IF THIS IS WAR, WHAT’S THE SCORE?

By Edwin Cooney

Beware of expectations and mindsets - especially your own!

President Trump's decision to eliminate Iranian Major General Qasim Soleimani, scary as it seems given President Trump's temperament and "seat of the pants” diplomacy, is not really new within the annals of our diplomatic history.

Those of us who were educated in post World War II America have been taught by parents, teachers, friends, neighbors and just about everyone else, that the United States has always been a reluctant player in foreign policy and that it has never been guilty of acting as did Japan on Pearl Harbor Day, Sunday, December 7th, 1941, the day which “will live in infamy!"

Unfortunately, this school lesson which most of us were taught is only true up to a point. Perhaps "we, the people" have been reluctant to bear the responsibility for international order, but that can't be said of the government or of very many presidents. Since the 1880s in the best interests of American commercialism, our governments, beginning with the administration of President Chester A. Arthur, have planned our military development to support our expanding needs for commercial markets abroad as well as for military advantage in case of international conflicts. Even before the Civil War, antebellum leaders sought to expand the South by annexing Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and, most dramatically, Nicaragua, under the American adventurer William Walker in the 1850s. (These sovereign nations would be slave states to match the political authority of northern non-slave states.) Certainly our adventurism has seldom, if ever, matched the dehumanizing of the Nazis, the Soviets, the imperialist Japanese, men like Qasim Soleimani, or any number of despots I can mention. Still, unless we are prepared to engage in total warfare, we need to be aware of our own capacity for international mischief.

Like most world powers, we have overthrown governments and watched other high governmental officials pay with their lives for their personal patriotism.

In 1953, we overthrew the elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh replacing him with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, for the next 25 plus years. He never allowed his democratic principles to show — if he even had any such principles. (Note that the CIA agent in charge of the Iranian coup d'état was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt for whom all wars were "just bully!") We overthrew the government of elected President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954, we sought to overthrow Castro's government in Cuba in April 1961 and Chile in 1973, and plotted against rulers such as Patrice Lumumba of Zaire in 1961, Rafael Trujillo of The Dominican Republic in 1961, and Salvador Allende, the Marxist president of Chile in September 1973. Of course, there were numerous attempts by the CIA throughout the Kennedy administration in the early sixties to kill Fidel Castro. Finally, there was the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem which was merely a foretaste of our tragedy which was the war in Vietnam.

In pursuit of sugar, fruit and even tobacco interests in Latin and South America and in industrial expansion in the Pacific as far west as China, we've meddled into the affairs of The Philippines, China, and, most successfully, into the sovereign independent nation once known as Hawaii. Opium, through what was called "dollar diplomacy,” guided our interests in China during the McKinley Administration.

In summation, since the end of World War II, we've attempted to overthrow governments in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Granada, Nicaragua, Panama, and twice in Iraq. Compared to all of this, President Trump's assassination of Suleimani  seems mild given the reality that Suleimani "died as he killed” as someone wrote last week.

It seems to me that if there's a threshold over which we could step that would mean war, it might be the personalization of a potential International conflict.

While in college, I read Winston Churchill's assessment of the growth of war from medieval days through the most recent war when he wrote the book — which was then World War I. In that 1930s book "World Crisis," Churchill observed how gradually but inevitably the process of war had changed. Churchill noted that science and technology were imperiling the peace to a much greater degree than most people realized. Throughout the Middle Ages, wars were generally fought between the royal families. They were fought in good weather and for the most part away from where most people lived. Generally, wars were fought by men who had sworn "fealty" to the nobles and who thus would personally gain or lose once the war was concluded. Changes in technology and science meant that from here on wars would be between nations rather than between mere armies. Today, ninety years after Churchill's book, the outcome of war has changed far more than even Mr. Churchill could imagine.

Nine years ago, most Americans were pleased when President Barack Obama gave the orders to successfully hunt down and, if necessary, kill Osama bin Laden. In order to do this, President Obama had to approve our invasion of the sovereign nation of Pakistan of international law than was the assassination of Qasim Suleimani. President Obama's mistake, as I see it, was to escalate the legitimate goals of war to include violation  of an innocent nation's territory without its consent.  President Trump's killing of Qasim Suleimani on the battlefield which Bagdad is today is somehow legitimate. After all, generals are expected to die on battlefields! Battlefields are where they gain their glory!

Another deadly threshold which we will hopefully never overstep is the one that President Trump threatened to step over right after the Suleimani assassination — namely, the destruction of cultural or religious sites. Such destruction might not cost us immediately, but you can be sure our grandchildren would reap their hatred due to our carelessness!   

As for the score of the war, the US hasn’t declared war since December 8th, 1941, yet, unfortunately, wars still thrive. At this point, since Friday, January 3rd, 2020, we clearly have the advantage. However, advantages are almost always temporary! To paraphrase men named Churchill and MacArthur, mere advantage is no substitute for victory. Victory could conceivably be too costly to even anticipate.

As for expectations and mindsets, let's hope we know how to identify and manipulate the enemies of peace, whoever they are and wherever they live, whether they live in Bagdad, Tehran, or Washington D.C.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY