As I suspect you are aware, there is substantial reason to believe that nothing whatsoever happened in the “Tonkin Bay Incident”.
I wasn’t speaking about the Navy specifically, but about the U.S., especially under our current president. I’ve little-to-no issue with the Afghanistan invasion, but the Iraq invasion was, is, and will continue to be a debacle and some here are starting to prep the foundation for a repeat in Iran (I sure hope the American people have learned better). I fully understand gamemanship. I know (or better to say I am pretty sure) that both sides of the cold war brought nuclear submarines inside local waters, and both sides used any number of means of surveillance. My issue is that the first aggressive manuever is putting war ships in international waters right outside someones borders. Sure, the Iranians actions were provocative, but it could also be seen as reactionary provocation. The U.S. needs to learn that being a bully and sending our warships out is the first provocation, and not to piss and moan when someone reacts. Just because you are allowed to put your ships anywhere in international waters that you like doesn’t mean that you should, nor that those nearby should not react. (The article I read this morning did not say what types of ships were buzzed by the Iranians - it just said that the Iranians retreated when the U.S. ship started to target the Iranians. Were these really warships, or just armed ships?)
For the record, I don’t view the military, as a whole, as aggressive. They simply carry out the will of the CiC, and our current CiC is being aggressive towards the country these ships were near. President Bush also gets bonus points for already having invaded one sovereign nation (I hesitate to call Afghanistan as it was in 2001 a sovereign nation, but if you believe it was, consider it 2 sovereign nations invaded).
Oh I’m solidy in the “nothing whatsoever” camp. If for no other reason, than that the North Vietnamese were in no hurry to win their civil war, much less escalate it.
Communist dictatorships thrive on outside adversity, they just don’t want too much of it at once.
What the GoT incident proves (to me), as well as the Battle of Corlonel being lost to the Royal Navy due to Churchill’s micro-managing it via wireless from London, along with more examples I could recall; and is confirmed by this Iranian incident is that captains who are allowed to exercise independent judgement usually do the right thing, but when they have the weight of their governments on their backs they usually screw it up.
“Nothing whatsoever” would be an almost deliberate misreading of the evidence, even if we stipulate that the Johnson Administration overreacted to events at the time and lied about their scope.
Isn’t anyone else just happy that this was resolved with no shots fired? Considering the level of nutcasery that the Iranian ships showed, this is the best possible reaction we could have made, and with no loss of life. If Bush is bright enough to spin this as us being levelheaded instead of calling the Iranians names, we could come out ahead.
From your lips to the Ears…
I’m curious: how do you think blowing these ships out of the water would have helped our country? On the one hand, I agree that the Iranians were trying to provoke us and should not have been surprised if we did sink a boat or two. On the other hand, how would us taking that action been good for the USA and what would be the long term consequences of the action?
It seems to me that the people calling the shots these days are of the same mindset you are. Lets “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran” (Sing it to the tune of the Beach Boys) for their posturing and aggression. Hell, we’re America damn it, we need to put those dirty Islams in their place! Never mind that invading Iraq will eventually cost us more than 1,500,000,000,000 dollars and probably leave us in a worse place that when we started (with a worn down Army & National Guard / Instability and distrust in the ME / strained relations with our nominal allies / weakened public support for funding our military / and a deep partisan divide in our country an government). Never mind that our status as an economic and military superpower will shortly be seriously challenged by a rising China. Never mind that our infra-structure is seriously being short changed while we engage in nation building. Never mind that the twin bogey men of Climate change and Peak Oil could seriously affect our economy and nothing is being done to hedge our bets. Never mind that the public safety nets of Medicare and social security will soon be unworkable and bankrupt. Hell, let’s forget all the domestic problems we have and start a war on a new front!
Never mind that for all of this, the regime in Tehran is facing worse pressures, and still engages in provocative bullshit like this.
Perhaps blowing the ships out of the water wouldn’t have helped our country, but I fail to see how threatening our navy helps theirs.
