Next Contestant, Iran: Meet America's Permanent War Formula
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
21 June 19
When it comes to starting wars, we don't even bother to change the script
anymore
Here we go again. Iran has not only shot down an American spy drone over the
Strait of Hormuz, but refuses to feel bad about it.
Iran's General Hossein Salami - one assumes this is a real person - said of
the drone downing, "We are completely ready for the war. Today's incident is
a clear sign of this accurate message."
We all know what this means. This aggression will not stand, man.
Depending on who's doing the counting, the United States has attempted to
overthrow foreign governments roughly 72 times since World War II. The
script is often the same, and the Iran drama is following it. Go back
through history and you'll often see these elements:
A FARAWAY STATE COMMITS AN ACT OF "AGGRESSION"
In August of 1964, Lyndon Johnson told the American people that North
Vietnamese, in an "outrage," fired at the USS Maddox and two destroyers in
"open aggression on the high seas." Explaining that "our response, for the
present, will be limited and fitting," LBJ assured us that "firmness in the
right is indispensable today for peace."
We now know there was no second torpedo attack by the North Vietnamese.
Cables suggested the U.S. was returning fire because an "overeager sonarman.
was hearing ship's own propeller beat."
A year later, Johnson himself would say, "For all I know, our Navy was
shooting at whales out there."
The Iranian "aggression" case is another murky high-seas drama. It was
reported that recent damage to a pair of oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman
bore "a striking resemblance" to the signature of "devices in Iran's
arsenal." The initial New York Times story about the damage to tankers in
May suggested a link to photos taken of missiles loaded into small boats by
"Iranian paramilitary forces."
In neither of these news stories was it mentioned that the tankers in
question weren't American (of the four hit so far, one was Norwegian, one
Japanese, and two Saudi). Still, the United States released black-and-white
images purporting to show Iranian Revolutionary Guards trying to remove an
unexploded mine from the hull of the Japanese ship, i.e. to hide the
evidence.
Sometimes the "aggression" is more real than in others (Saddam Hussein
invading Kuwait is a little different from a "sketchy" late-night firefight
in Panama), but the result is usually the same. It somehow never strikes
Americans as odd, however, that the "aggression" takes place in or around a
faraway country with no ability to attack the territorial United States.
The American military is always portrayed as being in a defensive posture,
even when it's many thousands of miles from home, on or even inside the
border of another sovereign state. Would we consider ourselves aggressors if
we shot down an Iranian drone in Cape Cod Bay? We've become so used to these
stories, they no longer strike us as odd.
INTELLIGENCE TELLS US THERE IS IMMINENT THREAT OF MORE AGGRESSION
In early May, anonymous American officials said there were "multiple threat
streams" from Iran and U.S. forces might be in danger in Iraq, Syria,
Kuwait, and other places. This triggered a decision to deploy a carrier
group and other forces to the Middle East.
It goes without saying that we've seen this one before, most infamously in
the case of the Iraq invasion, a caper Trump National Security Adviser John
Bolton had a hand in. In the second Iraq war, there were intelligence leaks
of everything from mysterious uranium purchases to meetings between Iraqis
and 9/11 bombers.
We also of course saw this in the first Gulf War, when President Bush told
us Iraq had massed an "enormous war machine" on the Saudi Arabian border, in
preparation for further incursions. Subsequently we found out the "enormous
war machine" reports were much exaggerated, and the Saudis were probably
never in danger.
There were air strikes in Iraq and Syria in 2014 after the U.S. gathered
"information on specific, concrete plotting" by the Khorasan terrorist
group, and Reagan in 1983 even went on TV to tell America that the airport
in Grenada could be used by Soviet long range bombers, and that Cubans there
had enough ammo there to supply "thousands of terrorists."
