to his negotiations with Kim, “in all my life, no, in all my imagination I could not conceive of someone like Kim. He was not cowardly, like the Ayatollah, nor deluded like Saddam. Contrary to what they say, he was not insane. He was perfectly grounded, rational, even intelligent. He never believed the propaganda about being a God, or about bringing the Worker’s Revolution - there was absolutely no higher purpose to anything that he did. He was simply, in every ounce of meaning the word can conjure, evil. Human beings outside his bloodline were regarded no different to inanimate objects - whether alive or dead held no significance to him. In most of the world, he would have simply grown up to be a serial killer on the street, murdering women at night. But here, he was given a full country, given free reign to kill everyone and everything he wanted. While Mao had many good points among some bad, whenever I saw him either in real life or in pictures and stared into his eyes, I could find only a void of eternal darkness.”
On June 20th, South Korean parents and relatives once more laid their eyes upon the thousands of children they had missed for a year. Japanese families were reunited with their relatives stolen away from them as early as the 1970s: Yaeko Taguchi, Kaoru Hasuike and many more. South Koreans imprisoned from the YS-11 Hijacking, Thai families reuniting with their own forgotten victims, it was an international spectacle. But despite all the cheer the event provided to many, it was equally tragic for so many of the children. This was because there were no parents left alive to meet them again. China had expected the return of South Korea’s children to make them loved in South Korea - instead, it only hurt relations more, as it reminded South Koreans of the monster who started all this misery, who was now laughing at them from the safety of China. South Korea would not forgive, and it certainly would not forget.
But the US Navy had their own thing they would never forget. Along the banks of the Taedong River graced a sight that few Americans had seen in the last thirty-five years: the half-sunk wreck of the USS Pueblo. A hole blown at the bottom of the ship had caused it to sink, but a significant portion of the ship was actually still visible above the water. The Navy, eager to boost morale after the Lincoln debacle, begged and pleaded for a project they felt would restore the navy’s pride: resurrecting the Pueblo. The cost was significant, but Bush concluded, “We’ve had so much bad news in the last couple of years, I say it’s about time we had some wins,” and approved in conjunction with the South Koreans. After much painstaking work, a thorough decontamination process and a complete overhaul of the ships’s ins and outs, the wreck of the USS Pueblo was brought shuddering back to life. The ship was so wounded that it had to be towed to Incheon on October 3rd. From there, the final journey began. The boat was slowly, painstakingly towed back towards the US in a spectacle that was much mocked on the internet, especially by Non-Americans. However, there was one special group waiting for it at home. On November 11th, Veteran’s Day, the USS Pueblo, after more than thirty-five years of North Korean captivity, docked successfully in San Diego in front of some very special people: the surviving crew who had been interned with her all those years ago. With only two months of life left in him, the elderly, frail and dying Captain Lloyd M. Bucher put his hand to the hull of the ship who destiny he had been tied to. Tears in his eyes, he remembered the beatings, torture and agony that had been inflicted on him by his North Korean captors and, amusingly, how they convinced them that the middle finger meant ‘good luck’ in Hawaii. When he died two months later, many believed that it was because he felt recompense in the ship’s return and could finally die in peace.
The USS Pueblo remains in San Diego to this day, again as a museum, only this time not in service of its attackers but of its makers, telling the story of the Pueblo’s crew to future generations. The USS Pueblo has resultantly become a symbol to the US armed forces in general, of never leaving anyone or anything behind. But it also showed the state of Pyongyang when it was recovered, of a city brought to dust and ruin. The Pueblo was a witness to heroism, but it was also a witness to the horrors of 21st Century warfare. A warfare we could easily soon see again.
