by George Mcclellan
The Islamic Republic of Iran launched a religious war against us almost fifty years ago (1979), and we still don’t believe it. Before his overthrow the Shah of oil rich Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was implementing modernization, Western ideals and industrialization policies but, a revolution occurred because the strict Islamists called the Shah’s government too restrictive, like Democrats are doing here today, causing the Shah’s government to quickly fall into the hands of the strict Islamic ideologues. It is regretted today!
Islam hates anything not in the Quran and they quickly declared America to be “The Great Satan” and the Jewish State of Israel illegitimate, whose inhabitants should be driven into the sea. They did this while returning Iran to brutal 14th century Islamic roots. In their zeal to show who was in charge, the Mullahs allowed “students” to attack the US Embassy, capture its diplomats, military and staff and hold them for ransom. Unfortunately for America, Democrat president Jimmy Carter was clueless about how to respond to the revolution. It was a foreign policy outrage and upon consultation with the military, Carter was convinced to launch a secret rescue mission that turned into a classic military fiasco. The military’s failure was viewed as America’s weakness and the Iranian regime has been attacking us ever since, until Donald Trump came along and said “enough!”
In 1979, our military branches operated nearly independently as each saw fit. So, in a brave attempt to rescue our Americans hostages Pres. Carter authorized a joint military rescue mission that, because of their individuality was uncoordinated, collapsed in flames and dead soldiers on some foreign middle-eastern desert. It was a debacle and the whole world saw it especially our enemies and our more astute military planners realized the problem and took corrective measures to see such a humiliation didn’t occur again. The Iranians scored a point against the Great Satan and no President until Donald Trump, took decisive action. Ronald Reagan did get the captives back but, alas, every president since Reagan tried diplomacy to bring Iran’s Islamic Republic into the world fold completely ignoring that the Iranians were religious driven, not by diplomacy but by what’s in the Quran. Today, by all appearances, Trump has put Iran on the ropes but they still cling to the Quran.
After that first fiasco in the desert, it became clear that ego driven, single service individualism could no longer work so, new concepts devolved to develop new systems of cooperation as combined arms by cross training in other services disciplines and doing the needed missions efficiently, secretly and with deadly precision. Thus, was born the world of Special Operations, a concept first introduced by the Green Berets JFK authorized during the Vietnam War. That was a big jump in military thinking. It forced the military services to absolutely abandon the old proved concepts that won World War II, were applied in Korea and later Vietnam. Desert Storm proved Tanks still had value on the battle field but the costs of getting them there and using them was onerous to budget planners. And since then, tiny Ukraine has shown that armor is now vulnerable to even newer types of warfare, the deadly drones. War, secret or otherwise cannot be conducted without the cooperative and combined input of the other branches.
Our involvement in Vietnam was to save French Colonialism cloaked in the hope of preventing South-East Asian countries falling to Communism, aka: the “dominos effect.” Since then, Vietnam has become a commercial partner with the US and has grown far beyond French colonialism. They hate the Chinese but do manufacturing business with them and, they are getting rich. The Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan have grown economically despite the hovering threat of a belligerent China. Kinetic war is very expensive as the Russians are learning. Tanks occupy territory once taken while trains, ships and airplanes deliver supplies and resources. The idea of solving problems with tanks, ships and airplanes has slowly developed into concepts of war by economics, a concept Donald Trump understands implicitly.
Iran, having no ability to pursue its war against the West by sending tanks and airplanes to attack us, turned to their best alternative, terrorism. Like the sand of the deserts, they have hordes of unemployed young men looking for something to do, all indoctrinated by the Quran and willing and able to kill infidels. In the meantime, the Mullahs saw an opportunity to grow its power of intimidation by joining the world’s nuclear club.
That is the necessary war Donald Trump is now waging because no US President before him took the initiative to stop Iran’s attacks against us. Iran, no more that the Japanese of WWII, has a capability to deliver a kinetic war to America’s shores but, they were within weeks of have nuclear bombs and the missiles to deliver ‘em. That chapter is closed for a few more decades but, their soldiers are now in our country, thanks to Obama and Joe Biden. They are in our neighborhoods and more troubling, advancing politically into our local, state and federal governments bringing their odious Islam with them. It’s not just Iran anymore, its every Islamic oil producing country in the middle-east that is infiltrating our culture with money and Sharia Law. I remind readers that all but one of the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia; that Qatar husbands the Hamas leadership of Gaza and Iran supported Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Americans are becoming very alarmed about the internal dangers Islam presents here. We’re under constant street attacks. China is a threat of course, but like the other great powers it is maintaining a vast military machine nearly unaffordable, because of their own disastrous economic policies. China faces the same problems as all the others: why maintain a vast army without using it? China’s PLA Army/Navy and Air Forces, while appearing formidable, are untested in combat, leadership is limited by fear of political execution and corruption. They can see what Trump did to Iran. They have seen what Ukraine has done to Russia’s military machine and they don’t really want to move ahead on Taiwan, yet! A new text book required for students of future warfare and foreign policy should include Trumps “The Art of the Deal!”