So let’s call a spade a spade for once - hell, let’s call it a shit shovel. There is no way that this was a peaceful act. It is another in a long line of provocative actions by a regime irrationally hostile to us. And yet there will be some voices that insist that we should talk and deal with the Iranians while they engage in such actions.
Perhaps we should, but those talks must immediately deal with incidents like this and make clear that we will not stand for them. No new business should be discussed until that is satisfied. I think we all can agree that we value the safety of our sailors and the freedom of navigation too much to allow the Iranian Navy to threaten either.
I’m sorry, every one here seems to be using restraint, but come on!
wolf_meister, nothing personal, but fuck you!
I am so sick and tired of people shouting “remember 9/11” as an excuse to just shoot first and ask questions later. How the hell can you look at a situation that can be summed up as “Iranian boats attempt to intimidate US Navy and/or try to get the US Navy to fire on them, but Naval officers don’t take the bait; no one was killed or injured,” and then insist that it was handled wrongly, based on a freakin’ news article?
Really, if the officers on ship didn’t feel it necessary to blow the Iranians out of the water, how do you feel your judgment of the situation is more appropriate?
Agreed.
Not this voice (though I don’t think you were obliquely referencing my earlier posts. IMO, we need some way to disentangle from all the ME BS ASAP. (as a navy man, I hope you appreciate the acronyms) The region is so incredibly fucked up, thanks to the U.S., Western Europe, and the former Soviet Union, and I can see no way for us to fix it (especially with the heavy-handed tactics we - the U.S. - tend to use.)
I know this is incredibly simplistic. The area is rife with petty dictators rich with oil money (and we call some of them allies :rolleyes: ), proximity to nukes potentially for sale from the Soviet Union, and a hard-on against the United States. But let us be honest with ourselves - what we’ve been doing has not been working.
By golly, the next time the Iranians fire a provocative and hostile radio message, we should immediately respond with a “Sez who?” on all frequencies! However, I would insist that a “Yo Mamma!” not be deployed without direct CinC authorization.
You know something? I’m going to see my brother in a few weeks. He’s a former sub sailor who has his expeditionary medal for service in the Persian Gulf.
He isn’t a coward, trust me.
I’ll ask him what he would have thought if he was on station and saw Iranian boats behaving in this way. I’ll bet his reaction would be a bit different than yours.
I’ve seen memorials to the sailors that died on both the USS Stark and the USS Cole. I’ve served on ships that went to the same areas - my shipmates deployed there and it is only an accident of my EAOS that prevented me from going there myself. And like I said, my brother sailed these waters.
Frankly, your post is a little bit offensive to me. It doesn’t seem to recognize the real danger involved here, both in an attack on our sailors and in a tragic reaction by our navy to an unreasonable provocation. And while I understand your need to have fun on these boards, a little recognition of these things I mentioned might be in order.
Seventeen sailors died aboard the USS Cole when a boat came up to it and exploded - since then, the Navy has been far more careful about boat attacks. The Iranians know this and may have been testing how far a destroyer could be pressed before responding.
That’s no joke.
Really? You’ve managed to up your percentage that much? That’s great 'luci!
…er. Oh…you meant ME? Well, I won’t call you kettle if you don’t call me black…how’s that?
-XT
I had quite a rowdy time in Valparaiso myself, but that was more than a century later.
Its not so much the sarcasm, XT, its that you’re not very good at it. A bit like being savagely mauled by a gerbil.
So what was in the boxes?
I bow to your superiority at both sarcasm and content free posts 'luci. You ARE the master.
And instead of being savaged by a gerbil your attacks are more like being smothered by very large and paisley colored pillows.
-XT
Unknown right now, but the boats dropped them right in front of our ships and forced us to evade them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were recovered, but examining them might take a while.
I seriously doubt the Navy got close enough to investigate…just on the off chance they would blow up. Probably nothing at all…it was just calculated to fuck with the Navy is my guess.
-XT
While I’d like to say an IED strapped to a member of the Iranian Olympic Swim Team, if you’ll remember recent claims were much more ominous. What those idiots did goes way beyond reckless.