Brian M Downing
Military thinkers have long stressed the importance of deception. Hiding troop movements, disguising weaknesses, and faking retreats have all been part of warfare since Sun Tzu wrote twenty-five centuries ago. Eisenhower pretended to have an entire army waiting to invade the Pas de Calais. He even placed George Patton in charge of it. Westmoreland knew the Tet Offensive was coming but its strength and objectives eluded him.
Deception takes place before conflicts even begin. Leaders make false claims and rig events to justify wars they’ve long had in mind. Sometimes this is judicious, other times foolhardy and even disastrous. Something’s up in the Persian Gulf these days.
The Past
America’s entry into World War One was based in part on Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare but also on claims of German atrocities in occupied lands. Babies and nuns were said to have been massacred by the Kaiser’s hun-like legions. It wasn’t true. Tragically, those claims led to skepticism regarding Nazi concentration camps during the next war. Even Justice Felix Frankfurter dismissed the reports.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, FDR faced public and congressional opposition to another European war. He nonetheless determined to help Britain against the Third Reich by lending warships and escorting convoys. In time, the navy began helping British counterparts find and engage German subs, which led to attacks on US ships such as the Greer and Reuben James.
FDR, we now know, was raising the stakes in order to lead the nation into war against the Third Reich. As noted, some deceptions are more judicious than others. Hitler obliged him with a declaration of war shortly after December 7th.
The best known deception might be the Gulf of Tonkin Incident (1964). The Johnson administration claimed N Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked US ships on two occasions. A fuller account was unknown until the Pentagon Papers came out seven years into war. The US destroyer that was attacked had violated N Vietnamese territorial waters and wasn’t far from a S Vietnamese commando raid. The alleged second attack two nights later never happened. Retaliation soon followed. So did escalation.
Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait led to a powerful international response that expelled Iraq. The build-up was helped by claims of atrocities. Iraqi troops were said to have pulled Kuwaiti babies from incubators. After the war, the claims were placed at the feet of a public relations firm in the employ of Kuwait’s royal family which had fled to safety abroad.
Twelve years later, Bush the Younger responded to the 9/11 attacks by invading Iraq. Intelligence was cherry-picked and doctored to indicate Saddam had a secret WMD program and ties to al Qaeda. Congress and the public lined up for war. The region has been even more unstable and violent ever since.
The present
Last week, the US asserted that Iran is poised to strike US troops in Iraq. A carrier group and bomber squadron were dispatched to the Gulf. This week, Saudi ships and oil facilities have been struck. Blame is being attached to Iran and its Houthi allies.
Past deceptions do not prove that recent events in the Gulf are also spurious. They do, however, suggest that things aren’t always as they appear and that states use dishonest measures to achieve goals. Few confer saintly status upon the crown prince in Riyadh and his regional counterparts.
Iran might indeed be responsible for the attacks on Saudi oil assets. Its Quds Force is practiced in explosives and clandestine ops. Remember the bombings of the American embassy and marine barracks in Beirut in the eighties. Tehran may calculate that the recent attacks will raise oil prices, alarm countries in Europe and East Asia, and encourage them to press all sides for calm.
Suspicion will readily fall on the CIA. Maybe too readily. It might be capable of such operations but keeping it secret would be more difficult. Langley is deeply suspicious of Trump’s ties to foreign powers and his ability to act in the national interest. It’s also still smarting over the manipulated intelligence that led to the 2003 Iraq war.
The Saudis and their regional allies might have been trying to make a case for attacking Iran. That is, for the US attacking Iran. They may have planted a false flag in the hopes of getting the US to salute it and march off to war again. The Sunni states may also realize that Trump might not be president for long and that his successor might not share his temperament, inexperience, and animosity toward Iran.
Throughout the 2016 election campaign, Trump echoed Neoconservative talking points on Iran’s support for terrorism, expansionism in the region, and continuing nuclear weapons program. As president, he’s accused Iran of violating the JCPOA – a view not supported by the CIA or other parts of the intelligence community.
Trump has shuffled personnel in his foreign policy team, dismissing cautious figures, many of them generals, and replacing them with team players. Some reports indicate that newcomer John Bolton is even more hawkish than the President.
In the absence of solid information on what happened in the Gulf, we might wonder if it was part of a pattern of deceptions that will lead to a war unrelated to our national interests. And remember the Maine. Only many years after the war did we learn that Spain had nothing to do with it.
© 2019 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.