Readers: please understand that I am using deliberately sarcastic and overdone language in a specific attempt to add some humour. I’ve been writing such serious stuff in the past two months that I thought it might be nice to have a little fun. Please read this piece with a sense of humour and humility. It is not my intent to be too offensive.
Remember in the presidential debates when everyone was screaming about how Iran was this huge threat to the world and we need to keep “all the options on the table?” Remember the axis of evil? Remember this article from two years ago explaining how leaving Iran alone might actually lead to a popular revolution and do our dirty work for us? …erm… sorry about that last one – it only got 4 diggs.
But nevertheless, I’m feeling another bout of “I told you so” coming on. Before we began really screwing with the middle east in 2003, Iran was about to go significantly more towards the pro-western side of the Islamic Republic spectrum. By now, we probably could have been travelling there on vacation – maybe even having some foreign exchange students waking us up at 5am doing yoga or whatever it is they do on our living room carpet?
But one of the unintended consequences of having a nut like George W. Bush at the helm is that people in the middle east are going to be scared. And people who are scared vote like, well, they freaking vote like people who are scared.
Remember what happened in our country when we got scared? We federalised airport security. We passed the PATRIOT act. We supported two undeclared wars. We re-elected GW for chrikey’s sake.
Iran of course got scared and elected their own nut:
And this guy was the Iranian equivalent of GW in a lot of ways – aggressive language and posturing and so on. And while I don’t speak Persian, I’m sure he’s probably said a few dumb things and had a few awkward moments.
Nevertheless, the people in Iran are about to kick this guy out. Moreover, it could result in more than that – perhaps some radical reforms in their system of government. All of this in spite of a bunch of old white men making juvenile threats to Iran (have I ever mentioned how much of demagogue Mike Huckabee is? And yes, for anyone who wants to accuse me of “changing” definitions or using them inappropriately, I mean the freaking dictionary definition of demagogue – “a person, esp. an orator or political leader, who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people.”).
Anyway, fortunately Huckabee isn’t in federal office and US threats against Iran have been a little bit less overt in the past few months. This has led to problems for Islamic fundamentalists in Iran who have been able to maintain power, in part, because they can play on people’s fears of an aggressive US, thus, diverting pressure away from reform.
If we want the people of Iran to have the most success in reform, and also want to foster long-term stability – perhaps even future trade and diplomacy with Iran (but I ain’t hosting any exchange students – especially this guy) than our federal government should not do any of the following:
- Issue official condemnations or supportive resolutions for one group or the other
- Send in CIA boys to assassinate someone
- Drop leaflets or other propaganda
- Perform air strikes or other overt military action
- Fight a proxy war
- Try to win the “hearts and minds” of Iranians
- Encourage or support Israel doing any of the above
For once in the last century, maybe the US can mind its own business. Perhaps our politicians will realise that the world doesn’t need Team America to play good cop / bad cop in every internal conflict and reform effort under the sun.
Let’s leave Iran alone for a little bit and let freedom and liberty do their thing.
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Showing that we care about their neighbors (the Iraqis) has helped, giving them the courage to stand up to their leaders. The Nedas of Iran might not exist if it were not for the success of democracy in Iraq. Of course, they shouldn’t have waited until Obama was in office; he is no friend of the Iranian people (but he does seem to care about what’s going on in Honduras, for some odd reason).
Darius, I hadn’t heard about that impact. Is that simply your conjecture or is there documentation regarding the fact that the democracy in Iraq is having a positive impact on the movement in Iran? If there is such documentation, I would be interested to read about it.
Atanamis, I heard it somewhere that reports are coming out of Iran that Iraqi and Iranian political leaders are meeting to discuss how best to reform the Iranian government and how to get the Ahmadenijad (sp?) and the mullahs out of power and implement a free democracy. I daresay that the success in Iraq of non-religious government has had an effect… much of that is still just conjecture though. I saw it first on a military blog by a guy who said he thought it was a mistake to go into Iraq until he saw the Iranians standing up to the government. A long way to go, but it’s definitely possible.
Didn’t the Iranians put the mullahs in power back in the very early 80′s? I can still remember them whipping themselves with chains and shouting death to America. Sat. nite live used to do some great spoofs on that. We should stay as far away from that as we can.
Iranians are people too. Sorry, it may be obvious, but it seems some are forgetting that.
