Iran's Bluff Humbles Britain

Watching Tottenham Hotspur fans taking on the Spanish constabulary at a European soccer match the other night, I found myself idly speculating on what might have happened had those Iranian kidnappers made the mistake of seizing 15 hard-boiled football yobs who hadn't got the Blair memo about not escalating the situation.

Instead, as we know, the mullahs were fortunate enough to take hostage 15 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines. Which were which was hard to say upon their release. The Queen's Navee had been demobbed. The token gal was dressed up as an Islamic woman and the 14 men had been kitted out in Ahmadinejad leisurewear. Which is not just a ghastly fashion faux pas but a breach of the increasingly one-way Geneva Conventions. But they smiled and they waved. Wave, Britannia! Britannia, waive the rules!

The Associated Press reported the story as follows: ''Analysis: Hope For More Iran Compromises.''

Well, if by ''compromise'' you mean Tehran didn't put them up for a show trial and behead them, you might have a point. With this encouraging development, we might persuade them to wipe only half of Israel off the map, or even nuke some sparsely occupied corner of the Yukon instead. With the momentum of this "compromise" driving events, all manner of diplomatic triumphs are possible.

Tony Blair was at pains to point out that the hostages were released ''without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature.'' But he's missing (or artfully sidestepping) the point: Tehran didn't want a deal. It wanted the humbling of the Great Satan's principal ally. And it got it. Very easily. And it paid no price for it. And it has tested in useful ways the empty pretensions of the U.N., the EU and also NATO, whose second largest fleet is now a laughingstock in a part of the world where it helps to be taken seriously.

I'm always bemused by the correspondence I get from readers arguing that there's more going on than meets the eye -- that the British and Americans wanted to keep things cool this last week because it's a massive head fake to distract attention from all kinds of covert activities already under way to overthrow Ahmadinejad, and Assad, and a bunch of other fellows. Even if it were true (which it's not) that Valerie Plame's crack commando units are rappelling down the walls of every presidential palace from Sudan to North Korea, in a media age what matters is not only what's going on behind the scenes but the scenes themselves. And scenes of British servicemen fawning on Ahmadinejad along with scenes of a headscarved Nancy Pelosi doing the same to Bashir Assad project a consistent message.

Even if there is more going on than meets the eye, what meets the eye is so profoundly damaging to the credibility of great nations that no amount of lethal special ops could compensate for it. Power is only as great as the perception of power. The Iranians understand that they can't beat America or Britain in tank battles or air strikes so they choose other battlefields on which to hit them. That's why the behavior of the captives gives great cause for concern: There's no point training guys to be tough fighting men of the Royal Marines when you're in a bloody little scrap in Sierra Leone (as they were a couple of years ago) if you allow them to crumple on TV in front of the entire world.

So in 2007 the men of the Royal Navy can be kidnapped and "the strong arm of England" (in Lord Palmerston's phrase) goes all limp-wristed and threatens to go to the U.N. and talk about drafting a Security Council resolution. Backstage, meanwhile, deals are done: An Iranian "diplomat" (a k a Mister Terror Kingpin) suddenly resurfaces in Tehran after having been reported in American detention, his release purely coincidental, we're told. But it's the kind of coincidence that ensures more of your men will be kidnapped and ransomed in the years ahead. And, just to remind the world who makes the rules, six more British subjects were killed in southern Iraq even at the moment of the hostages' release. The Iranians have exposed America's strongest ally as the soft underbelly of the Great Satan.

The most noticeable feature of the last two weeks has been the massive shrug by the British public. Some observers attributed this to the unpopularity of the Iraq war: Those nice mullahs wouldn't be pulling this stuff if Blair hadn't got mixed up with that crazy Texas moron. But it seems to me a more profound malaise has gripped them -- the enervating fatalism of too many people in what is still a semi-serious nation with one of the world's biggest militaries up against an insignificant basket-case. The traditional British position was deftly summed up in the chorus of an old music-hall song:

Or, to modify Elvis, they weren't looking for trouble but, if you looked right in their face, they'd give you some. In theory, they still have the ships, the men and the money, but something intangible has been lost. "Jingoism" is not merely a mindless swagger but a kind of assumed national confidence of which the fleet and the sailors and the cash are merely the tangible embodiment. Take away the confidence, and the ships and men and money avail you nought. You want a diplomatic solution? Fine. But, if you believe (as Europe and half America does) in ''soft power,'' it's important to remember it depends on the world's belief that you're willing to use that power. Looking at the reaction to this incident by the United States, European Union, United Nations et al., Iran will conclude that the transnational consensus will never muster the will to constrain its nuclear ambitions.

