Unsolicited Advice to the Government of Iran

Presuming that you are not actually ignorant enough to desire war with the United States, you might be well advised to read the history of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 and the history of the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964.

Having done so, you will surely recognize that Americans are reluctant to go to war unless attacked. Until Pearl Harbor, we were even reluctant to get involved in World War II. For historians of American wars the question is whether we provoke provocations.

Given the unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, you are obviously thinking the rules have changed. Provocation is no longer required to take America to war. But even in this instance, we were led to believe that the mass murderer of American civilians, Osama bin Laden, was lurking, literally or figuratively, in the vicinity of Baghdad.

Given all this, you would probably be well advised to keep your forces, including clandestine forces, as far away from the Iraqi border as you can. You might even consider bringing in some neighbors to verify that you are not shipping arms next door. Tone down the rhetoric on Zionism. You've established your credentials with those in your world who thrive on that.

If it makes you feel powerful to hurl accusations at the American eagle, have at it. Sticks and stones, etc. But, for the next sixteen months or so, you should not only not take provocative actions, you should not seem to be doing so.

For the vast majority of Americans who seek no wider war, in the Middle East or elsewhere, don't tempt fate. Don't give a certain vice president we know the justification he is seeking to attack your country. That is unless you happen to like having bombs fall on your head.

Comments

[JimJohnD]

Held Ha…

9/11 was the result of the Bush administrations provocation. Mr. Rumsfeld said after 9/11 that their tactics were to provoke the ‘terrorists’ into action but be there to stop them.

“Who was going to attack us, when and where and with what? You might recall the hijacking…that was referred to in the PDB was not hijacking a airplane to fly into a building, it was hijacking of airplanes in order to free somebody that was being held a ha…ee, ah, a prisoner of the United States.”

President Bush on the PDB as recorded by C-Span.

Who was being held hostage, I mean prisoner of the United States? Why weren’t the airlines at a higher security alert than they were? A standing hijack threat should have had someone telling security something; unless a hijacking was supposed to be our reason to go to war and the Administration got more than they bargained for.

[gernger]

In the first episode of "War," it was pointed out that our government knew for sure that the Japanese werw going to attack, they just didn't know when or where. There could only have been two places, one was Pearl and the other was the Phillipines. We weren't ready for either. We had enough aircraft at both places to launch a strong defence. After Pearl, McAarthur should have been ready at the Phillipines, but he wasn't.Eit­her our government was obliquely stupid, or they wanted the attacks to happen. We were technically provoked into war, but we also did a lot of provoking. After all we cut off there oil supply. What did we think they were going to do.

[parryisle]

The only people who have been fooled by these provocations are those who wanted to be fooled. Citizen Hearst gave us the Spanish empire in 1898 which cost him the dollars of that day-$2,000,000. Spain's troubles then became our troubles soon after when the liberated Filipino realized they had lost one colonial occupier to be replaced by the newest. Japan took note of this and a war forty years later should not have surprised anyone who reads history. We Americans have become so arrogant that we are unconcerned when people we attack attempt to retaliate. Mentioning our marines in Beirut; the attacks on the tower in Arabia and the USS Cole were to be expected when stationed in a war zone. Our troops are aware that the enemies we create may occasionally respond in kind. It's an occupational hazard. Steve, USN, WW2

[Beaux510]

Parry, something you may find interesting about the Beirut incident. Richard Marcinko of Seal Team Six claims that a few days before the bombing he had actually tested a device that broadcasted rotating radio frequencies to trigger inbound detonators before they reached their target. He said it took him only a few minutes of driving it around in a cab in Beirut before it triggered a bomb in a nearby apartment building. He tried to get the commander to install it on the building, but was refused due to policy reasons. The bombing came a couple of days later.

[anIndependent]

I find it interesting that you hear both reps and dems referring to Iran as againsts us, and evil. You could easily argue why the population might feel that way by knowing your history, or specifically theirs. But for the political boneheads in washington, including a few from both parties wishing to be president, to reference "Iran" instead of their problems with a specific loudmouth leader is as problematic as if any American were to hear such a statement from a Russian or Chinese leader. You shouldn't reference "Iran", the people, but the leaders. It doesn't matter what country your talking about.

[dkm]

It is instructive that Mr. Hart's two examples, Gulf of Tonkin and the Maine, were both either false flag incidents or at least not something that the "offending" country had anything to do with. The real warning that Mr. Hart is sending is that no matter what Iran does, the US administration will find some pretext to attack them. Actually that is pretty much what Iran already knows having seen how the attack on Iraq was preordained and there was nothing that anyone in Iraq could have done short of opening their oil fields to EXXON and the like that would have forestalled it. To plead that we honestly believed that Hussein and al Qaeda were linked only adds to the proof that the Bush administration along with its MSM enablers is able to deceive enough people to do whatever they want, in this case invade Iran.