Extract from ‘The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Iran’ by Zoreh Rahimi
American soldier Jessica Lynch raised the flag of the Stars and Stripes over the old embassy in Tehran, the one that had been witness to the infamous hostage crisis that had divided Americans from Iranians for so long. The building itself was full of holes from urban combat, and one would struggle to see the flag from afar due to the dust that had sprung into the air. What should have been a happy moment was marked by great sadness and guilt among the Americans, who felt they had ruined a beautiful city in return for thousands of their number dead. No one was thinking in terms of triumph - they just wanted the damned war to be over as soon as possible. The Fall of Tehran was greeted with relief much more so than cheering. At the same time, mercifully, it finally seemed like the war was coming into its final moments. With the slow collapse of the Iranian army, and soldier unions overwhelmingly voting to turn themselves into the Coalition authorities alongside the more liberal members of the clergy, the Ayatollah and Soleimani raged at the betrayal from their final fortress: Qom. The Islamic Republic’s final stand would be at the holy city, the Ayatollah predicting divine intervention turning the tide, infamously predicting on his final radio broadcast that ‘rocks will fall like rain upon the Devil’s army’. Khamenei and Solemani had been much derided by Iranians for abandoning Tehran while the average soldier fought hard and well. As a result, Khamenei said that Qom would be his final stand. Now free from having to win over the hearts and minds of the Iranian people, the IRGC set up shop in hospitals, stole civilian food and in the words of one resident, ‘acted like an occupying army’. Though few Iranians would join the Coalition in the final battle against the IRGC, many would take things into their own hands. The long dormant Iranian Left in particular began their own fightback against the now thoroughly disgraced and fleeing IRGC.
The mantle of the Iranian Left had traditionally been held by the MEK, who had been established by Anti-Shah students in 1965 and helped bring about his downfall. However, when power of Iran was seized by the Mullahs instead, the MEK launched a campaign of strikes and terror bombings in an attempt to overthrow the fragile Islamist government and becoming significantly better supported in Iran than the Pro-Shah forces. It was then that they made their crucial mistake, aligning with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War and annihilating any goodwill they had from the populace. The MEK set up shop in Paris where it would eventually mellow its rhetoric and relinquish armed struggle, supporting peaceful reform in Iran. It initially supported the Coalition invasion of Iran before eventually opposing it at the tail-end of 2002. But at the same time the MEK was getting in front of cameras in TV studios in Europe and America, a new Leftist alliance was emerging in Iran.
Starting with the murder of Khatami, Iranian leftists had taken the morality police head on, taking their weapons and forming the primordial identity of a new movement. These groups would still join the Iranian army, an organisation that had mostly purged any Pro-Khamenei elements into the IRGC owing to the boiling enmity between the two parties, where the unions that were formed inside the Iranian army would later clash with Iran’s leadership. These unions began talking among themselves, with the Second Christmas Truce redoubling Left-wing sympathies among many Iranians who saw an international brotherhood before their eyes. A lot of this was through the thoroughly throttled but still barely surviving Tudeh Party, the traditional Communist Party of Iran. On January 6th, the ‘Provisional MEK’ (PMEK) was announced by balaclava wearing men and women in a recorded video tape. The choice in name had derived from a similar situation in Northern Ireland - the IRA that had participated in the 1920s Irish War of Independence had morphed into a distant, abstract political party that was perceived as out of touch with the reality on the ground, leading to the ‘Provisional IRA’ being formed, who were renowned for active use of violence, minimisation of class rhetoric, and promotion of leftist nationalism. In their declarative statement, the group condemned the ‘Usurpers’ in the traditional MEK (nicknamed, in tandem with the Northern Irish example, ‘The Official MEK’ who would publicly beef with the provisionals but would see their power and influence decline) who ‘Backstabbed Iran in her darkest hour’, and that any Iranian who had helped Saddam Hussein in the 1980s war was not welcome in the new organisation. Consequently, the group announced it was at war with both the Coalition and the IRGC, with the ultimate goal of creating a ‘Neutral, Socialist and Secular Iran’. The Iranian army itself would not be targeted, as ‘We are among their number’. The United States and UK would declare them a terrorist organisation in that they had effectively declared war on them, albeit upon their enemy too.
