How's That Iran War Workin' Out For Ya? - Genghis Khan, Hiroshima, And The Perils Of Limited Engagement

Donald Trump, his Secretary of War Pete Hesgeth, and his aides were meeting in the War Room of the White House to discuss progress in the war with Iran. Memories of George W. Bush on the deck of an aircraft carrier smiling at the camera and saying, 'Mission accomplished' were vivid.  The mission in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein was by no means accomplished, for not long after Iraqis danced around the toppled statue of the dictator, militias quickly armed themselves and set out to gain control of the country. 

 

Instead of imposing military rule and a draconian 'shoot-to-kill' order for any civil disobedience and putting in place an indefinite military occupation, the US packed up and went home.  The result was predictable - the rise of Islamic militias and the descent of the country into chaos. 

It was 'hearts and minds' all over again.  The persistent Vietnam era policy of avoiding civilian casualties and winning the populace to the idea of democracy and civil rule - a policy which not only did not work but in its military reticence led to Viet Cong and North Vietnamese victories. 

The Viet Cong had their own means of winning hearts and minds - terror and intimidation. In the movie Apocalypse Now the Kurtz character describes it.  The American army had vaccinated the children of an entire village, and when the Viet Cong learned of it, the chopped off the vaccinated arms of every single one of them.  'The will', says Kurtz. 'The absolute, powerful, bright, brilliant will'; and with that knew that the war would be lost. 

Kurtz ruled his mountain region of Cambodia with such will.  As Willard and his crew sent by Saigon to assassinate Kurtz motor up the river to Kurtz's headquarters they see bodies hanged from trees, corpses lying decapitated, and smell the stench of death everywhere. 

As Willard read in Kurtz's dossier, Viet Cong activity under his command had dropped to zero. His summary executions of suspected Viet Cong and heartless pogroms did the trick. 

The accounts are fictional, but based on fact.  The movie was based in part on Michael Herr's firsthand account of the war - atrocity as an instrument of war was used without hesitation by the Viet Cong. 

'Hearts and minds' persisted in Afghanistan where the United States, in its exceptionalist view of foreign policy, set up a puppet 'democratic' government and made overtures to the Taliban to join the 'new' Afghanistan.  Of course the Taliban, like the Viet Cong were fiercely nationalistic, and having beaten the far more powerful Russian invader were in no mood for compromise.  The war ended, the Taliban regained power and Joe Biden brought the troops home.  Another war lost because of reluctance, hesitation, and overconcern. 

General of the Union Army, William Sherman had no such doubts.  His scorched earth campaign through Georgia and especially South Carolina, the state which began the Civil War, was brutal and effective.  'The South shall never rise again', he said, and the lesson was clear - raise a finger against Washington and all hell will rain down upon you. 

The emperor of all emperors, Genghis Khan marched down from the central Asian steppes with his Mongol-Turkic armies and conquered the world from far eastern China to the Danube, the biggest empire the world had ever seen. 

There have been many successful armies in the world.  Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, Pompey the Great, and Marcus Agrippa were as brilliant generals as Genghis Khan, and brought Roman organization, discipline, and management to the battle.  They won because of superior ability, armaments, and military thinking; yet it was Genghis Khan who, with an almost untamed savagery, conquered the world. 

Genghis Khan was a brilliant strategist, canny politician who through tact, intimidation, and offers of great spoils, enticed the warlike Turkic tribes to join his armies, nearly doubling their strength.  However, it was not only the might of his imposing armies, nor his ability to manage, discipline, and control such a large and diverse military force; nor even his tactical acumen and understanding of calculated risk which assured victory.  It was his indomitable, absolute, unalloyed will. 

Khan had no qualms, moral reservations, or ethical hesitancy.  Wars were for winning, civilians were complicit enemies, and total annihilation of any opposition was his modus belli. Not only would defeated populations be without the wherewithal to mount a resistance or counterattack, they would never dare to incite the bloody, murderous, savage wrath of the conqueror.

Curtis Lemay, US Army general and independent candidate for Vice President in the electoral campaign of 1964, was known for his hawkish views on military action. Impatient with Lyndon Johnson's measured approach to the Vietnam war, he proposed to 'Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age'.  Although he was ridiculed, he had history on his side.  The United States did exactly that reducing Hiroshima and Nagasaki to rubble with atomic bombs and firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, incinerating both.  

