As America’s interventionist war for Israel against Iran straggles along with a new anti-Iranian threat broadcast from the Whited House each day, the pride of place in that gaggle of bad ideas seems to be coming around to focus on a ground invasion of Iran by the ever-reliable U.S. Marines Corps and whatever combat-ready units there currently are in the U.S. Army, probably with a focus airborne forces.
One suspects that the ahistoric and non-military individuals who are involved with Trump in planning such a god-damned stupid operation are convinced that the ground and air invasion of Iran will be a cakewalk for what they inaccurately believe are “unbeatable” U.S. military forces, notwithstanding, of course the significant amount of recent and clear evidence that suggests – along with classical historians and the experience of the Iran-Iraq war — that Iranians can be beaten in battle but do they not run in fear from their enemies and their overblown reputations and capabilities.
My decision to write this piece is, in part, the result of my belief that America is now a nation – along with most of the other now-disintegrating Western countries, where history is too often written as historians and politicians want it to be, rather than based on what the evidence shows it to be. In the United States, for example, students are taught the ludicrously false “fact” that the Southern War for Independence was fought by the south to maintain slavery, and by the north to end slavery. That said, slavery was a popular and important point of political discussion and debate in the antebellum period between some northern politicians and their certifiably mad associates among the so-called Abolitionists – clearly the forerunners of today’s Wokists. But slavery did not cause the civil war; Lincoln got the war he wanted. The issue also was the source of poisonous mud-slinging at Southerners from northern politicians, preachers, and media outlets. The causes of the war are to be accurately found in the fifty-plus years of high U.S. government tariffs that deliberately built northern industry and retarded the ability of the south to consistently export the always much-in-demand products of its agricultural economy. Northern anti-slavery tendencies were also quite limited by the reality that the people of the north very much shared the south’s detestation of Black people, a point which is more than adequately proven by the large portion of the Congress that wanted the Union’s Midwest states protected from freed black settlers. The north’s sturdy hatred for blacks also was quickly discovered by blacks moving north either when they escaped from servitude or after they were “freed” by Lincoln and, more important, by the events of the war and the North’s need for black cannon fodder. That great northern distaste for blacks was clearly evident and can be seen in the great number of escaping-to-the-north Blacks kept moving north until they could settle in the less hateful and more benign environment in British-owned Canada. A final fact here also is relevant, namely that Lincoln could not have raised a single corps of infantry in the northern states if he had announced in early 1861 that the war against the south was to be fought to free the slaves, a point he reinforced by forwarding the first iteration of a draft of the 14tn Amendment to the state governors and which he recommended they adopt. Lincoln also made clear that he would do most anything to prevent a civil war – including leaving slavery as it was. Indeed, the draft of the 14th Amendment sent to the governors – if ratified – would have forbidden any further federal government action against the legitimacy of slavery. Later, in his first Inaugural Address, Lincoln again disclaimed any intention to eliminate slavery by force, bit did note that he might use force to collect any federal tariff money that was collected in post-secession Southern ports.
Other examples of such wild and reckless distortions of U.S. history birthed since the 1950s are voluminous and often as ridiculous, but let us go move back to the immediate issue of a U.S, ground-force invasion of Iran. There is, I believe, a sound and compelling warning against such a mindless military action that can best found in America’s war against Imperial Japan (1941-1945). This subject now is difficult to discuss because some historians and endless numbers of do- gooders, know-it-alls, and other fools have taken the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as tools with which to denigrate America and somehow excuse the war Japan started – with FDR’s essential help– at Pearl Harbor.
The Pacific war that ensued after Pearl harbor primarily pitted one God’s major gifts to America – the United States Marine Corps – against Imperial Japan’s military forces. At the start of the four years of war in the Pacific, the Marines encountered Imperial Japan’s ground forces and found that they did not run; they had come to war to win or die. The Marines, the U.S. Navy, and some U.S. Army units experienced fights-to-the death every time a Pacific battle took place. In a way, the Japanese – like today’s Iranians — were also fighting for their God, as Emperor Hirohito was deemed to be a deity. From Guadalcanal, to Tarawa, to Cape Gloucester, to Saipan and Tinian, to Peleliu, to the Philippines, to Iwo Jima, and to Okinawa, the Marines fought and won, but at every step of the way had the vital close-in support from the U.S. Navy’ carrier air-power, gunfire support from a variety of ships, landing craft, hospital ships, resupply of all needs. and multiple other kinds of support. Neither the Marines nor the Navy ever ran, indeed, U.S. aircraft carriers deliberately sailed to the sound of the guns and sought out battles with the Imperial Japanese Nany. My guess is that they would have sailed into battle even if their toilets were broken or their crews had been too long at sea. There were no easy battles in the Pacific campaign, and the Japanese military fought until nearly all of them were dead, some through suicide attacks to avoid the disgrace/dishonor of surrender.
Now, the American military has had 25 years of experience fighting Islamist fighters in Iraq, Afghanistan and other Muslim lands, and have withdrawn from all of them, driven by the ninnies who ruled the United States during those wars, even though the military had overwhelming material support, air-support, and apparently sufficient latrines. In these battles, Americans also encountered Islamist fighters who more often fought to the death in the name of Allah. But the numbers they faced are not the numbers they will face in ground invasion in Iran. The Iranians, as said earlier, have no record of running en masse from battle. They clearly lack close-air support, but their skilled use of missiles has been consistent and impressive. Between such skills, hatred for America, and the inspiration of the Islamic faith they will be a most formidable force, especially because they will be fighting on their own ground, and seem able to count on support from much of their citizenry. While the Islamists’ fighting skills and determination have to be countered, the small number of U.S. troops spoke of as the U.S. landing force – c.10,000 – is not impressive in an enormous country of 90 million people that is supported by two superpowers. Moreover, the U.S. Navy’s performance since the war began has not been one that in any sense resembles the daring and utterly courageous performance of the Big Blue Navy that helped win the Pacific war. Most of the reporting on the U.S. navy near Iran has been media descriptions of aircraft carriers quickly moving out of harm’s way whenever it appears, or sailors nearing mutiny. It seems that a lesson that has been forgotten since V-J day is that support for invading ground forces means the Navy must take great and possibly fatal risks to support an invading force in every way possible, from food, to medical assistance, to ammunition resupply, to troop reinforcements as Marines die or are wounded.
Overall, war with Iran is not a war to diddle around with, as the U.S. government has done in so many of its unnecessary wars since 1945. With a limited number of adults in Washington, their paralyzing fear of the vote-costing nature of military casualties, and their inability – since 9/11 and before — to take seriously the skills, determination, and deep-faith powering Islamist fighters, the idea of a land invasion of Iran or any other Muslim country should be put solidly on the shelf until those with some knowledge of the costs and risks of amphibious landings and their succeeding land operations, as well as some respect for skills and endurance of Islamic fighters who regularly defeat the United States on their home ground, can be located and heard from. But maybe there are none.