Darius, we are already involved in 2 stupid wars with no exit strategy. We have no intentions of winning either one. The troop morale is at all tine lows. At least in Vietnam you did your 13 month tour and went home. These wars just keep sending the troops back. The last thing we need to do is get involved with Iran. End these wars and we can all have free health care with the trillion or so spent. I’d much rather see it spent that way then on some 3rd. world craphole like the middle east. It’s time for Atlas to shrug.
Hmm, Lew, clearly you haven’t been paying attention recently. The Iraq War is won, and we’ve largely exited. Your ignorance is hilarious.
Again, let me repeat, I’m not asking for American military intervention in Iran. Please read my comments thoroughly, I hate to keep repeating myself.
I think we still have 130,000 troops in Iraq. That’s down from 170,000 during the surge, but it’s still nowhere near “largely exited.” Is that not true?
Officially, the Iraq War was ‘won’ quite a few years ago, but that didn’t stop the deaths and other ‘difficulties’ that had affected exit strategies….
If you’re referring to “Mission Accomplished”, that marked the end of the invasion–not the occupation and rebuilding. At that point, the first mission had indeed been accomplished: Saddam’s regime had been ousted from power, and US forces occupied Iraq. Nobody (at least not anybody who was paying attention) thought it meant the end of the occupation, or that our troops were coming home posthaste without bothering to help rebuild.
How is all of the money we’re spending there helping our country? Why did we attack Iraq? WMD’s? This whole thing has been a costly disaster just like Vietnam. Speaking of which-Body Bag McNamara checked out yesterday. He admitted after all those years the Vietnam was a mistake. We should learn from our past actions.
Jew is right, the media blew that out of proportion.
Lew, the big mistake was leaving Vietnam. That cost millions of people their lives.
Jew, that’s a good correction. Technically we still have a significant amount of troops there. However, to my knowledge, the Iraqis are providing much of the security and our troops are quickly becoming redundant. Either way, it’s getting pretty safe to say that the Iraq War is won, even if it is not technically done. Afghanistan, on the other hand… though it does look like the allies, including Pakistan, are working to snuff out the Taliban once for all.
Darius, the big mistake was going to Vietnam in the first place. It was a civil war and none of our business. The French were smart and pulled out after they got their buts handed to them at Diem Bien fu SP? The French even warned us that it would be a mistake to get involved. We never listen, we know it all. As far as Iraq was concerned Bush’s own father was asked why he didn’t invade in 1991. His answer was it would have been a quagmire. His son should have listened.
Jew, I was speaking directly to the point that we ‘won’ the war in Iraq. The war part of the story ended then (long time ago) and thus began the occupation part of the story…only wars are won not occupations.
I do have to agree with Lew that we tend to stick our noses where they honestly don’t belong, which I believe was implied in the original post from Colin. Is what we did to Iraq a ‘good thing’? Sure. Was it something we should have done? It can be argued as such. Was it a ‘good thing’ for us? Probably not. Clear as mud?
The OSS was established on 13 June 1942 over a year after the flying tigers were formed. This was roughly the same time as the flying tigers one year contract ended. Being OSS operatives would have been difficult to say the least.
The US had a lot more than a covert presence in China. We had the US Marines 4th regiment stationed there since the Boxer rebellion in 1927 as part of the four parties agreement. They were actively observing, spying on, analyzing, and reporting on the Japanese military for years. There was a strong believe that the “accidental” sinking of the gunboat Panay by the Japanese in 1937 was because Chennault was shipping recovered wreckage of the then secret Japanese zero fighter airplane to the states to be analyzed by the US military engineers.
None of this is any great secret.
I think the Boxer Rebellion was around 1900.
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq86-1.htm
I worded that poorly and off the top of my head. There were actually 8 countries involved in suppressing the boxer rebellion, of which 4 maintained a permanent military presence in China. Elements of US marine (1st regiment) and army (9th and 14th infantry) troops first went into China in 1901 during the boxer rebellion. These units stayed on a rotating basis until 1905 when the marines were given permanent duty. During the 1911 rebellion the army 15th infantry was assigned to China and stayed until 1938. The 4th marines went into China in 1927 to protect Americans in the Shanghai international settlement when the Chinese revolution started to become a threat and stayed until 1941.
Chennault’s American Volunteer Group (aka the Flying Tigers) were all civilians (technically at least since they all submitted letters of resignation to their respective services) in the employ of the Chinese. So even it they went into combat before Pearl Harbor (they didn’t) they were not American troops until the AVG was absorbed into the 23rd fighter group in July 1942.
My point was that there was nothing covert or sinister about any of this. It is well documented military history.
There was recent info that was released by the freedom of info act that mentioned the Flying Tigers were part of the OSS. If the Japs were aware of this, ww were committing acts of agression against their forces. If the same thing was done to us, I’m sure we would respond in kind. The point being maybe Pearl Harbor might not have haappened. Most Americans didn’t want to get involved in WW2. Had Pearl Harber not happened, we may hve avoided a conflict with Japan. I don’t think Germany would have been able to fight a war on two fronts in Europe and attack the US at the same time. We could have built our nukes and other weaponry as defense just in case they decided to come over here. Besides that, it would be difficult to attack and maintain control over a heavily armed United States citizenry. Just think of the money we could have saved as well as 500,000 US killed and countless wounded. Look at the money we wasted in Korea and Vietnam not to mention the lives of our troops and the way the country was torn apart by an illegal war. The money being wasted in Iraq 1 and 2 both instances, they didn’t attack us. They attacked Kuwait, lazy useless people that import labor from the Phillipines and treat them terribly. I would not have committed US forces to that war. Sadam was friendly with us because we gave him logistical support against Iran. They still would have sold us oil. After saving Kuwait, are we getting any discount on oil from them with our troubled economic times? Those creeps have done nothing to pay us back. When the heck are we going to learn to mind our own business??
Lew you need some work on your paranoia. What new FOI info? Please post it. The history of the AVG and the history of the OSS are in the public record and easily obtained online or at any public library. This stuff hasn’t been classified for decades. The AVG was absorbed into the US army almost the same month the OSS was created. Perhaps you are thinking of the Coordinator of Information (COI) agency which morphed into the OSS. Bill Donovan was selected to create the COI in July 1941. Again, by the time Pearl Harbor happened in December 1941 the COI was still leasing offices and getting furniture delivered. The idea that the COI somehow got in touch with the AVG to work for them, which the Japanese then found out about, whereupon the Japanese planned and carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor in retribution, all happening withing 4 months of the day the COI was formed is good stuff for Tom Clancy but not too realistic.
Pearl Harbor happened in response to the US cutting off exports, especially scrap steel, to Japan and Japan’s version of neocons frothing at the mouth to knock the US Pacific fleet out of the war. This is also well documented history. Many in Japan thought it was a serious mistake to antagonize the US. The hawks carried the day.
That being said avoiding US involvement in WW II would have been difficult on many fronts even without Pearl Harbor. The most important one being both the Germans and the Japanese (along with Russia, England, Poland and France until Germany rolled over them, and probably Canada) were actively working on developing nuclear weapons. It took a very determined effort by some of the top physicists in the world to convince Roosevelt of this and get the Manhattan project going.
I agree that avoiding almost every conflict since then should have been easy, except the irresistible urge politicians have to meddle in the world’s affairs.
When are we going to mind our own business? Probably never. We have a huge military industrial complex that needs justifying on a regular basis. Not to mention a large number of huge ego’s in government that think having a big military makes them more manly. That is why we spend more on the military than the next fifty nations combined. Sad but true.
If we had normalized relationships and encouraged as much contact and trade as possible with Iran and Cuba 25 years ago the mullas and Castro would have been long gone. That would have been too easy. It also would have deprived the neocon mouthbreathers the opportunity to play my dick’s bigger than your dick which, of course, is unacceptable.
From wikepedia–
The AVG was largely the creation of Claire L. Chennault, a retired U.S. Army Air Corps officer who had worked in China since August 1937, first as military aviation advisor to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in the early months of the Sino-Japanese War, then as director of a Chinese Air Force flight school centered in Kunming. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union supplied fighter and bomber squadrons to China, but these units were mostly withdrawn by the summer of 1940. Chiang then asked for American combat aircraft and pilots, sending Chennault to Washington as advisor to China’s ambassador (and Chiang’s brother-in-law), T. V. Soong.
