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August 23, 2004
History Backwards
One of the charges that the left often makes when arguing against the Iraq war is that we "supported" Iraq in the early '80s. I saw this charge again last week while debating with liberals on a website last week. Somehow, the fact that we "leaned" towards Iraq during their war with Iran means that our invasion was illegitimate. The logic of this escapes me, but that's not really what I want to discuss now. Rather, that if you want to understand why something happened, don't study just that time period, but examine what happened before the period in question.
Ok, this sounds obvious, right? Unfortunately I see mistakes along this line made frequently, and not just by the lefties mentioned above. I've decided to discuss three periods of history and common problems in understanding them;
- Our support of Iraq in the early '80s
- Restrictions on our military in general, and on pilots in particular, during the Vietnam war.
- Appeasement of Hitler in the 1930's
1. Support of Iraq in the early 1980's
In 1980 Saddam Hussein invaded his neighbor Iran. His objective was to seize the oil fields in the south of that country. Its basically old-fashioned greed. Iran was in the midst of their revolution and in a state of semi-chaos. He assumed that he could take advantage of that disorder to seize some territory.
This proved to be a miscalculation. He forgot the adage that there is nothing to unite a country like an external enemy. Iran thus united against their foe and put up a much stronger than expected defense. Far from easily seizing land, Saddam was soon faced with a serious war.
The United States looked on this with interest. The Persian Gulf region is vital to the economies of the Western world and as such we must be able to assure the continued flow of oil. The war threatened this transit, especially after Iran started to attack shipping in the gulf.
The Reagan administration therefore decided to "lean" towards Iraq. We supplied them with some arms and other material. Our navy conducted operations against the Iranians, attacking their mine-laying ships and off-shore platforms that they were using as bases. Don Rumsfeld, I believe, even made a trip to Iraq to meet with Saddam.
This "leaning"(the word we actually used at the time) towards Iraq is the basis of the charge the left levels against the Bush administration today.
But why did we lean towards Iraq? Ok, there's the obvious answer; "to protect the oil supply." But why did we think that supporting Iraq instead of Iran would accomplish this? Let's take our history backwards for a moment.
The Iranian Hostage Crisis
In order to understand U.S. policy in the 1980's we need to understand what happened in the late 1970s.
I was in my early college years when the Iranian Hostage Crisis occurred, and this is when I first really started to pay attention to politics. It was not a pretty introduction.
The sense of helplessness that most Americans felt was maddening. Here we were, a superpower, and yet we were unable to get our people back. We had just been through Vietnam and Watergate, with those humiliations fresh on our minds, and now this. Worse yet, our president was telling us that we would have to get used to a lower standard of living here at home.
I remember that my father was working in Washington DC at the time, and he'd tell us stories of the protests in the city: Protests, mind you, by Iranian "students" in support of the hostage takers. The protestors were protected by the police, whose protection they needed full well. The office workers would go out during their lunch break to observe these protests. My dad would tell us of normally calm, unsuitable men who would go ballistic at what they saw.
My point is that the anger towards Iran was intense and deep. We would have supported just about anyone who was willing to oppose the Ayatollah Khomeini and his regime.
More importantly, in the late '70s and early '80s it really did seem like the Iranians would be able to export their revolution to the rest of the area. The idea of the gulf states and Saudi Arabia falling to radical Islam was frightening indeed.
Contrary to what the left would have you believe, no one was under any illusions as to who Saddam was. We knew full well that he was a thoroughly rotten dictator.
The Lesson
We were right to support Iraq when we did, just as we were right to side with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. The threat of the Iranian revolution spreading throughout the region was quite real, and the consequences of it doing so could be devastating to the region and to our economy.
2. Restrictions during the Vietnam War
One of the most frustrating things about reading the history of this war that the restrictions upon our forces seem to almost dictate our defeat. These restrictions included, but were not limited to:
- Not being able to bomb surface-to-air(SAM) missile sites while they were under construction; the pilots had to wait until they were fully operational and thus able to shoot back.
- Not being able to bomb ships in Haiphong harbor that were off-loading massive amounts of war material that the North Vietnamese would then use against us.
- Not being able to attack North Vietnamese fighter bases. We had to wait until their aircraft were in the air to attack them.
- Entire areas of North Vietnam were "off limits", including ordinance storage areas.
- The pilots were often required to fly predictable strike routes again and again, the result being that North Vietnamese knew exactly when and where we were coming.
How in the world, one wonders, could we have been so stupid? And indeed that is exactly the charge that is most often made; that U.S. policy makers were "stupid". You hear it all of the time; on the radio, in movies, and in books. But could that really have been the case?
David Halberstam has said that the tragedy of Vietnam was not that we were led by stupid or evil people, but that it was our "best and brightest" who made the mistakes that led to our defeat.