One thing that was noted about the PMEK was how many of its roles were staffed by women, with roughly half of their members being female. Women had been highly discouraged from fighting not only by the IRGC but the Iranian army themselves, who considered their role as men to fight and resist occupation but did not feel it so existential to Iran as to warrant sending the women to die alongside them. This left thousands of women feeling angry and helpless in a country burning down, and the PMEK proved a perfect escape valve with thousands of young women joining the organisation. This played a solid reason in the group’s targeting. Despite the claim they would fight the Coalition, the PMEK certainly did not target the Americans with anywhere near the ferocity they attacked the Islamists, who had created generations of vendettas. The PMEK would launch a series of car bombings, ambushes and guerilla attacks (suicide attacks were forbidden by the organisation to differentiate themselves) on members of the IRGC, who responded with further terrorisation of any woman behind the lines. Many women in Qom found that one hair falling from a hijab could be seen by some as proof of covert PMEK membership - more twisted IRGC officers even concocted false accusations for no other reasons than sexual blackmail. At the same time, the PMEK would kill a grand total of 55 Coalition soldiers in the war, mostly as a result of the soldiers initiating a fight or instigating an arrest. The attacks on the Coalition were often infrastructure attacks behind the lines that didn’t kill anyone - a nuisance but hardly the horrors of the Battle of Tehran.
The proliferation of weapons, hopelessness and bitterness had reached their peak in the aftermath of the Fall of Tehran. While parts of the organisation fought in the battle itself, the female membership that took up a large amount of the organisation slipped out in the refugee waves, often with their weapons. Older veterans of the 1970s gladly taught the newer members how to rig bombs and set up devices. Some young men even joined the PMEK simply due to the talk of how many of the members were women in hopes of finding a girlfriend. While there were a small handful of Pro-Shah or nationalist groups that rose to little more than street gangs, the PMEK was enough to make both the Coalition and IRGC think differently. It had gotten so influential that it is basically confirmed by now that elements of the Coalition cooperated with the PMEK during the Battle of Qom to help attack the IRGC from within. It was at the Battle of Qom that the PMEK would be elevated from a bit player to a main one in the Iranian story.
On June 30th, the Coalition began the attack on Qom, trying their best to avoid striking any of the mosques in the holy city. The handful of Iranian army units in the city had mostly either surrendered rapidly (risking getting shot in the back by the IRGC) or joined the PMEK. However, it seems that while the Ayatollah decided to stay in Qom, Solemani was directing the violence from the city of Kerman, well out of danger. According to legend, Solemani promised he would stand in Qom with him before feigning an illness that forced him to stay at a distance. Regardless, Khamenei made declarations over the loudspeakers, willing his soldiers onto victory and taunting the Coalition troops. By now, even the draftees had developed a veteran’s wisdom and grit, and the counter-insurgency tactics proved far more successful this time around, restoring the pride of US forces after a shaky start. On July 19th, Qom was declared secure, but still no Khamenei, leading many to suspect he was actually somewhere else entirely. Interestingly, on at least two occasions an IRGC convoy was seen approaching Qom in the night, on the first occasion ambushed by the PMEK on the way in and second by the Coalition on the way back, with many suspecting that Khamenei had planned his escape with these convoys. Regardless, we will never hear it from Khamenei’s mouth.
On July 21st on the outskirts of Qom in the village of Jamkaran, three British soldiers were hunting for their man. When on patrol, they turned around a corner to see about six Iranians in military fatigue laughing in public. What they were shocked about was that three of them were women, unveiled at that, quickly realising they were PMEK (though it was rare for PMEK women to brazenly walk around without a covering). When the six Iranians realised they were spotted, instead of fleeing, they waved and called him over in broken English, even waving a white flag of surrender playfully. Now thoroughly confused but still expecting a trap, the three cautiously proceeded towards them and around the corner, only to be greeted with one of the most iconic sights of the War on Terror: Ayatollah Khamenei, hanging upside down while riddled with bullets. The manner was deliberately chosen to look identical to Mussolini’s execution. The soldiers were quickly informed that, owing to their more personal grievance, the men of the group allowed the women staff the entire firing squad. Thus, fittingly, after the 1979 (Counter)-Revolution had extinguished the rights of half of the population, nearly a quarter of a century of vengeance took its course and struck down the Ayatollah. The six confirmed that they were members of the PMEK, and that while their ultimate mission was to end Capitalism and establish a Socialist Iran, ‘Socialists and Capitalists worked together to beat Fascism’ one recalled, ‘and we just ended Fascism in Iran.’ They would gladly accept arrest, becoming international heroes and placing the Coalition authorities in a very PR-damaging situation. Khamenei’s death was celebrated among the Iranian diaspora and many Iranians in internal refugee camps, with one Iranian telling the BBC ‘It’s the first time I’ve been happy in nearly two years’.
