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[Adventurer]

Published on Thursday, March 29, 2007 by The Star Tribune (Minnesota)
Better That Iranians Didn�t Go After Yanks

A Similar Attack on Americans Could Have Led to Casualties and an Excuse For Bush to Bomb Iran.

by Gwynne Dyer
�I don�t want to second-guess the British after the fact,� said U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Erik Horner, �but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team�s training is a little bit more towards self-preservation.� Does that mean that one of his American boarding teams would have opened fire if it had been them in the two inflatable boats that were surrounded by Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast patrol boats off the coast of Iraq last Friday? �Agreed. Yes.�Just as well that it was a British boarding team, then. The 15 British sailors and marines who were captured and taken to Tehran for �questioning� last week are undoubtedly having an unpleasant time, but they are alive, and Britain is only involved in two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it had been one of Erik Horner�s boarding teams, they would all be dead, and the United States and Iran would now be at war.

Horner is the executive officer of the USS Underwood, the American frigate that works together with HMS Cornwall, the British ship that the captive boarding party came from. Interviewed after the incident by Terri Judd of the Independent, the only British print journalist on HMS Cornwall, he was obviously struggling to be polite about the gutless Brits, but he wasn�t having much success.

�The U.S. Navy rules of engagement say we have not only a right to self-defense but also an obligation to self-defense,� Horner explained. �[The British] had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, �Why didn�t your guys defend themselves?� �

It�s a cultural thing, at bottom. Britain has a long history of fighting wars and taking casualties, but the combat doctrines are less hairy-chested. British rules of engagement �are very much de-escalatory, because we don�t want wars starting,� explained Admiral Sir Alan West, former First Sea Lord. �Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back, and that, of course, is why our chaps were � able to be captured and taken away.�

That emollient British approach is probably why the Iranian Revolutionary Guard chose to grab British troops rather than Americans. It was obviously a snatch operation: the Iranians would not normally have half a dozen attack boats ready to go even if some �coalition� boat checking Iraq-bound ships for contraband did stray across the invisible dividing line into Iranian waters (which the British insist they didn�t).

A quite similar snatch operation against the equally belligerent Israelis last July led to a monthlong Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon and a retaliatory hail of Hezbollah rockets on northern Israeli cities. Well over 1,000 people were dead by the end, although nothing was settled.

Any day now, a minor clash along Iraq�s land or sea frontier with Iran could kill some American troops and give President Bush an excuse to attack Iran, if he wants one � and he certainly seems to. If the Revolutionary Guards had got it wrong on Friday and attacked an American boarding party by mistake, he would have his excuse now, and bombs might already be falling on Iran. All the pieces are in place, and the war could start at any time.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/29/178/

[Gopher]

Might have provided the W. Bush Administration "an excuse" to attack Iran?

At what point do people/antiwar critics recognize that actual provocations indeed occur and call for responses...?

[jinju]

If Iran did take Americans then its not an excuse to start a war, its 100% a justification to do so. And I really do hope the Iranians are dumb enough to provoke a war with the US. Iran a country that has no right to exist in its present form.

[freethought]

I easily could have missed something in the news, but I've yet to see any direct evidence contradicting the Iranian claim that the British ship had violated (intentionally or otherwise) Iranian waters. If it's a ship that has been in dock in the last 10, or even 17 years, it has a GPS system and the data could be released.

More importantly, what I find disturbing is the willingness in the two post above this one to go to war. War is not a something to be entered lightly, and the lives of a dozen men, aren't worth the deaths of hundreds if not thousands more American lives, yet alone the thousands upon thousands of Iranian lives that would be lost.

If it's an issue of american prestige that's at stake, may I say that in the grand scheme of things American opinion can't get much lower, and I would even argue that by not going to war, by showing restraint in this hypothetical situation, then they might actually increase their standing in the world.

[Gopher]

[jinju]

[freethought]

[freethought]

[jinju]

[Octavius Hite]

Yeah Jinju, we got ya, you and Dr. Strangelove must make a wonderful couple.

[wannago]

[jinju]

[Octavius Hite]

[wannago]

[jinju]

Why do I get the feeling that you think Hitler was justified in attacking Poland. eh, Hite?