UH OH! Iran is Acting Up...Again!

It’s hard to think that the Iran hostage ordeal was actually 37-years ago.  At the time, I was in the 509^th Airborne, based in Vicenza, Italy.  We were briefly put on alert, but it only lasted a couple days as the powers that be at the time opted to try another route to rescue the hostages.

In the end, it was the change in leadership from then president Jimmy Carter to the newly elected Ronald Regan that ended the “crisis.”  Now it appears we may again be in for some brashness by the Iranian government.

I remember those days pretty well; they are what psychologists call a “flash bulb memory.” Not unlike the “What were you doing the day John Kennedy was shot?” question.  For me on the Kennedy thing, I was in my third grade class and distinctly recall our music teacher running down the hall yelling “The president’s been shot; the president’s been shot.”

And the Iran thing is also pretty clear. We were restricted to the barracks and not allowed to make phone calls or basically do anything for two days except eat meals.  But that soon came to an end as the US decided not to invade Tehran.

But now, the way the Iranians are acting, is sort of like kicking a sleeping dog.  There are a lot of hotspots around the world right now, and just the other day I read an article about being closer to World War III today than at any time during the cold war.  And, sadly, that may be very true.

But here is the thing, the US has often put up with enough of that kind of stuff until it had enough.  Think Pearl Harbor.  What happened there was that the US was pushed beyond the brink.  The result was our entry into World War II and a huge shift in the balance of power between the Allies and the Axis.

Right now, we have problems with:  Iran, China, North Korea, and Guam.  Not to mention a slipping image in Europe and the Far East.  Who’s to say where all of that ends up?

Iran, I believe, is willing to push the US because the powers there don’t believe we will do anything about it.  Remember the line in the sand in Syria?  There’s an old Monty Python movie that has a disagreement between two forces and the one person says, “Don’t cross that line,” and when the more belligerent person steps over the line, the other person says, “Well, don’t cross that line.”  We are pretty much right there as a nation today.

As a country, we used to be respected and to some extent feared.  Machiavelli would say “that it is better to be loved, but that a leader must be able to do evil when constrained.”  Evil when constrained in today’s society is simply having a backbone.

The US today doesn’t seem to have a backbone.  In terms of body type, we much more represent a jelly fish.  The truth of the matter is you don’t have to fight; you just have to make sure that your opponent believes you will.

Right now, nobody believes we, the United States, will.  We are viewed much differently than we were even during the Viet Nam war.  We seem to have set aside Teddy Roosevelt’s suggestion that the US should “speak softly but carry a big stick.” Instead today, we speak loudly and carry a big shtick.  As a country we are no longer either loved or feared. We just are.

Look at how we have treated our friends and allies over the past few years. We have not supported our friends and have been a bit of a paper tiger to our enemies.  I am not suggesting that we go bomb some people, which we are doing anyway.  But there is no “fear” over what the United States might do.  We have effectively been shoved into a closet and left to rot with the moth balls.