Letter 137: Playing 'Chicken' with lran

"As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice...."

--LTG Flynn (Ret.), National Security Advisor, February 1, 2017

Those who follow the way
counsel against war
knowing the use of force
will simply create more
war and fill the land with thorns

--Lao-tsu, circa 550 B.C.

BLUF: The heated rhetoric about Iran is frightening. The Trump Administration does not yet know what Iran’s intentions are with these missile tests and possible nuclearization in the future as well as what Iran views as its security interests. 

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hossein-askari/uniformed-threats-against_b_14619770.html
• https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/03/statement-national-security-advisor-michael-t-flynn-iran
• http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/mattis-us-has-no-plans-to-increase-mideast-forces 

Historical backdrop for me. Forty years ago, in college, l was studying the actions of Germany, following Bismarck’s deft leadership as Chancellor, in the run-up to the 'Great War'. In a book I read, the Berlin press, apparently at the behest of the government, often sounded the war drums to coerce concessions out of other countries. This policy or practice had a name like 'hair-trigger'. 

http://topppaper.com/the-role-of-germany-in-the-development-of-world/ 

That book’s author, I think, was arguing that the climate of fear made the ease and consequence of miscalculation far more dangerous, not to mention begging the rivals eventually to call the Kaiser's bluff. Ten years ago there were similar 'bleatings' of war drums, climaxed (at least on my visual radar) by a 'Time' magazine and other periodical covers with menacing portraits of President Ahmadinejad looking like Mephistopheles.  

Those covers recalled my hearing casual remarks that people made in Baghdad in the Summer of 2004, when the United States were in the upswing of a weapons procurement boom, "Better brush up on your Persian, dude -- it's Christmas in Teheran." The whole idea of invading Iran in 2004 was, to state it mildly, dissociated from reality and arguably evil. Operation Iraqi Freedom was already mired in difficulties. 

http://nedmcdletters.blogspot.com/2015/09/letter-113-do-we-say-iran-or-i-ran.html

Iraq had been by far the easiest of the three members of the Axis-of-Evil (plus Syria) to invade: half-starved population from sanctions; wrecked infrastructure; minimal air-defense; flat terrain for easy avenues of approach; military without spare parts, etc. Iran had a better economy, double the population; a far better-provisioned military; and, a mountainous terrain. In short, if Iraq was not our Syracuse, Iran would be.

The Folly of the Toupée Trigger. The most tragic aspect about this ill-advised and unecessary game of chicken -- sponsored by the Lord of the Lies and his Loose Bannon -- is that my conviction that, while Iran may detest Israël, more for being a Western Democracy throwing regional dictatorships (like the theocratic tyranny in Iran) into disrepute, she truly fears Pakistan. 

https://thewire.in/41862/the-rising-threat-against-shia-muslims-in-pakistan/

Recently, I was swatted down by a military expert here in Birmingham for asking about the Pakistani threat to Iran; the dismissive answer indicated more the tunnel-vision taken by those tied to the military and the military-industrial nexus, constrained by threat assessments that lock in false consenses. Nevertheless, as an outsider with some experience on the ground, I will stick to my thesis in that case. 

The brutal treatment of Shi´ites in Pakistan plus that failed state having 155 nuclear weapons are the real reasons for Iran going nuclear. Lastly, Iran has a cosmopolitan middle-class we failed to support in 2009. If we play our cards right, they will overthrow the religious tyrants. These people have historically been neutral, perhaps pre-disposed, toward Israël (obviously, our #1 priority).

Letter 136: When Facts can be Feckless

"All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome." --George Orwell

One aspect of fact-checking concerns me. I refer to this article about Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions lll apparently having little time for disabled children. In a time when the President, as the Lord of the Lies, is often compared to Messrs Hitler and Mussolini, this indirect allegation has serious implications of, via indirect references to, the eugenics policies of the Third Reich. The article has been fact-checked by ‘Snopes’ as being true

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/29/1605134/-Jeff-Sessions-Protections-for-disabled-kids-are-ruining-America-s-schools 

We all know that we are all under assault when it comes to the truth these days and that assault hurts everyone for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, fact-checking unintentionally misleads us when the context is not spelled out clearly. Senator Sessions is a very decent man and has served Alabama well; in many ways, he is a model of the emerging post-racial South. True, Senator Sessions has the attributes of the Southern gentleman. Yet he suspends race in his extension of his personal honor to others, especially when it comes to prosecution of racial crimes, committed by blacks or whites. He also has displayed the courage at times to call the public's attention to the short-comings of popular policies (e.g., criticizing some aspects of mainstreaming disabled children). ‘Snopes’ assigned a green-check for 'true' on a speech Senator Sessions gave years ago.

http://www.snopes.com/jeff-sessions-slammed-protections-for-disabled-students/  

The bare-bones truth – the words stated in isolation – appears to say one thing when the context plainly implies another. The Senator was obviously not referring to all disabled children who are being mainstreamed but to those who come from homes, usually broken and awash in drugs, where children receive no discipline and have no role models if they are lucky; or criminal role models, if they are not. Senator Sessions, I suspect, was not deeming these children as evil or somehow bad.

Like most of us, the Senator realizes these living cast-aways do not have and, barring some miracle, will not have a chance to assume their fully ordained statures in the eyes of God (or Justice, etc.). Senator Sessions, like most Republicans, believes that every just society should set out to facilitate such 'self-actualization' for as many of its citizens as possible. This societal ambition, this social contract, calls for hard choices and gutsy policies, not votes purchased by dependency.

Nevertheless, the damaging start in life of these untutored students is regrettably and undeniably disrupting class-rooms. This reality is what Senator Sessions intended to address: the dynamics of the class-room where two or three hurting children make learning well-nigh impossible for the great majority of their better behaved class-mates. He was not saying that this particular segment of 'disabled' children is wrong; its members are children, after all, who can not know better if they are not shown better.

The problem with 'Snopes' is that, while its opinion did clarify the context, eventually, those details came too late as many readers likely saw only the green-check, indulged their confirmation bias and moved on. That scan-to-pan bias trivializes the immense pain borne by millions of our children. They bear the crippling scars and daily burden of being under-privileged, under-nourished and under-bred. Had the Black Panthers in the 1960s flourished peaceably, these troubling issues, at least in urban ghettoes, could have been addressed.

As far as I can see, I strongly suspect that the Senator had a compassionate alternative in mind. Since, as I have read or heard somewhere, these unsocialized children typically number one, two or three to a class room, and are most often boys, why not segregate them into separate classrooms run by former Marine drill sergeants so they have a chance to mature and learn? These children are screaming for guidance and attention; they thirst for a male role model, at least as a part-time father figure.

In that manner, then, everyone has a better chance of getting what (s)he needs: children cursed by the accident of birth into a maelstrom of malevolence get the manly attention they need and the rest -- able-bodied and disabled alike -- get on with their studies. For those who will screech, holler, hoot and boot -- especially those educated in private schools or wealthy suburban public schools where these lost little ones never show up on the radar -- I advise your doing two things.

• Watch the confirmation hearings of Senator Sessions for Attorney General and then see if you can rightly look people in the eye and say that the Senator is somehow deficient or malevolent and then do one of the following.
• Read the novel, Lord of the Flies. OR
• Watch the 'Miri' episode of Star Trek (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KII_6yhkEL4).