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<\/p>\nIn August 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Lyndon Johnson to \u201ctake all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression\u201d by the North Vietnamese.
\nThe resolution, passed at Johnson\u2019s insistence, was inspired by two alleged attacks on American destroyers by North Vietnamese patrol boats, turned out to be only partly true.<\/p>\n
Navy Cmdr. James Stockdale, who was flying recognizance over the Gulf at the time, doubted whether the second attack ever happened: \u201cOur destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets. \u2026 There were no (North Vietnamese) boats there \u2026 nothing there but black water and American firepower.\u201d<\/p>\n
History proved Stockdale correct: The resolution was a deadly fraud perpetrated by Johnson; by 1975, at war\u2019s end, 58,318 American troops, 250,000 South Vietnamese troops, over 1 million Viet Cong and North Vietnamese fighters, and more than 2 million Vietnamese civilians had died.<\/p>\n
Beware.<\/strong><\/p>\n In October 2002, Congress, fueled by false claims that Iraq\u2019s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, authorizing President George W. Bush the use of American force against Iraq.<\/p>\n It, too, was based on manipulated and flawed intelligence assessments.<\/p>\n Donald Trump\u2019s national security adviser, John Bolton, and Israel\u2019s Bibi Netanyahu were two of the leading cheerleaders for that war \u2013 a war that broke the Middle East for generations, awarded Iran hegemony over the Persian Gulf, and precipitated the rise of al-Qaida in Iraq and ISIS.<\/p>\n That war killed almost 4,500 and wounded 32,000 American troops, It killed 100,000 Iraqis and displaced millions. It added $3 trillion to America\u2019s national debt.<\/p>\n Beware.<\/strong><\/p>\n Today, I fear that yet another American president will again manipulate circumstances and the media into believing that an attack is both necessary and imminent, this time on Iran.<\/p>\n Beware.<\/strong><\/p>\n Once known as Persia, Iran\u2019s a proud nation with a history that spans over two millennia. Any attack on its sovereignty and 81 million people will galvanize most Iranians \u2013 regardless of how they might feel about its government \u2013 in solidarity and further destabilize the entire region.<\/p>\n In solidarity, Iranians remember well a 1953 challenge to its sovereignty when America, serving colonial interests, overthrew its democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed the shah.<\/p>\n Beware.<\/strong><\/p>\n Iran controls access to the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow passageway into the Persian Gulf and any disruption there could cause global economic upheaval and a strategic challenge for thousands of American military personnel deployed in the Gulf.<\/p>\n Trump \u2013 fueled by his personal animus of President Barack Obama and opposed to anything Obama accomplished \u2013 by choosing to unilaterally violate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) not only undid one of the most significant arms control agreements of our time but chose to align himself against Iran, in possible military conflict, with the current leaders of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Emirates.<\/p>\n With allies like those, who needs enemies?<\/p>\n Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in support of that agenda, is today trying to convince the world that a strategic alliance exists between Sunni al-Qaida (which took credit for a 2017 attack on Iran\u2019s parliament building and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini\u2019s tomb) and Shia Iran \u2013 a laughable intellectual exercise and contradicted by numerous intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n Beware.<\/strong><\/p>\n For over a decade Bolton has been a well-paid supporter of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MeK), a cultish Iranian terrorist organization that had first opposed the shah. MeK is responsible for the killing of six Americans in Iran, and it enthusiastically supported the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran before changing alliances<\/strong> and opposing the ayatollahs.<\/p>\n Consistent with MeK policy, John Bolton wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2018 that American policy should be regime change and \u201cending Iran\u2019s 1979 Islamic Revolution before its 40th anniversary.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRecognizing a new Iranian regime in 2019,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwould reverse the shame of once seeing our diplomats held hostage for 444 days.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Shame?<\/strong><\/p>\n Shame is to dishonor diplomats. Shame is to put more American troops in harm\u2019s way under false circumstances.<\/p>\n Shame is to deploy Americans to settle personal grievances.<\/p>\n There is much in Iran\u2019s behavior \u2013 particularly its support of Hamas and Hezbollah \u2013 that needs to be confronted and moderated; moderated by negotiation in conjunction with our allies. JCPOA was designed to limit Iran\u2019s nuclear program \u2013 and it worked.<\/p>\n Whatever \u201cmalign\u201d behavior Iran engages in \u2013 whatever suppression of dissent, women\u2019s rights, minorities, artists and homosexuals it engages in \u2013 should certainly be confronted, but not by recklessly placing Americans in harm\u2019s way.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s confrontation with Iran evokes memories of President George W. Bush\u2019s false assertions that al-Qaida had links to Iraq, suggesting even that bin Laden and Saddam Hussein might have cooperated in planning 9\/11.<\/p>\n Bush\u2019s illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq \u2013 a war of choice I vociferously feared and opposed \u2013 predictably fractured the Middle East, exacerbated sectarian tensions and provoked a rise in chaos, violence and terror that continues to this day.<\/p>\n Beware.<\/strong><\/p>\n America is still deeply embedded in Afghanistan and Iraq, still supporting Saudi Arabia\u2019s genocide against Yemen, still failing to hold Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman accountable for the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s America is increasingly distant from its professed values. Today we face, as Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, recently said \u201ca crisis that has entirely been manufactured by the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n This Memorial Day, as America remembers and honors those who have died while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, let us pray and resolve to impress upon our leaders that no life should be sacrificed in vain, no life lost because of the false vanities of leaders, tyrants and autocrats, no crisis created that jeopardizes justice and peace.<\/p>\n (Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.)<\/em><\/p>\n By ROBERT AZZI, For the Monitor, concordmonitor.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In August 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Lyndon Johnson to \u201ctake all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[90,64,20],"module":[81],"ctype":[17],"blog":[109],"class_list":["post-9797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mujahedin-khalq-proxy-force","tag-mujahedin-warmongers","tag-mkos-terrorist-activities","tag-third-view-mek","module-article","ctype-story","blog-western-bloggers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9797"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=9797"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=9797"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=9797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}