Since the U.S. was not at war, the “Special Air Unit” could not be organized overtly, but the request was approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself. The resulting clandestine operation was organized in large part by Lauchlin Currie, a young economist in the White House, and by Roosevelt intimate Thomas G. Corcoran. (Currie’s assistant was John King Fairbank, who later became America’s preeminent Asian scholar.) Financing was handled by China Defense Supplies – primarily Tommy Corcoran’s creation – with money loaned by the U.S. government. Purchases were then made by the Chinese under the “Cash and Carry” provision of the Neutrality Act of 1939. [1]
Chennault spent the winter of 1940–1941 in Washington, supervising the purchase of 100 Curtiss P-40 fighters (diverted from a Royal Air Force order) and the recruiting of 100 pilots and some 200 ground crew and administrative personnel that would constitute the 1st AVG. He also laid the groundwork for a follow-on bomber group and a second fighter group, though these would be aborted after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Of the pilots, 60 came from the Navy and Marine Corps and 40 from the Army Air Corps. (One army pilot was refused a passport because he had earlier flown as a mercenary in Spain, so only 99 would actually sail for Asia. Ten more army flight instructors were hired as check pilots for Chinese cadets, and several of these would ultimately join the AVG’s combat squadrons.) The volunteers were discharged from the armed services, to be employed for “training and instruction” by a private military contractor, the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which paid them $600 a month for pilot officer, $675 a month for flight leader, $750 for squadron leader (no pilot was recruited at this level), and about $250 for a skilled ground crewman, far more than they had been earning.[2] ($675 translates $10,012 in 2009 dollars, and at the time sufficed to buy a new Ford automobile.[3]) The pilots were also orally promised a bounty of $500 for each enemy aircraft shot down.
Although sometimes considered a mercenary unit, the AVG was closely associated with the U.S. military. Most histories of the Flying Tigers say that on 15 April 1941, President Roosevelt signed a “secret executive order” authorizing servicemen on active duty to resign in order to join the AVG. However, Flying Tigers historian Daniel Ford could find no evidence that such an order ever existed, and he argued that “a wink and a nod” was more the president’s style.[4] In any event, the AVG was organized and in part directed out of the White House, and by the spring of 1942 had effectively been brought into the U.S. Army chain of command.
During the summer and fall 1941, some 300 men carrying civilian passports boarded ships destined for Burma. They were initially based at a British airfield in Toungoo for training while their aircraft were assembled and test flown. Chennault set up a schoolhouse that was made necessary because many pilots had “lied about their flying experience, claiming pursuit experience when they had flown only bombers and sometimes much less powerful airplanes.”[5] They called Chennault “the Old Man” due to his much older age and leathery exterior obtained from years flying open cockpit pursuit aircraft in the Army Air Corps. Most believed that he had flown as a fighter pilot in China, although stories that he was a combat ace are probably apocryphal.[6]
The AVG was created by an executive order of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. He did not speak English, however, and Chennault never learned to speak Chinese. As a result, all communications between the two men were routed through May-ling Soong, or “Madame Chiang” as she was known to Americans, and she was designated the group’s “honorary commander.”
When you look at the pay these guys were making in today’s dollars, the govt had to be behind it. Look what they pay those hired killers from Blackwater today in Iraq. See the similarities? Look at the dates these groups were put together. 1937,authorization by Rooselelt early in 1941 before Pearl Harbor. Who was paying Chenualt in 1937? Smells like govt all the way.
You claimed “There was recent info that was released by the freedom of info act that mentioned the Flying Tigers were part of the OSS.” Either find this source or admit you don’t need evidence to believe your position since your mind is already decided. There is definitely plenty of support for the idea that the Flying Tigers were organized with knowledge and support from the US government, but try to keep your statements in line with actual facts rather than what the voices in your head tell you.
Has anyone anywhere suggested that Blackwater is not explicitly and intentionally employed by the US government? I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make here, but it seems like you’re trying to distract us from the fact that you referenced a FOI release of which nobody else has heard anything. Having been in the service yourself, you too were a “hired killer”, so I’m not really sure why you want to use the term negatively. That’s why soldiers don’t make good peace keepers. Police are trained to try to subdue non-violently while soldiers are trained to eliminate a threatening force. It’s like using a hammer to pound in a screw. You can get it in there eventually, but there will be a lot of mess and collateral damage when you’re done and the screw really won’t be working right.
“Smells like govt all the way.”
No kidding THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT, read your own post. Better yet read “The Maverick War” which is extensively researched and very well documented. The US military could have cared less where Chennault was in 1937. He was widely considered a gadfly and forced into early retirement. Chennault sent extensive documentation and analysis about the Japanese military hardware, especially the Zero fighter, to the US Army while working for Chiang. Apparently this vital information about a potentially hostile country was simply thrown away. That’s how much respect there was for Chennault.