Populations were considered complicit in warfare, so Harry Truman had no compunction whatsoever in using the A-bomb against the civilians of Japan.  That would show Hirohito that we meant business. 

Donald Trump's war in Iran is different because the Iranian population is in full support of regime change, having suffered for almost fifty years under the oppressive theocratic regime of the ayatollahs.  A Hiroshima/Nagasaki attack is not possible; and because the current Iranian regime knows this well, it holds many cards. The limited response by the US and Israel is unlikely to annihilate the Republican Guard, the Secret Police, and loyal factions of the army. Winning a war of total destruction while destroying the population along with it is an impossible option. 

There can only be 'acceptable collateral damage' - i.e. blowing all headquarters, government buildings, military and oil depots, missile silos and above-ground installations to smithereens with minimum but significant civilian casualties. 

'This is the compromise the Iranian people will have to accept', said one military adviser in the War Room with the President. 

The aide's hawkish options were 'off the table', for the Administration was confident that with total control of Iranian airspace, precision bombing and the neutralization of missile defenses was possible. 'This is not total war', said the President. 

Yet of course it should be. If Iran is as dangerous an enemy as Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, then it should be destroyed and like the American South, never allowed to rise again. 

Under President Richard Nixon, the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign was unleased.  Giant B-52 bombers released full loads of high-powered explosives up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail to completely eliminate the enemy's north-south supply lines and destroy him in the process. 

This massive bombing campaign such as the world had never seen, did no good.  The little black pajama, bowl of cold rice Vietcong, simply went deep underground during the bombings, came up when the planes had returned to base, and rebuilt the damaged trail.  Because air power was ineffective and land troops were hamstrung by 'hearts and minds', the war was eventually lost. 

'Boots on the ground' - that last ditch effort to search and destroy the Iranian enemy - will undoubtedly be necessary.  The war in Europe was won thanks to D-Day, the Normandy invasion and the march of Allied troops across the continent to Berlin. 

The lesson of Iraq is unavoidable. Even if the regime leaders are eliminated, armed militias fighting on their home territory will be a resistant, difficult, implacable enemy.  Urban combat as American troops learned in Hue, is bloody and discouraging. 

So, 'Bombs away and praise the Lord' is the modus operandi for now; but the Iranians are not stupid, and more than likely will pause their missile attacks hoping to give the impression that they are destroyed. Absent American ground troops, the Iranian army and Republican Guard will be able to regroup, and just when the Israeli-American axis feels confident enough to send in occupying troops, the Iranians will exhume their deep underground missiles and begin combat again. 

Iran is no patsy.  It has spent nearly fifty years in offensive and defensive armament, creating an extensive political machine, and used its oil wealth to pay for absolute fealty.  It will not roll over and die, and is likely to fight to the last man. Particularly now with much of its infrastructure destroyed and images of its destruction gone viral, the will to resist is even stronger. 

Most of those in the War Room wished that it wasn't so bloody complicated, and many channeled old Curtis Lemay.  Bombing the suckers back to the Stone Age would be too good for them; but reality bites, and after much consideration, debate, and lack of consensus, there was only one option - move more firepower into the region and all hands on deck. 

The Odd, The Perverse, And The Unthinkable - The Real Diversity Of America

On the surface New Brighton was like any other small town in America, much like Grovers' Corners, the fictional town described by Thornton Wilder in his play Our Town.  There was a pleasant downtown with a City Hall building, Zackin's pharmacy, Dot's Kitchen, a barber shop, a nail salon, one clothier, a furrier, doctors' offices, and Jimmy's Smoke Shop. 

  

People went to church on Sundays, joined Rotary and the Lions Club, volunteered, supported the local police, and lived a quiet, peaceful, and uninterrupted life. 

To the casual observer New Brighton was a model town - one of rectitude, propriety, and community. People greeted each other on Main Street, men tipped their hats to ladies, children behaved, and the downtown was festooned with wreaths at Christmastime. The clothing store always had a display in the window - an electric train with a real whistle and smoke, a Nativity scene, and Christmas music. 

