Whatever you think of President Trump and his foreign policy, you might agree with me that we don’t need another North Korea in the Middle East.
To say the least, it would not be in the best interest of the United States to have another rogue, unstable, America-hating, nuclear-armed entity committed to our annihilation – especially one armed with ballistic missiles of ever-increasing range. I suppose it’s absurd to dress North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in the robes of an ayatollah, but unless we intervene, we may end up with similar regimes – isolated from its own people, despotic, armed with nuclear weapons, and determined to preserve power at any cost.
Perhaps it’s an odd way of thinking, but the volatile situation in the Middle East might be different if Lawrence of Arabia hadn’t been thrown from his motorcycle and killed on a country road in Dorset, England, in 1935. Most would know that Lawrence had little to do with Persia, or modern Iran. It was not part of the Ottoman Turk world that he fought in during World War I. Persia had its own ancient identity, its own monarchy, its own religious traditions rooted in Shi’a Islam rather than the Sunni Arab world that Lawrence knew.
But he might have helped steer the early postwar political settlements between the victorious Allied powers in a way that produced less resentment, less instability, and less of the slow-burning anger that eventually erupted in places like Iran. When the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown in 1979, it ended a monarchy that some trace back to Cyrus the Great (550 BCE), who is mentioned favorably in the Bible because he allowed a Jewish remnant to return from Babylonian exile and rebuild Jerusalem (Ezra 1:1-4).
As I was listening to President Trump’s speech the other evening, it was hard for me to determine exactly what the administration’s goals are in Iran – except to keep it from becoming nuclear armed, an outcome with which I enthusiastically agree. I couldn’t help but think of that old Buck Owens song, “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail.” That phrase well describes our predicament. We seem to have started a major conflict without a definite end goal, or as I hear the pundits say on TV, “without an off ramp.” There’s no way Iran can defeat the United States militarily, but, by asymmetrical warfare, it can prolong the conflict, increase the cost, and adversely affect public opinion here in the States. I’m not exactly a graduate of the Fletcher School of Diplomacy, and Mr. Trump doesn’t need my help, but here’s my take on the situation, and I’d be glad to pass it on to those in authority.
- We could just declare victory and go home. Why not? Isn’t that what we did in Venezuela? According to the President, we’ve neutralized their nuclear capability, destroyed their Navy and Air Force, disabled their air defense system, and rendered their systems of command and control ineffective. However, considering the missing enriched uranium, their capability to continue launching missiles at will into surrounding countries, the apparent ability to shoot down an F-15, one of our most capable fighter planes, and the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, something tells me this option isn’t on the Pentagon’s table.
- Continue limited war. The evidence is clear that this is a non-starter: a limited war can quickly escalate, especially with Israel, as the wild card, pursuing its own agenda, the economic “blowback” is already upon us. Have you filled up your automobile’s gas tank in the last few days? It took $92.00 to fill up my 1994 Ford pickup today. What about the drain on our own military resources? I read somewhere that it will take us years to replace the Tomahawk missiles that have been fired into Iran. Between this theater and what we have sent to the Ukraine, we are basically disarming ourselves. Don’t you suspect that our potential adversaries are watching this with interest? What are the implications for China’s plans to invade Taiwan, etc.?
- Negotiate a deal. If you’ve read President Trump’s famous book, The Art of the Deal (1987, Ghost written by Tony Schwartz), as I have, you know that it’s about thinking big, using leverage, and controlling the narrative, all attributes of Mr. Trump. For my money, it’s good information on how to polish your image and increase your confidence but lacking in information on how to complete complex negotiations and deals. After watching Kim Jong Un eat our lunch twice in North Korea and seeing NATO and some of our other so-called friends string us out over the years, I’m not so sure we should negotiate. The Iranians lie.
- A major escalation involving boots on the ground. I don’t think the American public is ready for this one, especially without an official Congressional declaration of war. I’ve been on “floats” with the Marines in the amphibious ships in the task force that you’ve read about, and I’m sure the troops are ready to go. I also heard last week about sending 1800 members of the elite 82nd Airborne Division, my son’s old unit, for a possible invasion. In my opinion, these are both bad ideas. Toward the end of my career, as the only parachute-qualified chaplain in the Navy, I was offered the job as the Central Command (CENTCOM) chaplain in Tampa. I would have enjoyed working with the special operators, and I needed the monthly jump pay, but I said, “No thanks, I’ve had enough.” I believe a person only has so much “luck” and then it runs out.
- Regime change. This would be nothing new. It’s a matter of record, but in 1953 the CIA and British intelligence backed a coup in which Iran’s Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who had naturalized the nation’s oil industry, was removed from office so that the “weak” Shah could rule. With our support, he ruled until 1979.
