So I stayed up all night worrying about being an immature idiot and whether my flight to Rochester, New York for "spring break" would be cancelled. By 4 am there was a serious blizzard blowing and 6 inches of powder in upstate NY and a front bearing down on Boston, but my wife cheerily assured me that we still had a window before the Nor'easter shut down all travel.
So I pulled myself together, packed my golf clubs and my son's into a hard cover tube that looks like a bazooka tube to teh TSA and always gets searched. Even though we would at best be lucky to smack whitey at a range the idea of a week's vacation without the prospect of sport makes me wither.
Spring break 2007 would involve packing up the remnants of my parent's estate in a snowstorm. Dad killed himself 11 months ago, unable to recouperate from the blow struck when my mom died in 2003 from the sporadic form of mad cow disease.
I was hardened, hung-over and fairly heavily stressed out when we pulled into Logan. The rain from the Nor'easter was starting to fall sideways I figured we'd be lucky to fly any time in the next two days. They called our section and I stood there talking to a guy in a Red Sox hat about how we were heading into the teeth of the storm - six inches fallen already and 1-2 feet forecast. He told me he thought we would be flying around it. But I pointed out that we had to land in it nonetheless. Then my wife Emily handed me my ticket... to San Juan Puerto Rico and said, Surprise!
It was awesome. My son Clint didn't figure it out until we were landing and the pilot mentioned that it was 87 degrees and that we were landing in San Juan Puerto Rico... What continent are we on? He asked bewildered by the possibilities.
My daughter was wondering about why we were flying over the ocean, but is still more surprised that her mother could fool her for so long...
So here I am in the mountains at Nelson's Country House a few hundred yards from the entrance to the Carribean National Forest with about 700 screeching frogs yelling in my ear. 2000 miles from estate planning and putting my family heirlooms in PODS containers. I'm told there are more pleasant surprises to come, there always are with Emily... It's good to be alive.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Guest Blog: The Gulf of Tonkin and the Persian Gulf: The Case Against a War with Iran
The Gulf of Tonkin and the Persian Gulf: The Case Against a War with Iran
For those who know history, the capture of fifteen British sailors elicits an unhappy feeling of déjà vu. In the Gulf of Tonkin, U.S. naval forces were supporting South Vietnamese commandos engaged in sabotage operations in North Vietnam. Although Operation 34 A may have been a justifiable response to Vietcong infiltration of South Vietnam, the fact that U.S. naval forces were engaged in military conflict at the time of the first attack on the destroyer Maddox was withheld from the general public. Apparently, there was no second attack on the Maddox and the Turner Joy, and it may well be the case that in the first episode the Maddox was attacked in a case of mistaken identity by still relatively harmless patrol boats. In the second attack, it is clear that what Clausewitz called the fog of war played a key role, as nervous sonar technicians misinterpreted data under stress.
The point of the matter is that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was generated by dangerous interaction between U.S. naval forces pressuring an adversary, and then used to rationalize the escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnamese civil war, an escalation that President Johnson already desired. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that authorized the ultimate deaths of millions of Vietnamese and fifty thousand Americans would have been unlikely to have passed the Congress if either Operation 34 A or contemporary doubts as to the reality of the second attack had been public or congressional knowledge.
The analogy with the capture of the British sailors is obvious. It is widely rumored that the United States has been attempting to pressure the Iranians through destabilization activities of U.S. intelligence services. The Bush administration has called for regime change in Iran on more than one occasion. The Bush administration has placed an enormous naval and air strike force in the region capable of a devastating attack on Iran. This has created a very tense situation between the U.S. and Iran, especially on the Shat al Arab waterway where the British were captured, the waterway being a source of contention between Iran and Iraq that in significant measure lead to the Iran-Iraq War.
An episode like the capture of the British sailors was almost a certainty given the tense security environment. While we may not like the Iranian regime, we would be unwise to allow such an episode to be the first step to rationalizing an attack on Iran that is a Bush administration policy in search of a justification for the following reasons.