Bread, milk, and breakfast cakes were delivered weekly and newspapers brought to the doorstep.  Mowers and trimmers kept front yards neat and presentable in the summer, children built snowmen and snow forts in winter, and the smell of burning leaves filled the air every October. 

Mrs. Fender's next door neighbor, Mrs. Helander noticed that she was getting milk delivered three times a week instead of the usual one, but never asked why.  Mrs. Fender did have two growing boys and it would not be unusual for them to drink more milk than usual, so Mrs. Helander went back to her baking and never gave it a second thought. 

Until she realized that the milk truck was parked for over a half-hour each delivery.  Again, New Brighton being a small community where everyone knew each other and where class distinctions never prevented friendship, it was quite likely that Mr. Benson, the milkman, had been a client of Mrs. Fender's husband and had gotten to know the family. 

Again, Mrs. Helander went back to her baking and did not give it a second thought.  The community's well-deserved reputation for respect and understanding kept gossip, rumor, and innuendo at a minimum. 

The truth of the matter was, of course, what anyone but the good citizens of New Brighton might well have expected.  Anita Fender entertained the milkman every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and it was only when Bobby Fitch walked into the kitchen looking for the baseball he had thrown through the window and saw Aldo Benson coming down the stairs with his trousers at half mast and shirt unbuttoned, was Mrs. Fender's secret out. 

Bobby Fitch was a blabbermouth, and before long word had spread through the community about the goings-on at 71 Lincoln Street. 

For some time Mrs. Fender's milk deliveries returned to once a week, so the rumors died down and eventually were largely forgotten. 

Only much later did it turn out that Anita Fender was what was then called 'a nymphomaniac'.  Since most women in those days in proper middle-class, middle-American towns were settled, untroubled homemakers, such aberrant behavior was assumed to be a psychological disturbance. 

Nothing could have been farther from the truth.  Anita Fender was as hot and bothered as a bitch in heat, and if it wasn't with the milkman it was with the roofer, the gardener, and the mailman. 

'Where was ol' Harry Fender when all this was going on?', wondered the town.  No man in his right mind would put up with such things; but little did they know about Fender's own 'preoccupation', a seedy, trashy, day-closeted gay man who cruised the back alleys of Arch Street every night buggering, sucking, and cornholing his way through the week. 

In fact the couple was the model for Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell, ahead of their time for smarmy promiscuity and illegal pandering.  The Arch Street cruising and afternoon quickies with the milkman were only the tip of the iceberg.  The sex ring (prostitution, pornography, underage sex) organized by the Fenders was remarkable not for its range and profit, but that it existed in such a tightly-buttoned, conservative time and place. 

This was nothing compared to the Rabinowitz scandal - a scam of Bernie Madoff proportions, although far less spectacular in scale. Ira Rabinowitz was the town furrier who sold mink, ermine, fox, and Persian lamb, but whose real income was from 'investments', unsecured, high risk, high profit financial commodities brokered through a network of shysters in New York.  The furrier's store was the perfect venue for the operation.  The business was clean, Rabinowitz was a model citizen, and New Brighton was just a stone's throw from New York. 

From the basement of this modest establishment was run one of the most successful financial scams of the Fifties extending far beyond New Brighton and even New York.  When finally uncovered by the SEC and FBI, the operation was worth several hundred million dollars, a king's ransom for those days. 

As surprising as this level of corruption seems, it was par for the course for New Brighton whose cheating was endemic.  There was not one public works project without a line of contractors, judges, police, and public service employees with their hands out.  Toxic landfills were plowed under and buried and housing developments built on 'reclaimed land'.  Drugs flowed through the hands of white middlemen to the black dealers of Corbin Avenue.  The Catholic Church was a gay jamboree, and their boys' summer camps a pedophilia paradise. 

All this is by way of preamble - today's diversity is way off the mark.  The real diversity of America has nothing to do with race, gender, and ethnicity but a spider's web of untoward illicit complexity. The American ethos of the good guy, the patriot, the volunteer, the church goer, the family man is the perfect cover for a vast underworld of bad behavior which has no limits to sexual ingenuity, financial tricks, and political corruption. 