The AVG came into being only because Chiang Kai-shek requested it. Actually Chiang and his cronies begged, lobbied, arm twisted, and made wild promises. Most of the people involved in the process strongly opposed the whole ides. They quite correctly assumed that a large portion of any aid to China would be siphoned into the endemic corruption that was part and parcel of the Chiang Kai-shek government. That is exactly what happened.
I second Atanamis, what are you saying anyway? Are you seriously suggesting that Japan, with an army of almost 2 million men in 51 divisions and the third largest Navy (widely considered the most powerful Navy) in the world, went to war with the United States because they were intimidated by 99 pilots and 99 obsolete P40b fighters?
Amazingly none of the books I have read about the attack on Pearl harbor picked that up. Even your own source wikepedia under the heading of attack on pearl harbor missed it. Please cite your sources for this new and dramatic insight into history.
Hi Atanamis,
I’m looking for the info on the OSS Flying Tiger connections. I heard on coast to coast Am people talking about the connections. It did say in the previous article that Roosevelt authorized funding prior to the attack on Pearl harbor. The point is we could have avoided that conflict if we didn’t stick our nose in there. As far as Blackwater is concerned, they pretty much had carte blanche and imunity from prosecution for the first part of the Iraq War. Many regular US service members were killed and injured in retaliation for what Blackwater mercs did in Iraq.As far as some of the Iraqis were concerned they didn’t know the difference between the US miltary and the mercs.There is a book out called Blackwater about some of the practices of this company including hiring Chilean ex Pinochet Death squad members and sending them to Iraq. Blackwater also patroled streets in this country after huricane katrina. Hiring mercenaries to keep order in our own country in my opinion is not following constitutional guidelines. There was a posse comatatus act. I guess we just trashed what was left of our constitution with the Patriot Act after 911
Our Fabled Enemies
We are being told we have to fight this war against terrorism because they hate our freedom. Why then is our own govt. taking those same freedoms away??
“Coast to coast Am” is about as unreliable a source as you can get (possibly beat only by “some blog I read somewhere”). They don’t even bother to maintain internal consistency, let alone consistency with the outside world.
“The point is we could have avoided that conflict if we didn’t stick our nose in there.” Find any reputable historical scholar anywhere that takes this position, and we will perhaps take your argument more seriously. In the real world, nations are always making small moves against one another. Germany was sinking US ships throughout the war without our declaring full assault on Germany. Japan launched an all out attempt to destroy the US Pacific fleet before we had launched ANY assault against Japan. Yes, money was loaned to a “private” company to take contracts from the Chinese government, but no assault had taken place and every care was taken to make this company NOT be “the US military”. This was done like it was because the US did NOT want to engage in all out conflict with Japan until Japan attacked us.
RE: Blackwater, all you stated here is common knowledge. Whether the use of Blackwater is Constitutional is a matter for legal experts, and your opinion may be entirely correct that it is not. Morally, if the US is going to use mercenaries the US government is both responsible for their actions and for punishing wrongdoing. To the extent they have failed in this duty, the US government has acted immorally. I still don’t see how this relates in the least to the discussion at hand. It feels like you are just bouncing around randomly and refusing to back up statements of fact which you are called out on. Find the FOI release or admit you were lying. An FOI like the one you described shouldn’t be hard to locate, since it would fundamentally change the popular understanding of US involvement in WW2.
Because that’s how government always trends. The idea of a democracy is supposed to be that we can cast out those in power when they overrun their legitimate use, but that falls apart when the citizenry decides that they don’t mind an oppressive government as long as it only oppresses those on the OTHER side. The current US political system is built with 80 plus percent supporting oppression by THEIR side of the political scale, and very few people who want freedom from both sides. The US government isn’t taking freedoms, we’re surrendering them.
Also, the terrorists don’t really want to just generically “take our freedom”, they want to personally control our actions. They don’t care whether we are free, only that we do what they want us to do. And that’s just the ones with a motivation other than to kill and destroy. In Iraq, the terrorists don’t just target US troops and interests (arguably a legitimate act of war), but also Iraqi politicians and even civilians. They don’t want our freedom, they want to rule over us. Terrorism is always about control, and oppression of the common man (see Colombian drug lords exerting control over the people using terror). Freedom fighters target oppressing militaries (civilians killed are unintentional). Terrorists target civilians, and if they happen to hit a military target it is nothing more than an added perk.