STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Three Decades Of Iran/USA Secret Hostilities!   President Ronald Reagan as The American Hamlet!

Please read David Crist’s The Twilight War.

While the Republican Political Cardinals attempt to canonize  former President Ronald Reagan as a ‘Man For All Seasons’,    I had to step back from the Cathedral of Paeans and reflect.   By chance,  I picked up a book entitled The Twilight War: The Secret History Of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict With Iran by David Crist.    Unbeknown to me,  David Crist is currently the historian for the federal government and a frequent adviser to senior USG civilian/military officials.    He was a Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and served one tour in the First Iraq War and two tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

But what really compelled me to write this blog was the incredible amount of information that I had not known about this Crypto-War that the USG has conducted vis a vis Iran.   What was particularly interesting to me were Crist’s descriptions of the contretemps relating to Iran and the furious arguments that senior officials in Reagan’s Administrations had with regard to attacking Iran or supporting the Ayatollah’s enemies.   Yes,  contradictions abounded within the Reagan and subsequent administrations with regard to USA relationships with Iran.

 

The recent,  inevitable denouement with Iran culminates three decades of endless drama encompassing unique and influential game players on both sides of the chess board.    Although I served in the State Department during the Reagan Administration,   I was certainly not exposed to the intense rivalry among Secretary of Defense,  Caspar Weinberger,   Secretary of State George Shultz, and National Security Advisor,  Robert “Bud” McFarlane.    Admittedly,   I was working with another host of characters—Don Gregg [CIA] ; Fritz Ermath [ CIA]; V. P. George H. W. Bush Sr’s office—on a completely different area of  strategic concern --  the dismantling  of the Soviet Union  through Psychological Warfare.   Interesting that none of the these players were mentioned in Crist's book.   Also worth noting:  although I  developed a strategy paper in which I had to incorporate Ronald Reagan’s negotiating style versus the Soviet leader’s modus operandi,  I was unaware of Crist's observation that "Reagan hated personal confrontations."    In his book,   Crist points out this aspect of Reagan that I had not encountered but I had found quite revealing and foreboding.

Crist then goes onto explain that Reagan was unable to made any effective decisions in terms of US retaliatory actions after the unfortunate tragic death of 241 Marines as well as 58 French paratroopers in the Hezbollah bombing of the US Marine barracks on October 23, 1983.     “For the U.S. Marine Corps,   it was the worst loss of life in a single day since Iwo Jima in 1943.”

The US Marines had been mistakenly sent by Reagan into Lebanon as a ‘Peacekeeping Troops’ interceding between the Israeli/Christian Lebanese and the warring factions of Shia,  Druze,  Syrian, Sunnis.     This indeterminate internecine conflict would not be resolved for another decade or so.    In many ways,  as Crist writes,  this was a “needless death” of our brave Marines;  in part,  thanks to the “incompetency” of our civilian leaders [i.e. Reagan] in the White House and elsewhere in the USG.

  In this book,  Crist forges onward,   as any good Marine would do.    He ventures where no one else has dares to go.   He undertakes the impossible mission of attempting to redefine  the universally accepted definition of  ‘terrorism’  from the perspective of the combatant:   “While Israel and the United States condemned these as acts of terrorism,  in truth the attacks were not terrorism.   The founders of Hezbollah had devised the poor man’s smart bomb and aimed it at their opponent's ill-prepared military.”

Crist adds the following quote to make his judicious point:   “If Hezbollah had GPS-guided bombs dropped from thirty thousand feet,  they would not need martyrs”,  said one Lebanese official with Hezbollah.

I remembered that tragic day and I recall how perplexed I felt as to how that tragedy could have happened,   given the sophisticated intelligence that we had in both the CIA/MI.   Nevertheless, Crist highlights a most telling point that I had completely failed to recognize as both a psychiatrist and State Dept. strategist/tactician.    Crist delineates in a very compelling prose the fact that the USA had become what he called,   a “Hamlet of Nations.”

 

Here is what he had delineated most forcefully in the book:
“….in the end,   REAGAN became the AMERICAN HAMLET. [my emphasis].    The debate over responding to terrorist attacks continued week after week in the White House…”

“A shortsighted Israeli policy and American Cold War naivete opened the door for Iran in Lebanon.    Israel’s myopic obsession with destroying the Palestinian resistance spawned a far more dangerous enemy,   while an American government equally fixated with the Soviet influence in the Middle East had led to misguided meddling in a Lebanese quarrel that Washington barely understood.    In the process,   Hezbollah’s success had emboldened Iran on the value of terrorism and the poor man’s precision weapon—the truck bomb---as instruments for successfully beating a superpower.” 

  Sound familiar?
  Déjà vu, all over again!!!
Let us remember that anytime a Republican praises Reagan,   lest he/she pause for a moment to understand that by omission of historical fact,   he/she may have committed the greatest of all commissions—lying to the American public for personal gain. 

 

Stop praising the wrong guys!   it will continue to lead to a destructive foreign policy in the Middle East.

We have had too many Hamlets in both the purviews of  'too precipitous action'  [Iraq/Afghanistan]  and inaction.

Whatever pew of the church of politics you might kneel in,  be it Democrat,  Republican,  Tea Party,  or whatever,   please don’t forget to learn about our history toward Iran. 

If nothing else,  spend a few minutes a day and take the time to read,  David Crist’s book,  The Twilight War.

Semper Fei!!!