Ivan's devil in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov tells Ivan that he, the devil, is a vaudevillian, a comedian, a player of tricks and games.  Without me, says the devil, life would be a bloody bore, an eternity of Sunday Mass, a lifetime of doing good.  You need me, he says, to stay awake. 

A future cultural historian will look at New Brighton and the thousands of other likeminded American communities and see the real America, the savvy, canny, ingenious Americans who so successfully used the gabardine cloak of polite respectability to cover outrageously uncivil behavior and had a good time doing it. 

No one really cares about the black man, the lettuce picker, the lesbian, or the transgender; and even less about raising them to epic status.  Diversity is not this charade, this cavalcade of color and sexual identity; nor is it even the richness of artistic, scientific, or entrepreneurial talent.  It is in the underbelly of America, the adulterers, philanderers, cheats, tarts, deviants, and seductive predators.  Any country can produce robber barons, financial wizards, and garage geniuses; but nowhere is the real diversity of human behavior more clearly seen that just under the surface. 

Shakespeare knew this and was fascinated not with the predictable scope of history but in the stories of the greedy, malicious, ambitious, murderous characters who populate it.  It is Richard III who holds our attention, not the lives of saints. 

Kurtz, the main character in Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness says on his deathbed, 'The horror...the horror' as he understands that the savage barbarity of the cannibalistic tribes among which he lived and profited was universal.  We are they. 

Conrad saw the horror, Shakespeare saw the inimitable irony and humor.  However you look at it, the goings on in New Brighton are well worth the price of admission. 

Why Place No Longer Matters In A Virtual World - Except To 'The Comanches Of Martha's Vineyard'

'The Comanches of Martha's Vineyard' was how an editorial writer for the New York Times described the Old Guard there who had built bulwarks against assaults from the mainland. These Islanders, all descended from patrician New England stock, all securely aristocratic in outlook, attitude, and culture, wanted no interference from the outside, and resented and resisted any attempts to open the island to market forces. 

'It is ours.  We built it, we own it, we maintain it, and we will never give it up' 

The issue came to head when certain New York financial interests began buying properties on the island. Families who had lived there for a century were now running out of steam - intermarriages, off-island romances, ambitious moves to California and Florida all meant no heirs to take over the waterfront estates, to invest in the well-being and cultural longevity of the island; and so the last residents sold out, made a fortune, and restocked diminishing trust funds. 

'Jewish money', said one of these Comanches citing a commonly-held belief.  It was one thing to have New York real estate interests to take a shine to the Vineyard.  It was another thing altogether to turn it into a crass, gross distortion of its patrician roots.  

Even the liberal establishment, ordinarily adamant in their belief in diversity and inclusivity, kept silent on the matter.  They too could only imagine the streets of town crowded with mink coat-wearing, bejeweled, garishly made-up Bernsteins and Rabinowitzes  - Collins Avenue north, a grotesque parade of Jewish princesses.  Unthinkable!

Yet there was nothing they could do because their own kind were turning traitors to the cause.  They were being just as moneygrubbing, selling out with no regard to the cultural integrity of the island. Old, grey-shingled, pristinely landscaped homes were being turned into absurd plastic mansions, and golf courses, Cadillacs, and furriers would follow. 

Billings Eddy was the leader of the Comanches - a descendant of one of the oldest families on the Island turned nativist firebrand.  No 'outside money' - he had the good sense to keep his prejudices in check when speaking politically - would despoil the island. 'Imagine', he said, sprawling, garish, crude, tasteless mansions perched on our headlands, golf courses instead of quiet wetlands, tacky, bourgeois stores replacing our legacy establishments.  A nightmare, a horror show, a twisted, unholy future'

However push came to shove when one of these New York investors offered him a king's ransom for his property, tempting beyond belief.  He demurred and promised to think about it; but the damage had already been done. Once infected with the virus, it was impossible to get rid of it. There wasn't a day that went by without a 'Fuck it, I'm in' crossing his mind.  He of all people.  He at once felt ashamed and stupid.  What was he doing?  The Vineyard was just a place after all, and all the historical legacy fol-de-rol was just cover for insular, elitist intentions. 

Yet Billings in all his prejudice and bilious social conservatism was on to something. As The World Turns, the treacly tearjerking soap opera that his mother used to watch came ironically to mind. He was fighting eventuality with inertia.  He was an old fool, tethered to fanciful notions. 