With the death of the Ayatollah, the Assembly of Experts began their debate in exile in Kerman as to who should be the new ruler. The hawks, led by Ali Meshkini demanded his ascension to ensure a continuation of the war to the bitter end, while Akbar Rafsanjani demanded an acceptance of the unconditional surrender terms while there was still an Iran left. After a tense vote, Rafsanjani was declared the new Supreme Leader by a single vote and prepared to make peace with the Coalition. Meshkini prepared to organise a counter-coup but he was shot by a member of the PMEK while on his way to meet with his co-conspirators (various theories float around that Rafsanjani set this up but no evidence has been shown). On July 29th, Ayatollah and Supreme Leader Rafsanjani announced over the radio and television the unconditional surrender and the dissolution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, with authority in Iran turned over to the Iranian Occupational Authority primarily led by the United States. The Supreme Leader ordered the IRGC and Iranian Army to surrender - Solemani rejected this proposal, announcing the creation of the ‘Islamic Revival Movement’ (IRM) out of the remnants of the IRGC, which was quickly disbanded and declared a terrorist organisation by the occupational administration. The PMEK, especially the three women who shot the Ayatollah, have become heroes in many circles in the Left, though more extremist and 'tankie' groups consider them useful idiots of the Americans.
The Iranian Occupation had officially began - and every Iranian, be it Leftist or Islamist or Conservative, made it their sworn duty to bring it to an end as soon as possible.
Excerpt from ‘Broken Dreams: How the War on Terror Changed America’ by Linda Reins
On the evening of July 29th, President Bush would declare from the White House that while there were new challenges, insurgencies and fights to be had, the conventional conflict known as the War on Terror had finally come to a close with Coalition victory. It was a conflict that had killed, in total, roughly 42,000 Americans in a fraction of the time as Vietnam’s 58,000. Nearly 30,000 had died in the Iranian theatre, roughly 12,000 had died in Korea and roughly 2,000 died in Iraq and Lebanon together. A further 8,000 NATO/Allied deaths were reported, alongside a jaw-dropping 100,000 military deaths alone for the South Koreans. None of the above figures include those who died during the subsequent peace-keeping/occupational missions, nor the roughly three times as many in all the above numbers that were ‘simply’ seriously wounded. It did not include those who were ravaged with PTSD in the memories of what they saw and did. The War on Terror would dominate the collective memory of America for decades to come, and not in ways many expected at the time.
The toll on the Coalition was mind boggling but it was still only a fraction of the devastation that had befallen the nations America had been at war with, with North Korea by far suffering the worst. There were an estimated one and a half million military deaths on the North Korean side, coupled with a further four million wounded, on top of the starvation and death of civilians behind the lines, with civilian deaths estimated to be another three million. The war was simply apocalyptic from a North Korean standpoint, and helps explain the reason why the Unification Church proved so popular in the coming years - the North Koreans needed anything to escape the pain of what they went through that they didn’t ask for. While there were some fears that Kim-nostalgia would prevail in the intervening years due to poor treatment by South Koreans, it appears based on polling data that the numbers of North Koreans who will ever forgive the Kims for the annihilation they wrought upon them, and their cowardly escape would struggle to fill a taxi.