Europeans and more and more Americans believe they can live in a world with all the benefits of global prosperity and none of the messy obligations necessary to maintain it. And so they cruise around war zones like floating NGOs. Iran called their bluff, and televised it to the world. In the end, every great power is as great as its credibility, and the only consolation after these last two weeks is that Britain doesn't have much more left to lose.

If you are as conservative as you say you are (and btw, nice website), surely you will agree that anything coming out of CNN ought to be viewed with great skepticism. The transcript you have provided provides quotes from McFarlane, Snow, etc., but the majority of that transcript is nothing but editorializing by John Roberts and painting the picture CNN wants to put on display.

I have noted that since the U.K./Iran debacle this past week, there is a growing tendency on the part of some individuals to try and paint Ronald Reagan as somehow being negligent or less than engaged in the early years of the Islamofascist war on the United States, and yet the fact remains that Iran released our hostages the day Reagan was sworn in, and that wasn’t because they thought he was nice guy and easy to deal with, far from it. Reagan actually sank the better part of the Iranian navy as mentioned by poster ‘ithinkBIG’ above, so while the U.S. actions following the Marines barracks bombing of ‘83 can be debated ad infinitum, the fact is that Reagan remained engaged in the Middle East, the U.S. did not leave Israel to fend for itself, when it came to the Straits of Hormuz, we kept them open and Iran paid the price for messing with us in that area, we bombed the Libyan bozo Gaddafi, and this all took place under the shadow of the continuing Soviet threat in the waning years of the Cold War.

I note also, that McFarlane (quoted extensively in this CNN ‘report’) was only Reagan’s National Security Advisor for the better part of two years, ‘83 to ‘85. I have to also question just how stable McFarlane is, as he tried to off himself with valium in ‘87 claiming he ‘failed his country’ due to the Iran-Contra nonsense. That isn’t rational behavior, and I think it means that his statements ought to be viewed with at least a slight degree of skepticism. How many of his recollections are accurate? Who can say? I can’t, and neither can you. I’m not saying McFarlane is the bad guy, far from it but it would be absolutely SOP for a yellow journalistic enterprise like CNN to take advantage of someone who had been through that kind of trauma, both personally and professionally. I think the entire CNN ‘product’ is questionable.

If someone wants to put the blame on somebody for the current jihad that the West is facing, they need look no further than the traitor Jimmy Carter who set the whole thing in motion starting with the betrayal of the Shah.

Reagan responded to the threat of terrorism more than appropriately in the context of fighting (and winning) a larger conflict, i.e., the Cold War against the USSR. George H.W. Bush might have achieved 91 percent approval ratings, the liberation of Kuwait, and all that goes with it, but he royally screwed up when he let Saddam remain in power, and history will validate that.

The eight year vacation from history that defined the Clinton/Gore years allowed our enemies to prepare for, and ramp up their plans to attack America and begin the current global jihad, and just as Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Clinton played his sexophone while his administration treated terrorism as a ‘law enforcement’ issue. That is what led us to Mogadishu, to embassy bombings, to the U.S.S. Cole, and finally to 9/11. The blame for that can be squarely laid on the shoulders of Clinton & Company.

As for Reagan’s response to the Marine Barracks bombing in ‘83, he most definitely did not ‘cut and run’ as some latter day analysts want to portray it. There is a reason for their desire to portray Reagan that way: by doing so, their friendly ‘Rat cowards and buffoons look a bit less negligent.

Were mistakes made during the Reagan Administration? Of course there were, no Administration is fault free. But these convenient post-mortems of the Reagan years while we are engaged in the current war on Islamofascism serve only one purpose, to demoralize conservatives and boost the fortunes of the left.

Sorry pal, I’m not buying into it.

First let me say that we probably agree on a lot more than you know. But lately these last couple of years I have become disenchanted with politicians in general. From my point of view just because I disagree with Democrats does not make me a Republican, nor vice versa. While I tend to agree more often with Republicans its usually that I am settling on the best of two bad choices. Not that the Republicans are actually either what I consider moral or particularly bright. The long and short of it is I don't like politicians as a class of people. They are a necessary evil not an answer which I believe allows me to see the evil that both sides commit.