'My name is Ira Goldblatt, Mr. Eddy', the silk-suited sharpie said, 'and I hope you have considered my company's offer' to which Billings, already at sixes and sevens because of the existential crisis, could only stammer and bumble when he wanted to yell, 'Get out you...' but the slur wouldn't come, and for that he was additionally frustrated.  Not only was his emotional livelihood at stake, he had been clotured, shut up, and silenced. 

The Vineyard will remain as it has always been if there is a demand for its particular brand of patrician cachet, but that is just whistlin' Dixie, for those who have an eye on buying on the island only want a view, ocean access, and yes, golf courses. Billings Eddy and his cousins will be soon dead and buried and with them the sepia-toned, grainy images of an America that once was.  The Vineyard might not exactly become Miami Beach, but there will be no stopping its move in that direction. 

'Place', reflected Billings in a quieter moment, that was what mattered.  Somewhere with roots, a permanent place, a consistently familiar place, a cultural home, a secure emotional harbor; but that very idea was being challenged by the 'outside money'.  Before long not only would the Vineyard no longer be the Vineyard but no place would be the same.  There would be no more cultural preserves except for a few designated historic streets. 

Billings was too old to appreciate the real existential crisis of the day - AI and virtual reality.  With the advent of universal cyberspace, brick and mortar let alone private enclaves like the Vineyard will become irrelevant as cultural places, homes to return to.  The will be functional anchors for virtual commerce, perhaps not data centers, but functional units, residences, retail, government - all interchangeable, fungible, without inherent value, only serving the needs of the new virtual world. 

The Comanche Chief White Wolf was the most savage, bloody, brutal killer of whites the Union Army had ever seen. His approach was simple - rape, slaughter, behead, eviscerate any white settlers that squatted on Indian land, and no more would follow. 

Defending his land against foreign intruders, and as bloody a warrior as Genghis Khan, White Wolf knew that a purposeful barbarity would intimidate the enemy.  Just as Genghis Khan posted severed heads on roads leading to conquered villages, gruesome warnings to the next settlements in his sights, so did White Wolf use unconscionable savagery as a tool of war.  He knew that the Christian soldiers would see his tribal, animist, ferocity, understand that they were up against a frightening, unfathomable enemy with no moral restraint and would turn tail. 

 

Jonathan Foreman, writing in The Daily Mail said:

S C Gwynne, author of Empire Of The Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche, says simply: ‘No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.’

He refers to the ‘demonic immorality’ of Comanche attacks on white settlers, the way in which torture, killings and gang-rapes were routine. ‘The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward,’ he explains.

‘All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang raped. Babies were invariably killed.’

‘One by one, the children and young women were pegged out naked beside the camp fire,’ according to a contemporary account. ‘They were skinned, sliced, and horribly mutilated, and finally burned alive by vengeful women determined to wring the last shriek and convulsion from their agonized bodies. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was among these unfortunates who died screaming under the high plains moon.’

Not only were the Comanche specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors — indeed, they become known as ‘Lords of the Plains’. They were as imperialist and genocidal as the white settlers who eventually vanquished them.

When they first migrated to the great plains of the American South in the late 18th century from the Rocky Mountains, not only did they achieve dominance over the tribes there, they almost exterminated the Apache, among the greatest horse warriors in the world.

 

'That's who I am', said Billings Eddy, admiring an early 20th century photographic portrait of the Indian chief.  'He took no prisoners'; but of course the patriotic territorialism of White Wolf's day was no longer.  There were no boundaries or demarcations, bastions or bulwarks, perimeters or lines of defense.  Everything was permeable and change was the only constant. 

Worst of all few people except for alte kockers like Billings cared a whit for place.  Weather mattered, better mild winters than not. Taxes mattered as did proximity to grandchildren, good Internet connections and health care; but not place in Billings' sense - somewhere with an unbroken, storied history, with a recognizable, durable culture, with solidity and meaning. 

At last notice, Billings was still holding fast and had not yet sold his property. 

He would soon because he was tooth-by-jowl with the new golf course and the condo village that had gone up next door.  It was only a matter of time.