MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. — Our Fox News crew is here wrapping up our 100th "War Stories" documentary — with some of the "stars" of previous episodes. Though most of the Marines here are recent veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, their present focus is on the next trouble spots. Thanks to inept national security planning in Washington, there are more vulnerabilities today than there were just three years ago. At the top of the list: Iran.
Few of the young Marines we meet here are old enough to remember what happened to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran 32 years ago this month. But the "old guys" do. That's why senior officers and noncommissioned officers here had a déjà vu moment when images of Iranian "students" sacking the British Embassy in Tehran flashed around the world this week.
Iranian regime officials, the ayatollahs' propaganda organs and most of the Western media described the perpetrators as students. But those who stormed and trashed the British diplomatic mission weren't really scholars at all — unless matriculating in mayhem, mass intimidation and murder is considered a legitimate academic pursuit in today's Iran. According to expatriate Iranians with whom I have spoken, the entire event was planned and carried out by members of the Basij militia — the "civilian auxiliary" of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
These aren't students. They are Islamist thugs supported and directed by the regime in Tehran. In 2009, they were the primary mechanism for brutally suppressing popular discontent after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected to the presidency after widespread voting irregularities. Then, Western media outlets were barred from covering the massive street protests. Visual documentation of the confrontations — as with those taking place in Syria today — was generally limited to what could be captured by protesters using cellphones, small hand-held cameras and social media outlets.
That's not what happened at the British Embassy in Tehran this week. Iran's state-controlled television network cameras and reporters arrived before the so-called students and their government handlers began shouting "Death to Britain." Government security personnel and police — responsible for providing security for diplomatic facilities — initially did nothing to prevent waves of berserkers from breaking in to the compound, smashing their way into buildings, dumping documents from broken windows and burning a diplomat's vehicle.
It was only after the interlopers seized six British diplomats inside the embassy that the police intervened.
Though the six Britons were released within six hours, the reaction in London was immediate. After withdrawing all remaining official government personnel from Iran, Prime Minister David Cameron expelled every Iranian diplomat — giving them just 48 hours to vacate British soil. Washington's response was, well, flaccid. Our president, apparently speaking without the aid of a teleprompter, made the unusual demand that the Iranian regime should "hold those responsible to task." Whatever that means.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at an international aid conference in Seoul, South Korea, carried the tough talk even further. She described the invasion of the British Embassy as an "affront" and condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms."
Meaningless words such as those have become the Obama administration's default position for a string of egregious acts committed by the theocrats in Tehran over the past three years. The O-Team's limp reaction to the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report showing significant advances in Iran's nuclear weapons program was so tepid that Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Senate are actually working together to toughen unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran's Central Bank.
None of this bodes well for a region of the world where U.S. influence and presence diminishes every day. There are now fewer than 12,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq — and all of them are due to be out by the end of the year.
That's why the Marines here are constantly asking questions that begin with the words "What if." Thinking ahead is a hallmark for members of our armed forces. No one in uniform wants to be assailed for preparing to re-fight the "last war." But it's difficult to be ready for the next fight when all of our military services are facing potentially catastrophic budget cuts.
None of the Marines we spoke with at this "Crossroads of the Marine Corps" is predicting they will have to fight a ground war in Iran. But they also know that the theocrats in Tehran are completely unpredictable.
Oliver North is the host of "War Stories" on Fox News Channel, the author of "American Heroes in Special Operations" and the founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance. To find out more about Oliver North and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM
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3 Comments | Post Comment
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Mr. North,
And the magic Ollie North solution to the situation in Iran is? As usual, no ideas, just your usual babble about how the President is doing it all wrong.
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And, of course, that other question still remains. Mr. North, this is now your eleventh column since the end of "Don't ask, Don't tell". (My, how time flies when you are avoiding a topic...) Still no reports of the sky falling from Ollie and his Fox "News" team? Isn't the fact that the most professional military in the world has taken this change in stride something that you are happy to report? Do you have the courage and personal integrity to admit that your dire predictions concerning the end of "don't ask, don't tell" were simply political theater?