(Sidenote; if you insist on thinking that because we won most of the tactical engagements we "really" won the war but were stabbed in the back by the media, please read my earlier post here, especially the conversation between the American and North Vietnamese colonels) .
How did this situation arise? Let's go farther back in history
The Korean Experience
After being surprised and suffering some initial defeats by North Korea's attack in 1950, the U.S. quickly recovered. General MacArthur staged a brilliant landing at Inchon, which, coupled with an advance from the southern city of Pusan, completely routed the North Korean army. Barely eight months after the war started, it looked like a decisive U.S. victory was at hand. Not only would we save our allies in the south, we were on the verge of capturing all of the north. It seemed that a huge defeat for the communists was at hand.
Then things went wrong in a big way.
For months the Chinese had been warning us not to come too close to their border. The Yalu river forms the border between North Korea and China, and the Chinese feared that we would take the opportunity to invade their country. The communists had recently taken control of the country and feared "imperialist aggression."
General MacArthur dismissed Chinese warnings, along with intelligence reports of Chinese troops massing for the attack. This proved to be a recipe for diasaster.
We were caught completely by surprise by the Chinese attack, and they overran several US divisions in the ensuing confusion. There was much bravery on the part of U.S. troops, but in the end our forces were pushed out of the north entirely and well back into South Korea. It was only with much effort and loss of life that we were able to push back to the original border again. A bloody stalemate along World War I lines developed, and after much negotiation an armistice was eventually reached.
The Lesson
To U.S. policy-makers, the lesson seemed clear: Do not let a small, regional war escalate into a larger one by provoking a larger, third, power.
When it came to Vietnam, we were deathly afraid that there would be an "incident" that would provoke the Chinese, or even Soviet involvement. This might even result in a new global war. Because the relevant parties all had nuclear weapons (China having exploded it's first device in 1964) the results might well have been catastrophic.
This, then, was the reason that we placed so many restrictions on our pilots. For example, because we knew that Soviet and Chinese technicians were helping to build the SAM sites, we feared that a bombing raid would kill them, and the Soviet Union or China might retaliate.
I am not defending the actions of our policy-makers. I am explaining them. As I stated earlier, we should have headed Stonewall Jackson's advice to "Never take council of your fears."
3. The Appeasement of Adolf Hitler
Of all mistakes that have occurred this century, it seems blindingly obvious that the policy of appeasement would lead us to war . How in the world could anyone have given in to his demands? "Peace in our time"? What a joke. The man was obviously going to overrun Europe.
Thankfully Winston Churchill saved Britain, and by extension at least half the world, from permanently Nazi occupation.
What seems especially odd is that it was widely believed at the time that those who advocated appeasement held the high moral ground. This attitude was held not just by the elite, but by a significant part of the population in the US and UK at the time. FDR faced stiff opposition in even providing minimal aid to Great Britain even after France had been defeated and she stood alone against the Nazi onslaught.
The Perceived Pointlessness of World War I
During "The Great War"(as it was known at the time) nationalist fervor ran high. Despite the slaughter in the trenches, most people on both sides believed the war worth fighting and decried attempts by a few "troublemakers'" to seek a negotiated settlement. It was only towards the end that the German people grew weary and their army broke. Even the French had been able to contain mutinies within their ranks.
It was after the war that it hit home; what did we go through all that for? Tens of millions had died, and for what? Persuasive answers were not forthcoming.
In Germany a "stabbed in the back" explanation took root. "We really won the war," it was believed, "but the Jews conspired to see us defeated."
In the UK pacifism took hold. King George V himself said the he would abdicate rather than allow his country to go though another such war.
The situation was perhaps the worst in France, where a malaise militaire set in to destroy morale within the ranks. They retreated behind their Maginot Line to recover.
We in the U.S. were disillusioned with the war as well. Woodrow Wilson had been completely outmaneuvered at the peace talks after the war and his Fourteen Points ignored. A congressional investigation (the Nye Commission) said that arms manufactures had conspired to get us into the war. The lesson, we thought, was to never again sell arms to belligerents.
The Lesson
The Great War was a huge shock the people of Europe. Such a thing was not "supposed" to happen. Even the Napoleonic wars of a hundred years earlier had not resulted in such devastation. The nineteenth century saw the development of what we today call "science". It was widely assumed that science would solve all of our problems and we would live in an age of unparalleled prosperity. Few imagined that the twentieth century would be among the bloodiest in history.
Anything, it was felt, was better than another war. Although now it seems so obvious, few at the time believed that Hitler would really launch another war, or that it could be more terrible than the Great War.
Wrap up
The above is not meant to be a complete history, or to list all causes or results for each war. It was mainly an exercise in historical review, which started off by frustration with yet another stupid leftist charge against Operation Iraqi Freedom. I am sure that readers will be able to add much insightful commentary and perhaps even correct some of my inevitable errors.
Posted by Tom at August 23, 2004 2:49 PM
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