The lies of war

The Trump administration today announced that it blamed Iran for attacks on two tanker ships in the Gulf of Oman.  The Iranian regime has categorically denied being involved.  This follows a case last month in which four ships were attacked near the Strait of Hormuz, which the US government also blamed on Iran.  This follows a long-standing pattern of escalating saber-rattling by the Trump administration against Iran, beginning with Trump's unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear agreement negotiated by Presidents Obama and Rouhani, despite the fact that international observers agreed that Iran was adhering to its side of the deal.

It may be of some value here to recall the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to substantial escalation of US involvement in the Vietnam conflict.  Official reports at the time claimed that several North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked the American destroyer USS Maddox "on the high seas", followed a few days later by a second attack on the Maddox and another US ship.  As we now know, the Maddox had in fact opened fire first, and the clash happened within the 12-mile limit which North Vietnam claimed as its territorial waters, while the second attack never happened at all (false radar images were mistaken for enemy craft which were not actually present).  Nevertheless, President Johnson and pro-war elements in his administration presented the incident to the US public as a pretext for escalating US involvement, leading to the protracted bloody mess which dragged on wearily until 1975, at staggering cost.

There is a lesson from the Gulf of Tonkin incident and from all the other lies and deceptions fed to the public during that war.  It's the same lesson offered by the official hysterics and falsified evidence which were used to whip up support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  That lesson is:  when it comes to leading this country into war, the establishment lies.

They lie.  They simply lie.  It's what they do.  When I was younger, as the truth about Vietnam began to emerge, I came to realize that the establishment must never, ever again be given the benefit of the doubt on such a matter.  Because the establishment lies.  In any future such case, I decided, anything the establishment says must be considered a lie -- not until proven otherwise, but even if proven otherwise.  Because they are not above lying even about the evidence.  The establishment lies.  Period.

By 2003, after the shock of the September 11 attack, my conviction had weakened.  It is a shameful admission, but they fooled me.  I supported the Iraq invasion at the time, because the thought of Saddam Hussein (whose regime genuinely was among the most horrific of the modern age) with nuclear weapons was unacceptable.  As we now know, that too was all lies.

Never again.

The Iranian theocracy is evil, but it is not stupid.  It defies sanity to believe that Iran (which has not attacked another country in almost 200 years) would carry out shipping attacks calculated to provoke a war with the mighty United States right at the very moment when the Trump administration could direly use a pyrotechnic overseas distraction from its domestic woes with investigations, failed trade wars, flaccid poll numbers, and a wall which even the Trumpanzees are starting to realize will never get built.

Don't fall for it the way I did in 2003.  There must be no war with Iran.

Update:  Stonekettle Station discusses some suspicious details of this incident.

[Image at top:  looking northwestward from above the Gulf of Oman toward the Persian Gulf -- Arabia is to the left, Iran to the right.]