Some Democrats in this case are saying people like Bolton (who's wanted war
with Iran since his first mustache) and Mike Pompeo are trying to "twist the
intel" to make it seem like Iran is bent for war. Connecticut's Chris Murphy
tweeted, "that's not what the intel says." Such complaints from the opposing
party are not unusual:
THE MINORITY PARTY COMPLAINS THAT CONGRESS HAS NOT BEEN CONSULTED
This has been a running theme with both parties since 2001 especially, when
the United States passed the Authorization for Military Force Against
Terrorists (AUMF). When Republicans are in power, Democrats complain they
haven't been consulted about the use of force, as they did following an
increased troop deployment to Iraq in 2007 (Joe Biden even said this was an
impeachable offense).
Republicans were shocked, shocked that the Obama administration attacked
Libya without congressional approval back in 2011, and again when Obama
bombed Syria in 2013, and again when Obama bombed Syria in 2016 (Republicans
also criticized Obama for asking for congressional permission in a 2014
bombing campaign). The tables turned again in 2017, when people like Nancy
Pelosi said Donald Trump's decision to bomb Syria "needs oversight," and in
2018, when congressional Democrats criticized Trump again for bombing Syria
without their permission.
Now, with Iran, multiple Democrats are doing the same dance, arguing the
AUMF couldn't apply to a conflict with that country. In a lot of these
cases, lawmakers in question aren't actually opposing military action,
they're just saying the president should ask them before they do it. The
transparently political nature of these protestations makes it difficult to
sort out when members of congress genuinely have reservations about imminent
military conflict (as they actually might in the Iran case).
THE FOREIGN AGGRESSOR IS FOUND IN VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
This is often true! Sometimes, however, it isn't. The pretext for invasion
of Iraq was a supposed violation of a United Nations Security Council
resolution requiring disarmament. You might remember Colin Powell saying
Iraq was in "material breach."
Iran has just announced that 10 days from now, it will be in breach of
international agreements on its permitted levels of enriched uranium. Added
to the intelligence about the tanker "attacks" and warnings of "multiple
threat streams," the political justification for invasion will be there.
Precedent suggests Trump could just use the AUMF again to attack Iran
because, why not? We've been doing that all over the Middle East for nearly
two decades.
The "violation of international law" argument would probably carry more
weight if it weren't also true that basically every American military action
in the last half-century has been considered illegal under international law
by someone. This is a conclusion that's been reached about the 2003 invasion
of Iraq, the NATO bombing of Kosovo, the entire U.S. drone assassination
program, the coalition bombing of Libya, and other campaigns.
Trump's decision to exit the Obama-era nuclear deal may have led to
increased belligerence by the Iranians, or it may not have. Did we send spy
drones toward Iran to be shot down because we no longer have the access we
might have had under the Obama deal, or because we've been spying on Iran
with drones anyway, for a while now (Iran even built a "copy" of an RQ-170
Sentinel drone that crashed in Iranian territory in 2011)?
The bizarre consolation in all of this is that Trump himself doesn't appear
thrilled with the idea of going to war with Iran. When Iran shot down the
drone, Trump said it was "hard to believe it was intentional" and might have
been done by someone who was "loose and stupid," despite the aforementioned
General Salami saying Iran was "ready for war" after it happened. This is an
area where we actually want to encourage the all-hat-no-cattle side of our
president.
The seeming ambivalence of Trump while the likes of Bolton and Mike Pompeo
burn through the same old invasion-pretext script presents a powerful case
that this is just how the American state operates, irrespective of who sits
in the White House.
What we end up calling "aggression" abroad is often more like resistance to
our plans to control a region. Sometimes the "aggressor" is genuinely
behaving badly, and sometimes not, but for decades we've been
lightning-quick to opt for military solutions to almost any crisis, for
increasingly obvious reasons.
The politicians running the United States often owe their careers to
military contractors. Their children typically don't fight in wars. The
mayhem, death, and environmental catastrophe that result from modern war
never occur in their home states. It long ago became too easy to make this
decision, and we're on the brink of making it again. At least with Iraq we
pretended to argue.
Iran isn't Iraq, Serbia, Panama, or an airstrip in Grenada. This country has
real military strike-back capabilities that the backwater states we're used
to invading simply do not, meaning war would present a far heightened danger
not only to our troops but to civilians in the region. All our recent wars
have been stupid, but this one would be really stupid. Just once, could we
not do this? Does the script always have to end the same way?
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