All that bluster for carrying out an assassination? If
you had not been following the news lately, and you happened to read
Lingamfelter's article, you'd think he was talking about a creature of the
Rambo Americanus genus who single-handedly braved a hundred enemy soldiers,
forced his way behind their defense line and went on to assassinate their
God-like monarch with a silver bullet shot from his golden gun.
Well, if you want to know who is telling this story,
his full name is L. Scott Lingamfelter, and his work came under the title:
“Iran provoking the United States will summon the full range of US military
might,” published on January 14, 2020 in The Washington Times. If on top of that,
you're curious as to what Lingamfelter has been blabbering about, here is a
condensed version of what he foamed at the mouth:
“The president has isolated Iran's leaders
and brought them to their knees. Mr. Trump has demonstrated willingness to
employ the full range of US national power, as witnessed in his strike against
Soleimani. The president's application of this doctrine and strategy refutes
the rhetoric he has no strategy in Iran. In fact, his strategy is working. The
Iranian regime is crumbling. If war erupts, Iran's fate will be quickly sealed.
The Iranian military is ill-equipped. It depends on mercenary militia forces.
These surrogates are badly squeezed by US sanctions. The result? Neither Iran
nor its surrogates can win a conventional war. Iran is fortunate that its Jan.
8, 2020, missile attack resulted in no American deaths. The US response would
have been cataclysmic for an Iran that should understand provoking the US will
result in devastating target hits”.
Given that Lingamfelter is a military man, and that he
should know what he's talking about, the question to ask is this: Why does
someone with his credentials, and having served in combat, put himself in a
situation that could very quickly prove him a fool? Think about it, he says that
neither Iran nor its surrogates can win a conventional war against the United
States. Granted.
But neither can the United States win a war going
against any power that is larger than say, an impoverished Third World village,
as witnessed by America's miserable performance in every war it got into since
the Second World War. Be honest now: Was Korea a success? How about Vietnam? Or
the invasion of Iraq? Or Afghanistan? Does Lingamfelter believe that Iran will
be a cakewalk for an America that's used to failures?
And so, to respond to the question that was asked
earlier, we must recognize that only one answer will make sense as to what has
motivated Scott Lingamfelter to write what he did. It is this: As combat
veteran, he must have fought in one of those losing wars, has tasted the
bitterness of defeat, has gone home with his tail between his legs, and is now
engaged in a virtual fight against a ghost enemy, knowing that he'll experience
the exhilaration of being shot at without result. This fantasy makes him feel
like a Winston Churchill.
And that's also the problem with all those retired
generals, colonels and captains whose names did not ring glorious hymns upon
their return home … such as the name of George Patton or Dwight Eisenhower, for
example. Now, after these many years, and getting on with age, the former
soldiers are overtaken by both sadness and nostalgia. They look back at moments
in time when they were doing what soldiers were supposed to do, but they also
think of the battles they did not fight as well as those they fought and lost.
They wish they could go back in time and have a chance
to re-fight those battles. However, unable to do so, they talk big about
battles they say will take place in the future. These are battles of their
imagination in which they score for America the winnings they failed to deliver
when they had the chance to do it.
And this explains what Lingamfelter is blabbering
about while at the same time counting on both America and Iran to be so wise as
to avoid getting into a full-fledged war. His thinking is that without a
serious war actually taking place, his description of it will not be tested,
and this means he will not be humiliated again.
Though harmless on its face, an undertaking of this
kind still has a destructive side. It is that people of all ages and
professions get to read it. Can you blame a teenager that reads it thinking the
next war will be a cakewalk, and be motivated to enlist, not to defend the
country, but to have fun?
That's what some teenagers will think. But what do you
suppose their parents will think when they return home –– not to tell glorious
war stories –– but return in body bags for the parents to do the most dreaded
thing a parent can do: bury their child?