Admittedly the Democrats are a lot closer to terribly bad than the Republicans but neither one of them is invited to date my daughters or sell me a car. Having said that let me say thank you for the compliment on my site...now back to the show. hehe...in case you forget what you said you will be indented, bolded, and italicized...jus cuz.

If you are as conservative as you say you are (and btw, nice website),

Whether I am or not is up to me. Whether others think so does not concern me.

surely you will agree that anything coming out of CNN ought to be viewed with great skepticism. The transcript you have provided provides quotes from McFarlane, Snow, etc.,

Yes but the problem you have is those quotes back up what I was saying not what you were saying. Here let me demonstrate...

LT. GEN. LAWRENCE SNOWDEN (RET.): We had every reason to believe that Hezbollah was the unit that did the job. And we do know that the operation had the support of the Syrian government, and the Iranian government.
ROBERTS: A civil case in 2003 did just that. The judge ruled the suicide bombing was carried out by Hezbollah, with the approval and funding of Iran. Retired Admiral James Lyons testified U.S. officials intercepted a message from the Iranian ambassador to Syria.

(I include the Robert's quote for clarity because Admiral Lyons puts paid to the fantasy of Casper that he was holding on to in 2000 that we still didn't have proof of Iran's involvement)

ADMIRAL LYONS: This is the smoking gun. There was proof positive to coordinate their attacks against the multinational force, and in particular, the United States Marines.
LT GENERAL SNOWDEN: There was a real concern that if there was an accidental discharge of a weapon, some, quote, "innocent civilian" might be killed or wounded in that parking lot, but in hindsight, it was not a good idea.

(This is comical and should be remembered when we laugh at the British for not firing on the Iranians, our Marines did not even have their guns loaded)
GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FMR. VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're not going to let a bunch of insidious terrorists, cowards, shape the foreign policy of the United States.

(Laying the law down...or was he?)
REAGAN: Those who directed this atrocity must be dealt justice and they will be.
REAGAN: If we were to leave Lebanon now, what message would that send to those who foment instability and terrorism.

(More laying the law down...but there is a fly in the ointment)
ROBERTS: By now, American intelligence had traced the seeds of the attack to a barracks in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah was holed up. The Navy was ready to strike back.

(Again I include Roberts only for clarification)

ADMIRAL LYONS: We went ahead and made up the plans. We had the photography. It was a great radar target. There's nothing else around. And we were going to take out all 250 of them.
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR MCFARLANE: The president called the National Security Council together. He was convinced himself that the target was responsible in the Bekaa Valley, that Hezbollah had done the deed, and that's where they trained and were armed.
There were arguments, disagreements. Weinberger disagreed, thought it would have a very negative impact on our relations in the Arab states. The president said, "Well, I believe we have to do this."
ADMIRAL LYONS: We had the planes loaded. It would have been a minute and a half strike, in and out in a minute and a half, and we would have sent the message that everybody was waiting for us to send. We never got the orders to launch.
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR MCFARLANE: I was awakened at home by the situation room, with the word that the attack had been aborted. I was speechless. I said, "By whom?" and I was told the Secretary of Defense. I was thunderstruck. I went down to the office and called Cap right away and asked him, what in the world happened? He said, "Well, Bud, I believed it was a bad idea, and it would have done us great harm." and I said, "Cap, the president of the United States approved this."

(Maybe you are too young to remember I don't know but Casper Weinberger was what has been known as an Arabist. Grover Norquist is also one as is James Baker. Which is actually irrelevant to the argument since our argument revolves around whether the Reagan Administration failed to punish those who killed US Servicemen)
REAGAN: But that is no reason to turn our backs on friends and to cut and run. If we do, we'll be sending one signal to terrorists everywhere. They can gain by waging war against innocent people.
REAGAN: Now, one fact, though it's already obvious, the problem of terrorism will not disappear if we run from it.
MCFARLANE: I think he understood very well the withdrawal of American forces, anywhere, at any time, is a negative signal, a sign of weakness. Shortly thereafter he acknowledged that we're going to pay a price for this downstream
SNOWDEN: I think the terrorists had good memories, and they remember that, when we were pushed up against the wall, and they successfully attacked us like that, there was a demand for the troops to come home, and they did.
MCFARLANE: To absorb such a horrific loss as the Marines suffered in Beirut, without reacting, implies that you can attack the United States and not pay a price for it. That we're too weak, irresolute, politically paralyzed, and that is intolerable for a great power.