First, given the duplicity of the Administration in launching the attack on Iraq, there would need to be very precise GPS coordinates of the British ship's position provided by an independent source before anyone ought to believe the story being put forward. Second, any attack on Iran would severely stress the U.S. armed forces, because the United States would be required to secure the oil fields of Southern Iran in order to prevent Iranian retaliation with their oil weapon. Third, an attack on Iran would increase Muslim hostility to the United States in general, and especially among Shia in Iraq who are vital to achieving any reasonable outcome there. Fourth, any U.S. attack on Iran more generally would unite Shia and Sunni against the United States, a grievous development to long term U.S. security interests. Fifth, an attack on Iran would push China and Russia closer together, as the U.S. would appear as an increasingly dangerous menace to world order. Finally, because of all the above effects of an attack on Iran, Israel's long term security would be endangered. Israel cannot in the long term live with Muslim hostility that is provoked by the United States on an increasing basis and must find some accommodation in order to survive. Many Israelis fear Iran, and not without reason, but a Muslim world increasingly united in hatred of the U.S. cannot be in Israel's interest.
The impact of the Gulf of Tonkin incident was to destroy a generation of South and North Vietnamese, and kill fifty eight thousand American soldiers. The press must do its duty and see that the current drift of events with Iran does not generate an outcome orders of magnitude worse.
Guest Blogger Donnie is an adjunct professor of
Instructor of Political Science, Economics, Finance and Law
He can be reached here:
Drich@mc3.edu
For those who know history, the capture of fifteen British sailors elicits an unhappy feeling of déjà vu. In the Gulf of Tonkin, U.S. naval forces were supporting South Vietnamese commandos engaged in sabotage operations in North Vietnam. Although Operation 34 A may have been a justifiable response to Vietcong infiltration of South Vietnam, the fact that U.S. naval forces were engaged in military conflict at the time of the first attack on the destroyer Maddox was withheld from the general public. Apparently, there was no second attack on the Maddox and the Turner Joy, and it may well be the case that in the first episode the Maddox was attacked in a case of mistaken identity by still relatively harmless patrol boats. In the second attack, it is clear that what Clausewitz called the fog of war played a key role, as nervous sonar technicians misinterpreted data under stress.
The point of the matter is that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was generated by dangerous interaction between U.S. naval forces pressuring an adversary, and then used to rationalize the escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnamese civil war, an escalation that President Johnson already desired. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that authorized the ultimate deaths of millions of Vietnamese and fifty thousand Americans would have been unlikely to have passed the Congress if either Operation 34 A or contemporary doubts as to the reality of the second attack had been public or congressional knowledge.
The analogy with the capture of the British sailors is obvious. It is widely rumored that the United States has been attempting to pressure the Iranians through destabilization activities of U.S. intelligence services. The Bush administration has called for regime change in Iran on more than one occasion. The Bush administration has placed an enormous naval and air strike force in the region capable of a devastating attack on Iran. This has created a very tense situation between the U.S. and Iran, especially on the Shat al Arab waterway where the British were captured, the waterway being a source of contention between Iran and Iraq that in significant measure lead to the Iran-Iraq War.
An episode like the capture of the British sailors was almost a certainty given the tense security environment. While we may not like the Iranian regime, we would be unwise to allow such an episode to be the first step to rationalizing an attack on Iran that is a Bush administration policy in search of a justification for the following reasons.
First, given the duplicity of the Administration in launching the attack on Iraq, there would need to be very precise GPS coordinates of the British ship's position provided by an independent source before anyone ought to believe the story being put forward. Second, any attack on Iran would severely stress the U.S. armed forces, because the United States would be required to secure the oil fields of Southern Iran in order to prevent Iranian retaliation with their oil weapon. Third, an attack on Iran would increase Muslim hostility to the United States in general, and especially among Shia in Iraq who are vital to achieving any reasonable outcome there. Fourth, any U.S. attack on Iran more generally would unite Shia and Sunni against the United States, a grievous development to long term U.S. security interests. Fifth, an attack on Iran would push China and Russia closer together, as the U.S. would appear as an increasingly dangerous menace to world order. Finally, because of all the above effects of an attack on Iran, Israel's long term security would be endangered. Israel cannot in the long term live with Muslim hostility that is provoked by the United States on an increasing basis and must find some accommodation in order to survive. Many Israelis fear Iran, and not without reason, but a Muslim world increasingly united in hatred of the U.S. cannot be in Israel's interest.
The impact of the Gulf of Tonkin incident was to destroy a generation of South and North Vietnamese, and kill fifty eight thousand American soldiers. The press must do its duty and see that the current drift of events with Iran does not generate an outcome orders of magnitude worse.
Guest Blogger Donnie is an adjunct professor of
Instructor of Political Science, Economics, Finance and Law
He can be reached here:
Drich@mc3.edu
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