by Bill Bonner
President John F. Kennedy and Air Force General Curtis Lemay, April 1962, Source: Getty Images
The big news came this morning. Huffington Post:
Donald Trump has announced a ceasefire between Israel between Iran is “now in effect” after days of intense bombardments.
It comes after the US waded into the regional conflict, siding with Israel by launching strikes on Iran’s three nuclear facilities on Saturday.
The US president wrote on Truth Social at 6:08 BST… “THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!”
But wait…
Minutes later… was this fake news? The Tehran Times:
Iran has not agreed to a ceasefire. Trump is lying again
The president appears to be making up a new lie to force the Iranian government into accepting a ceasefire, believing that the move could pit the Iranian people against the officials and create domestic dissent.
How much of this war is real? How much is fake?
The US attack came while the two sides were in active – but apparently fake – negotiations.
Then, sources claim the Iranians were warned of the incoming US bombers (if there were any). They say the Iranians were given time to move people and valuable research supplies out of the target area.
Iran returned the favor – intentionally not hitting the US base in Qatar – in its counterattack.
And now…a fake ceasefire?
Bunkers busted…people killed…tempers running hot; what was the point?
There are only two ways forward…either peace or war. Either you stick to negotiation, courts, laws, rules, customs…and the common, vernacular decency of civilized people.
Or, you bomb the hell out of them.
Everybody has his reasons. Ask a murderer why he killed; he’ll have a perfectly sound reason: “He was messing with my girl,” for example. Liars tell their tall tales for a purpose. And every thief needs the money…even if only to prove he can get it.
Russia says it is trying to protect the Russian speaking population of Ukraine…is that a good reason?
The US invaded Iraq because it said it was ‘fighting terrorism’ or ‘nation building.’ (Cynics said it was just protecting its cheap oil…or providing profits to the firepower industry.) Which of those were good reasons?
But even good reasons are often misunderstood.
In 1965, President Johnson launched Operation Rolling Thunder. The objective, nicely summed up by General Curtis LeMay, was to ‘bomb them [North Vietnam] back to the stone age.’
At the time, North Vietnam was seen as the major sponsor of communist aggression in South Vietnam. Operation Rolling Thunder was intended to raise the stakes…force the North Vietnamese to drop out…and thereby protect the South from communism. Was that a good reason?
Long after the war was over, an historic meeting was held in Hanoi. Former US Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, then 79, met with Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, 83. The purpose: to try to understand ‘what went wrong.’
“Didn’t you understand? When we bombed Hanoi; we were trying to send you a message.”
“I guess we didn’t understand that,” replied Giap. “We thought you were just trying to kill us.”
Later, in a press conference back in the US, Mr. McNamara did one of the classiest things ever done by a US public official. With tears in his eyes, he said he was sorry.
Some reasons are better than others. Mr. Trump has bombed Iran because, he says, “they can’t have nuclear weapons.” Senator James Lankford says we need to protect the thousands of American citizens who live in Israel.
And Senator Lindsey Graham says we were “fighting for our freedom.”
None of those ‘reasons’ have the ethereal majesty of ‘making the world safe for democracy’ in 1917 or the visual simplicity of blocking the ‘domino effect’ in Vietnam.
Probably, it was Rep. Pat Harrigan, channeling Curtis LeMay, who came up with the best reason to bomb Iran. He said we needed to turn up the heat on the Iranians, “in order to lower it.”
Or as Donald Trump himself put it. Yes, we punched you in the nose. But… “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE.”
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