(Well ok that laying down the law stuff is ok when its just talk but when it comes to steel to flesh...hmmm)
1. Lets summarize shall we?
  1. Marines put into a desperate situation with a pitiful ROE: Check.
    1. Unarmed Check
  2. Marines get attacked and killed in numbers not seen since Iwo Jima: Check.
  3. Government officials talk smack: Check
  4. Government officials back down: Check.
  5. Terrorists emboldened: Check.
2. Well done Reagan administration.

but the majority of that transcript is nothing but editorializing by John Roberts and painting the picture CNN wants to put on display.

Gee that was quite a bit that I just posted and it is pretty damning that the Reagan administration blew it. Remember that I worked on the Reagan campaign...didn't mention that did I?

I have noted that since the U.K./Iran debacle this past week, there is a growing tendency on the part of some individuals to try and paint Ronald Reagan as somehow being negligent or less than engaged in the early years of the Islamofascist war on the United States, and yet the fact remains that Iran released our hostages the day Reagan was sworn in, and that wasn’t because they thought he was nice guy and easy to deal with, far from it.

I was under the impression it was because he was making deals to release the hostages. But you think it was they were scared of the US? Or him personally before he had even gotten into office? If that is the case then having their Proxies blow the crap out of the Marine Headquarters/Barracks seems contradictory.

Reagan actually sank the better part of the Iranian navy as mentioned by poster ‘ithinkBIG’ above, so while the U.S. actions following the Marines barracks bombing of ‘83 can be debated ad infinitum, the fact is that Reagan remained engaged in the Middle East, the U.S. did not leave Israel to fend for itself, when it came to the Straits of Hormuz, we kept them open and Iran paid the price for messing with us in that area, we bombed the Libyan bozo Gaddafi, and this all took place under the shadow of the continuing Soviet threat in the waning years of the Cold War.

I didn't claim he did everything wrong just that he didn't do the Marine Barracks right.

I note also, that McFarlane (quoted extensively in this CNN ‘report’) was only Reagan’s National Security Advisor for the better part of two years, ‘83 to ‘85. I have to also question just how stable McFarlane is, as he tried to off himself with valium in ‘87 claiming he ‘failed his country’ due to the Iran-Contra nonsense.

You sure that you are not a leftist? Because that attack was straight out of the playbook. Attack the messenger not the message...for shame.

That isn’t rational behavior, and I think it means that his statements ought to be viewed with at least a slight degree of skepticism. How many of his recollections are accurate? Who can say? I can’t, and neither can you. I’m not saying McFarlane is the bad guy, far from it but it would be absolutely SOP for a yellow journalistic enterprise like CNN to take advantage of someone who had been through that kind of trauma, both personally and professionally. I think the entire CNN ‘product’ is questionable.

Perhaps you missed the other personalities:

LIEUTENANT GENERAL LAWRENCE F. SNOWDEN, U.S. MARINE CORPS (Ret) (This bio is from the Beirut International Airport Bombing Page he was on the commission investigating the bombing)

Lieutenant General Snowden retired as Chief of Staff, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, in May 1979, after 37 years of active service which included combat duty in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Lieutenant General Snowden served as a regimental commander in Vietnam; Director of the Marine Corps Development Center; Chief of Staff, U.S. Forces, Japan; and Operations Deputy of the Marine Corps with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Upon his retirement, Lieutenant General Snowden joined Hughes Aircraft International Service Company in Tokyo where he is currently Vice President, Far East Area.

James A. Lyons Jr. is a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, senior U.S. Military Representative to the United Nations and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, where he was principal adviser on all Joint Chiefs of Staff matters. (Oh found this little tidbit when I went looking for Admiral Lyons bio...he was quite the Star having maneuvered his fleet twice in such a fashion that he both surprised and angered the Soviets. Surely he has some credibility?)
"On October 25, the chief of naval intelligence notified Lyons of an intercept of a message between Tehran and Damascus that had been made on or about September 26, 1983. The message had been sent from MOIS [the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security] to the Iranian ambassador in Syria, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi….The message directed the ambassador to contact Hussein Musawi, the leader of the terrorist group Islamic Amal, and to instruct [Musawi to] have his group instigate attacks against the multinational coalition in Lebanon, and to take a spectacular action against the United States Marines."