As for the threat to keep their forces away from the border so that the US Special Forces have free rein to blow up everything, please!

[BinBaldwin]

Killing US Marines in Beirut. Taking US Hostages and now supplying weapons to those killing US Troops in Iraq is not enough justification?

[Balloonman]

BinBaldwin
Killing US Marines in Beirut? I didn't know IRAN did that. Taking US hostages, yes. That was nasty. Consider however, CIA and KERMIT ROOSEVELT's sneaking around instilling fear and uprisings in some key quarters of IRAN for 3 days or so, forcing out their democratically elected President to be replaced quick by our puppet the Shah.

KILLING US troops in IRAQ? You mean the alleged, if not likely assistance­--consider­ing like us IRAN supports 'friends'--IRAN gives to 'insurgent' shia factions and providing parts and info how to make IED's more effective? Nasty yes. Can't have that. Course consideration we supported IRAQ during IRAN/IRAQ war, and advocate REGIME CHANGE and labeling IRAN key in our AXIS OF EVIL trilogy, and claiming they (not us) want to dominate the OIL of the Middle East, thus dominate their neighbors, likely by the force of IRAN's military, might rub IRAN wrong. Plus claiming them a nuke threat, which eminates off their claim they have as much right to NUKYULAR energy for their municipalities as other nations (FRANCE powers 80% nuclear energy). Those 'smears' just might stir up some IRAN annoyance towards our superpowering for ourselves THEIR native region. Eh.

That IRAN reportedly executes homosexuals and stone women? Unexeptable, appalling, unforgivable. Go to war for it, a sovereign NATION been doing ancient/misbegotten punishment in the name of the KORAN for centuries, no. That is their ugly business to evolve out of.

IRAN a threat to ISRAEL? Sticks and stones, hate nasty, it's ugly and doesn't help peace matters. And likely IRAN, it's leaders, would love to see ISRAEL, the ZION obliterated, replaced by a new PALESTINE. Clandestine shenanigans are likely, but ISRAEL, protected by us 100% ameliorates IRAN as an overt, physical overt threat.

[realistic2008]

I have not heard or read anywhere that the Iranians were responsible for the deaths of the marines in Beirut, nor I have ever heard president Reagan sending planes and bombing the hell out of whoever perpetrated that atrocity, in fact what he did is remove the marines and bringing them home, have you ever ask yourself why?
As far as supplying weapons, don't you know that we are the biggest suppliers of arms to most of the nations on earth and so are the Russians and the Chinese and these days perhaps even Brazilians, shall we invade all those countries including our own armaments factories?
Are not our weapons killing people in Iraq and therefore will that give say the Rusians reason or justification to attack US? or at the very least ask the UN for sanctions?
Come on don't be so naive, first arms in any conflict are provided mostly by mercenaries and arms merchants who profit greatly from those conflicts, for all I know it may include Americans among them.

[whirlygirl]

i heard an interview with a foreign policy analyst who believes that iran is arming all factions in iraq so that they can be on good terms with whomever comes out ahead, as they're tired of having disagreeable neighbors. this has the ring of ugly truth; after all, for them it's a matter of regional politics. meanwhile, with heated rhetoric on all sides, there are many astute iranian citizens who are unfortunately caught in the middle. i don't believe they want our help. and i am not sure where attacking iran will lead us.

not to mention, the violence among iraqis is aided by, but by no means solely caused by, iran's interference, so even if the invasion goes beautifully, it won't solve our problems.

i like joe biden's idea of a loose federation where the three populations of iraq can control their own gvts. the whole idea of a unified iraq is an outsider's (in this case, britain, post-Ottoman Empire) poor idea of nation building.

now, as then, as we know, it's all about oil. in order to get our hands clean, our ultimate goal should be to get out of the middle east while working hard at finding alternative means of producing energy. this should in fact be an overriding scientific preoccupation in the western world as the need is urgent and our leaders are not particularly bright people.

[Kendo Nagasaki]

Even in a Kurdistan, Shiastan and Sunnistan there will be fighting over the borders. Remember when the British left India/Pakistan in 1947 and when Jugoslavia disintegrated into Croatia, Serbia, Macedonija etc. fairly recently ?

Turkey is also very nervous about Kurdish ambitions on its own Kurdish regions and maybe Iran will try to annex Shiastan or at least its oil.

Lets face it, under Bush or Hillary US troops will not leave Iraq until Exxon has signed a lucrative oil deal at the expense of the Iraqi people. This oil costs the US taxpayer billions and our troops deaths and dismemberment. We have to decide whether it is all worth it. Ask any Gold Star Mom.