The Iranian revolution of 1978-79 marked the rise of Ruhollah Khomeini (1900-1989), the Shi’ite cleric who became the first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Those of my vintage can remember the 444-day period when Iranian students held diplomats from the U. S. Embassy in Tehran hostage. The subsequent botched and tragic rescue attempt (“Operation Eagle Claw” – 8 special operators killed) helped to undermine the Jimmy Carter administration and played a major role in his failure to be reelected in 1980.
Writing this on Easter Sunday, I couldn’t help but remember the 1979 hostage taking and think how much the Iranians would like to capture the downed F-15 Air Force pilot and hold him hostage for maximum political benefit. Thankfully, I learned in Sunday School that he had been rescued and that, apparently, none of his rescuers had been killed in that extremely risky operation.
It’s brave exploits like this that make me so proud that I spent my life in the military. Whatever your political persuasion, whether you are red or blue, you can’t help but be proud of the men and women who serve in our armed forces. They might not personally agree with or even understand the difficult assignments they are often given, but when it’s time to execute the mission, no one is going to argue or “parse” the orders: they will “kick the tires and light the fires.”
I suppose I sound like a “cheerleader,” but this is someone who owes everything he has to the military; someone that his high school classmates would have voted “Least Likely to Succeed” had that yearbook honor existed; someone that a Navy recruiter took a chance on because he scored well on the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAP) qualifying test. Someone that the military picked up, cleaned up, smarted up, focused up, and sent on his way.
While the United States military is rightly regarded as the best in the world, there’s something “rotten in Denmark” (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4), and it’s not President Trump’s preoccupation with Greenland. Our military is increasingly becoming a catch basin for the poor, the less educated, and the marginalized. Some say it’s because we’ve abandoned the universal draft and gone to an all-volunteer force. In many ways, it’s the same problem I noticed when I was teaching high school. Many of the students deemed by the educators to be less qualified academically were shunted off to vocational classes of dubious value and not encouraged to attend college. Ironically, as things have turned out, many of such students who learned a trade have ended up with higher yearly incomes than their college graduate classmates. Likewise, many “marginal” recruits prove to be excellent service members and use that experience as a steppingstone to better things. Of course, the military still attracts the highly educated and highly qualified personnel who, like their fellow volunteers, are motivated by patriotism and love of country.
Even if reinstituted today, the draft would not fare very well. Recent Pentagon data shows that 75% of those ages 17 to 24 don’t qualify for military service because they are physically unfit, have a criminal record, or didn’t graduate from high school. Even worse, one-fourth of volunteers who attempt to join the military fail the ASVAP, and a study in 2018 showed that more than 17 million young adults would be disqualified for various health reasons. To meet their recruiting goals, several branches of the military have reduced the required ASVAP score to attract more candidates.
But the more things change, the more they remain the same. When I went through parachute school at Fort Benning in 1970, about one-fourth of the wannabe commandos in my class washed out in the first hour because they couldn’t do minimum six over-handed pull-ups.
Today’s all volunteer military force is increasingly drawing its ranks from a relatively small pool of Americans with historic family connections to military service. For example, in my family, my father and every one of my uncles except one who was a conscientious objector served in World War II. Polls show that many military personnel are conservative and hard right politically. However, a study during the administration of President Biden failed to find much evidence of extremism of any kind in the armed forces beyond that found in the civilian world, and this included the so-called Christian Nationalism.
Today’s wars are authorized (theoretically) by a Congress whose members have the lowest rate of military service in history, and our nation has been led by four successive Commanders in Chief who never served a day on active duty. Less than one-half of 1% of the U.S. population is in the armed forces today, compared with 2.7 million men conscripted from every segment of the population during the Vietnam War. And that is a strength of the draft – it gave us a good cross-section of Americans, cutting across socioeconomic, geographic, and racial lines.
Now we are, perhaps, in danger of developing what our erstwhile Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, calls a “warrior class, a warrior ethos.” Personally, I’m not sure it’s in the best interests of our nation to develop such a fighting caste, a Roman Legionnaire mentality, a throwback to the classical tension between the worldviews of Athens and Sparta.
I guess most of the above is beyond my pay grade. I just know that if Uncle Sam hadn’t rescued me and given me a trade and a future, I’d still be standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, waiting for something positive to happen in my life. One good thing did come out of Lawrence of Arabia’s untimely death. He swerved on his motorcycle to avoid two bicyclists, was thrown over the handlebars, hit his head on the pavement, and was in a coma for six days before he died. Because of his notoriety and manner of death, helmets for motorcyclists became very popular in England.
Light a candle for me.
Benny Hornsby, a resident of Oak Grove, is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Write him at villefranche60@yahoo.com or visit bennyhornsby.com.