The ruling continues: "Lyons testified that he has absolutely no doubt about the authenticity or reliability of the message, which he took immediately to the secretary of the navy and [the] chief of naval operations, who viewed it, as he did, as a '24-karat gold document'."

If someone wants to put the blame on somebody for the current jihad that the West is facing, they need look no further than the traitor Jimmy Carter who set the whole thing in motion starting with the betrayal of the Shah.

Absolutely no argument there...the worst President of the last 100 years. Perhaps the worst President of all time.

Were mistakes made during the Reagan Administration? Of course there were, no Administration is fault free. But these convenient post-mortems of the Reagan years while we are engaged in the current war on Islamofascism serve only one purpose, to demoralize conservatives and boost the fortunes of the left.

No actually if we don't acknowledge mistakes we will continue to make them. Matter of fact that is exactly what we are doing as we watch President Bush continue the proud tradition of NOT holding States accountable for terror. Am I glad about Iraq and Afghanistan? You bet. Was WW2 over after we invaded Morocco and Sicily? Nope. The left will be defeated by our deliberate drive to defeat our enemy. Not by our halfway measures to appease them as well as defeat an enemy whose main purpose in life is our complete and utter destruction. But the left is another subject...maybe you can school us on your tactics...hehehe.

Those are powerful arguments you’ve assembled, and yet I still take issue with the characterization that we ran with our ‘ass between our legs’ (not going to let you forget that, lol), because that is simply not what happened. If Reagan had issued an immediate order to get all of our forces out of Lebanon the very next day after that bombing, THAT would constitute cutting and running, ala Jack Murtha but that isn’t what happened.

I agree with you that a stronger response was needed, and in retrospect Reagan should have either asked for Cap’s resignation or fired him when it became apparent that Weinberger was not on board with what Reagan wanted done in the area of retaliation.

Don’t think for a moment however, that I have any leftist leanings, my questions regarding Bud McFarlane were legitimate, and you know that if we were talking about a hypothetical Sandy Burglar in that position who had tried to kill himself, that there would be people raising the same issues about just how stable he might be. As I said, McFarlane wasn’t the bad guy, he was arguing FOR retaliation, Weinberger blocked it. But if CNN was exploiting McFarlane in order to smear Reagan, that would not surprise me in the least.

What I am reminded of in this exchange we’re having is how easy it is for anyone (including you or me) to look back and say with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight that we should have done this, or should have done that, but I recall Reagan saying words to the effect that his Administration would take responsibility for any mistakes that were made, if they at least were given credit for what they did RIGHT.

Your view on this post-mortem on Reagan policies regarding terrorism in general and Lebanon in particular is that we benefit when we identify errors made, and take steps to be sure those errors aren’t repeated. I’m in full agreement with that approach, but remember also that when such ‘analysis’ is presented by the premiere conservative-hating, left-leaning, and disloyal cable network of all time, the question must be asked “who benefits”?

You might say that America benefits if we avoid errors in the future. That may yet be the case. But when CNN and their affiliated America-hating brethren broadcast stuff like this, their agenda is NOT to ‘avoid errors’ in the future, their agenda is to retrospectively slant and taint history as THEY wish it to be portrayed, the focus being concentrated on what went WRONG in the Reagan years, not what went RIGHT, to emphasize mistakes, not the successes, and by so doing, they inject their ideological meme into the public consciousness to be parroted, repeated and embraced as gospel by those who work tirelessly to bring about an American defeat and a collapse of our way of life.

What we need as a clearly enunciated national policy, is that if terrorists mess with the United States, they will be killed. No ifs, ands or buts. They will die, and hopefully as horrible a death as is humanly possible. It should be an unconditional policy, which covers individual terrorists and their cells, to rogue states like Iran that seek to destabilize the entire Middle East. No negotiations, no conferences, no initiatives, no ‘road maps to peace’, I say bullsh*t on all of that yak-yaking, the best way to end the scourge of Islamofascist terrorism is to kill each and every last one of them, sparing NO one.

That’s the way I see it.

By the way, interesting note on your work in the Reagan campaign, did you also work in his Administration? I’m sure you have some stories to tell, I hope you’ll share them.

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