Comment: #1
Posted by: Mark
Sat Dec 3, 2011 12:47 AM
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Gutless Mark, you don't even have the courage of your "convictions" to show your whole name. I'm wondering why the hell you bother to read Ollie's columns, since you're obviously an anti-military bleeding-heart liberal, and your only purpose is to attack and ask gotcha questionsl Talk about a lack of integrity. I'd bet that you're one of those misguided occupiers, a loose cannon without anything useful to contribute, you just bitch and gripe and create messy and costly disturbances. It would never occur to you that Ollie and his fellow warriors, including me as a 30-year man, defend your right to make strupid remarks and to engage in irresponsible silliness in general.You and your selfish wastrels who expect everything given to them are what's wrong with the country, pampered babies who would have been CO draft-dodgers and escapees to Canada back in the 70s. Lucky you. You wouldn't know what it's like actually to serve your country.
As far as the DA-DT issue is concerned, the other shoe hasn't fallen. I complained years ago that abandoning DA-DT would require a huge addition to military infrastructure, specifically segregated living, shower, and toilet facilities, since it creates two new sexes: queer males and queer females. For straight people showering with same-sex queer people is tantamount to men and women showering together, and don't the queers love that! Trust me, there is trouble ahead, and the military is just like other government bureaucracies and is able to conceal certain embarrassing difficulties "for good order and discipline;" e.g., you have no idea how many queers have been kicked out of the military, thousands actually. You're probably a drug-addicted queer yourself from San Francisco, and you wouldn't even qualify for a military position, physically or mentally, not even for permanent KP. You might have been one of the many who spat upon us returning Viet vets. Get a life, you maggot! Proudly signed, retired AF colonel. P.S.: I hope we never have your misfortune of our crossing paths, you (expletive).
Comment: #2
Posted by: Derel Schrock
Sat Dec 3, 2011 11:06 AM
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Wow. Quite the tantrum, Mr. Schrock. I must be doing something right. Where to start? The foolishness of the little man from Texas and his blind supporters such as Mr. North have nearly bankrupted our nation. At least 2 trillion dollars, the lives of more than 4,400 of our finest, thousands more wounded, as well as tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths (some estimates go as high as 1.4 million) have been the result of the foolish war of choice in Iraq. Do we now have a strong ally in Iraq or did we simply remove Iran's biggest problem? Entering the war in Iraq was one of the greatest military blunders in our nation's history and fools like Mr. North supported it all the way. The time to prevent a bigger blunder with Iran is now.
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Mr. North's great insight currently seems to be little more than saying that whatever the Obama administration does, it must be wrong. Obama, according to several of Mr. North's columns, is all wrong about Iran. Easy for Mr. North to say, but somehow he never shares his deep vision into what President Obama should be doing. I do not claim to have the answers for this one. Bombing Iran, as the Israelis seem to want us to do, would do little more than delay the Iranian efforts a year or two. It would also unite the nation against us and behind its government. Invading Iran would bankrupt us. The efforts at sanctions may be, realistically, about as good as it gets. Not every problem has a military solution. When Mr. North babbles about how wrong Obama's policies are, and yet offers no alternative coarse of action, it is fair game to point that out. When he offers an alternative course of action that has obvious flaws, I believe that it is also worthwhile to point out the flaws. From such public discussion real ideas may emerge. I read Mr. North's column in the hope that he may yet offer some useful ideas. If you only read people you agree with you will have a very limited view of the world.
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The nation is still waiting for the other shoe to drop on the racial integration of the military. Bigots predicted a calamity from that change also. Mr. North predicted the loss of up to 20% of the armed forces refusing to re-enlist due to the end of don't ask, don't tell. I'm sure that the numbers must be clear by now. Are tens of thousands of our finest refusing to re-up? Are requiters having sudden problems meeting their requirement goals? No. The finest and most professional military in the world has made the transition to the modern era, as has every other western military. I'm sure that if the military was busy building millions of dollars worth of special facilities for gay service members, as you suggest will happen, Mr. North and his Fox "News" team would be all over it. Funny, 11 columns (and counting) and no reports of the other shoe.
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I choose to limit my discussions concerning Creators columns to the comments sections of the columns. Your angry, bigoted rant, concluding with a not-so-subtle personal threat has confirmed the wisdom of that decision.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Mark
Sun Dec 4, 2011 11:25 PM
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