[ccalee]

We're the ones who have armed everyone in Iraq... it's NRA heaven over there!
There's no need for anyone to get arms from Iran or from any where else!
We sent the Iraq army home with their weapons. We armed the Iraqi Security Firms (owned by US interests like Paul Bremer.)
Blackwater, et al are armed better than our troops.
We armed the new Iraqi Army.
We armed the Iraqi police.
We armed Shia'a militias.
We armed Sunni militias.
We armed the Kurds.
If there are any Sufi's in Iraq, we probably armed them, too.
We "lost" a half million weapons in the process of getting everyone armed.
We didn't secure Saddam's remote munitions depots, the ones where the IED explosives came from.
If the Iraqi government had any control over the arming of all these people, maybe they'd have had some control over the security of their country.

[ganjamon]

Global drug prohibition represents the most significant distraction to eliminating the very real threat religious fanaticism poses to civilization. Turning that mountain back into the mole hole it really is will do more to safeguard our individual freedom and allow our leaders to better focus on what matters most: the formation of a democratic and secular world.

[Spider53]

Gary,

Please read "Killing Hope" by William Blum about US-Iranian relations, especially the part where our CIA threw Prime Minister Mossadegh out of office because he had nationalized the oil industry (hell of a note: Iran's oil BELONGED TO THE BRITISH OWNED ANGLO-IRANIAN OIL COMPANY, AIOC). The audacity of some nations--wanting to control their own minerals! Not nice! Not American! Not capitalistic! Not British!

Then our CIA put the Shah in power, so he could torture and murder opponents. (America always knows what's best for other countries, and if you don't think so, just ask the world's greatest nuclear power what it thinks!)

The Iranians threw out the Shah; the American CIA threw him back into power. (How to win friends and influence people!) The Iranians threw him out AGAIN and later seized hostages (they were a pissed-off people).

Gary, the rest is history!

[Shagnasty]

Gary Hart and many others make lots os sense--to those steeped in Judeo-Christian philosophy. Life-and-death logic does not translate from one pholosophical outlook to another because of vastly different concepts of life, death, and the hereafter. After all, could everyone that believes in a God is already deluded.

[pennygram]

I'm tired of the Iran discussions. Why isn't anybody speaking out about the fact that the majority of suicide bombers in Iraq are from Saudia Arabia, not Iran. (at least that fact was in my paper, the Arizona East Valley Tribune.)

[susanlno]

Actually, not all of us were fooled by the garbage the Bush/Cheney White House spewed to persuade Americans--and our gullible, gutless Congress--that we had to attack Iraq, that Saddam Hussen was part of the 9/11 attacks, et cetera ad nauseam.

The truth was out there, though not widely publicized, and yet few people seem to have heard it.

[Norge]

Provocation was not required for General Custer either at Little Big Horn Mr. Hart or was it required for the overthrough of the Queen of the Hawaiian Islands or for the invasion of the Philippine Islands and the subsequent death of more than 200,000 civilians of those pristine islands, or for the invasion of Mexico and the subsequent anexaction of what is now know to most Americans as California.

Or for the overthrough of a past Iranian Leader
without provocation.

You are correct Mr. Hart in warning Iran of your dangerous Uncle Sam.

[WigWamWag]

Finally one of the better bloggers here speaks with some real wisdom. Your words sir are not hateful or manipulative. That is why you need to speak up for the better good of all concerned.

[AnAmericanSpeaks]

I think it is important to note that the explosion on the USS Maine has been widely considered an accident and the 'yellow journalism' of the time a drum beat for war. The Gulf of Tonkin ("incident") has been debunked as well as never having actually happened, (but little is known about the Nasty Boat activities against the North) so the military strike action against North Vietnam was not directly justified. We, as American's, must call for our leaders to not use false provocations as justification for our actions. To offer these two historical examples is worrisome.

Now, having said that, do not think me a pacifist. Iran, as currently governed, truly is a danger, not only to regional stability but also in other places of the world. I believe it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they are truly a "State Sponsor Of Terrirism" (ie. Hamas, et al). Perhaps the use of the Gulf of Tonkin as an example for them to be concerned with has some merit after all. Just as North Viet Nam pursued the overthrow of the government (?) of South Viet Nam and provided weapons and personnel, the same can be said of Iran now in Iraq. Could the message to Iran, as voiced by former Senator Hart, be that "beware, we can trump up a cause for action based on your speedboat attacks in the Gulf of Harmouz, or whatever might sell newspapers around the world".

I will sign my name to this comment: James Shaw