In Iran, roughly 150,000 people were dead and about 300,000 wounded, albeit here the total were mercifully skewed towards military personnel, even better disproportionately of the IRGC over the Iranian army (who were more likely to simply surrender and not fight to the death). While they were run by a dictatorship, the failure of the Ayatollah to run a truly totalitarian society and the stern resistance inside the Iranian army to any attempts by the government to make the nation a disposable human shield for its own benefit had resulted in significantly lower civilian casualties than otherwise would have happened. If Iran had been run with a stern fist like Kim in North Korea or even Saddam’s in Iraq, one shudders to imagine the number of deaths that would have resulted. While Tehran had been horrendously damaged, its oil facilities in the south were working, giving Iranians a hope for the future that many North Koreans did not have. But, in the name of the ever-present search for Nasrallah, the Americans insisted that they had to stay, with growing frustration at the failure to find him even after he had supposedly escaped to Iran.
Iraq was its own mess, never truly finding peace after July 29th. The jihadists were not as active as they would later be, and they were consolidating their power in the west of Iraq where the FIA and Coalition were at their weakest. Spontaneous sectarian violence was a very real problem in Baghdad. The Kurds had pulled out of Mosul in return for yet further de-facto independence guarantees, while at the same time they consolidated their occupation in the Kurdish regions of Iran in hope of creating a unified polity. While al-Maliki celebrated to great crowds in Basra of ending Saddam’s rule, his sectarian favouritism had already hurt his relations with Sunnis. Al-Maliki, like many Iraqis, were convinced that the American presence itself was exacerbating the jihadist problem and, overconfident in the FIA’s ability to project power deep into regions of Iraq that were at least indifferent towards it, immediately called on the Americans to leave, something he knew Bush could not just do at a whim. At the same time, he needed popular support, as the Iraq he loved was on the brink of a destructive conflict.
Lebanon, ever quiet since the initial invasion, was quietly simmering with resentment, not just against foreign troops being present in Lebanon (primarily French) but of the entire sectarian system itself. Younger Lebanese, more secular in each of the three major communities than their parents, blamed the fickleness of the sectarian political system and favouritism for inviting this catastrophe to Lebanon in the first place, starting from the Civil War right up to Hezbollah’s shenanigans. While it had not suffered anything like the destruction visited upon the Axis of Evil countries, the sense of having such a glorious recent past snatched away by the hands of religious fanatics (or very often irreligious warlords claiming to represent those communities) who now had to have their ring kissed just to do business with them had left a very bitter taste. While Hezbollah’s defeat and subsequent trade liberalisation with Lebanon brought major economic improvements even amidst a global economic slowdown, the politicians incorrectly thought that this guaranteed their survival. Instead, all it did was convince the younger Lebanese that they were no longer necessary, as they were inspired by the Left-wing groups in Iran to oppose both the religious establishments at home as well as foreign occupation.
The ‘War on Terror’ would be a name whose very mention would conjure images of ‘The War to End Wars’. The era of 90s innocence had made way to the foreboding, devastating and blood-red dawn of the 21st Century. The world of the 1990s seemed as distant from the average American in 2003 as the 1890s. Tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands deprived of loved ones, their country’s flag burned around the world in hate. Was it worth it? Was anything worth it? To millions of disillusioned young men, no, it wasn’t. Because deep down, they already knew that the forces unleashed by this war were not going to go quietly into the night. The War on Terror, like the Great War, would only light the catalyst for future conflicts. In those moments, many cursed God for how the world turned out. Perhaps responses to these reactions were best summarised by a character in Kurosawa's seminal film Ran, who said, "Do not blaspheme! It is the gods who weep! They see us killing each other over and over since time began. They can't save us from ourselves."
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Thus ends the conventional stage of the War on Terror ITTL - my intention is to continue writing this timeline until TTL's 2012 US Presidential election. I hope this will take no more than three or four updates, as I'm setting a goal to myself to finish this before the end of March. I will be going to Taiwan at the end of March and when I'm back in April I'll stick around to answer some story questions and say my goodbyes.
All in all this alone would make for an exceptional ending chapter if you left it at that, though Im very curious how things will turn out till 2012
That choice of year in particular resonates with me
Since in my private life it was the end and start of an era that lasted till the pandemic
That choice of year in particular resonates with me
Since in my private life it was the end and start of an era that lasted till the pandemic