Who Should We Believe? : Faisal Shahzad, and the Gulf of Tonkin

Gulf of Tonkin incident, off the coast of North Vietnam, August 2, 1964. Illustration by E.J. Fitzgerald (1980) / U.S. Navy Historical Center / Wikimedia Commons.
Who should we believe?
How foreign policy lies lead to war

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / May 10, 2010

Should we believe 'intelligence officials'? 'Western diplomats'? 'A senior intelligence official'? 'A senior military official'? Or 'the official who would speak of the investigation only on condition of anonymity'?

I was reading The New York Times accounts, Friday, May 7, of the ongoing investigation of the attempted Times Square bombing by suspect Faisal Shahzad. I was intrigued by a variety of stories that turned speculation by various anonymous informed sources into complex analyses of Shahzad’s international connections, the transformation of the Taliban from a political force in Afghanistan to one also in Pakistan, the emergence of a variety of other Islamic dissident groups in Pakistan and their connections with Taliban and perhaps Al Queda.

The lead in the front page story on May 7 headlined “Pakistani Taliban Are Said to Expand Alliances” stimulated my curiosity:

The Pakistani Taliban, which American investigators suspect were behind the attempt to bomb Times Square, have in recent years combined forces with Al Qaeda and other groups, threatening to extend their reach and ambitions, Western diplomats, intelligence officials and experts say.

The story indicates that the Pakistani Taliban have reached out to other militant groups, “splinter cells” (which sounds really scary), “foot soldiers,” and guns-for-hire.” The article continues with elaborations of nefarious early connections between the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Qaeda, and increasing numbers of Pakistani Punjabi militants.

Faisal Shahzad may have received bomb training from one of these groups, a claim reiterated in another article quoting a senior military official who was not authorized to speak in public. The article reported that the leader of the Pakistani Taliban said that “the group had suicide bombers in the United States, who, he said would carry out their mission at an opportune time” while denying complicity in the Times Square bombing attempt.

Reading these stories and viewing a variety of claims about the causes and connections of the failed bombing reminded me of a short essay I wrote for an interesting volume of writings and graphic design images edited by Rebecca Targ titled “Lying,” in Fold: the Reader. I wrote:

Foreign policy lies lead to war

On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese armed motor boats attacked two U.S. naval vessels off the coast of North Vietnam. The administration of Lyndon Johnson defined the attacks as an unprovoked act of North Vietnamese aggression. Two days later it was announced that another attack on U.S. ships in international waters had occurred and the U.S. responded with air attacks on North Vietnamese targets.

President Johnson then took a resolution he had already prepared to the Congress of the United States. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin resolution declared that the Congress authorizes the president to do what he deemed necessary to defend U.S. national security in Southeast Asia. Only two Senators voted “no.” Over the next three years the U.S. sent over 500,000 troops to Vietnam to carry out a massive air and ground war in both the South and North of the country.

Within a year of the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incidents, evidence began to appear indicating that the August 2 attack was provoked. The two U.S. naval vessels were in North Vietnamese coastal waters orchestrating acts of sabotage in the Northern part of Vietnam. More serious, evidence pointed to the inescapable conclusion that the second attack on August 4 never occurred.

President Johnson’s lies to the American people about the Gulf of Tonkin contributed to the devastating decisions to escalate a U.S. war in Vietnam that cost 57,000 U.S. troop deaths and upwards of three million Vietnamese deaths.

Forty years later, George W. Bush and his key aides put together a package of lies about Iraq imports of uranium from Niger, purchases of aluminum rods which supposedly could be used for constructing nuclear weapons, development of biological and chemical weapons, and connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

As the Vietnamese and Iraqi cases show, foreign policies built on lies can lead to imperial wars, huge expenditures on the military, economic crises at home, and military casualties abroad.

Are there any lessons to learn from the Vietnam and Iraqi cases sited above? I think so.

Two of the most damaging, indeed murderous, foreign policies of the United States were built on lies.

The record indicates that key policy-makers in both the Vietnam and Iraq eras made decisions with almost no knowledge of the political cultures of the two countries. In the Vietnam era not more than a handful of Americans had knowledge of the Vietnamese language or history.

In both cases, foreign policy decisions were shaped by frames of reference, or ideologies, that bore little or no relationship to the political reality in the countries targeted for war. The frame shaping Vietnam was the war on international communism; for Iraq it was the war on terrorism.

In both cases, decisions were made based on recommendations of parties interested in war, from Pentagon officials, to military contractors and arms merchants, to academic and think tank “experts,” to media outlets with stories to create, to journalists seeking to establish their careers, to liberal and conservative politicians seeking issues to shape their own quests for power.

Returning to the Times Square incident, we may never learn the truth. But we can assume with confidence that military, economic, academic, and journalistic interests will promote a scenario of a Pakistani Taliban/Al Queda connection to the failed adventure in New York. And we can expect that all these interests will promote the idea that such attacks, perhaps successful next time, can occur anyplace in the United States. We must live in terror of the terrorists.

Finally, we can be sure that “the cure” for perpetual terrorism will not include economic development, a just and humane U.S. foreign policy, ending drone attacks on Pakistani citizens, and stopping the demonization of peoples of color, in this case, those who embrace the Muslim religion.

[Harry Tarq is a professor in American Studies who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical.]

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Budd Saunders : Luck, and Dumb Luck

Sailers in 1946 are shown wearing goggles to shield their eyes from an atomic blast. Dr. Phil Trapp told about how such goggles were expected to protect his World War II Marine flotilla from the effects of a third atomic bomb to be dropped on the beach just ahead of them. Dumb luck saved them. Photo by Bob Landry / Life Magazine.
(And a whole row of 'had's...)
Luck, and dumb luck

By Budd Saunders / The Rag Blog / May 8, 2010

DURHAM, Arkansas -- I ran across a note that had been lost for some time and I want to share its content. The note has nothing to do with politics, war, or anything but English grammar. It is a sentence that contains 11 "had"s in a row, and it is perfectly correct.

My father-in-law wrote it out years ago. My wife Nancy's father is George Armitage Miller, one of the outstanding intellects of the 20th century. Words and communication were his life. Whatever else the sentence is, it is interesting: "John, where Bill had had 'had', had had 'had had'; 'had had' had had the teacher's approval."

When George visited us years ago, Nancy mentioned several things so I would notice them. When her father was sitting in a chair with his head nodding, he wasn't asleep, he was thinking. He would take out a small notebook from his pocket and write in it. I was told not to ask what he was writing because I wouldn't understand it. It was to himself. When he would later communicate, you would understand, like WordNet 2.1. You can find it with your computer and download it. It's free and very useful.

There have been another two disasters and a near disaster recently affecting our country. The oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, Nashville under water, and a car bomb in Times Square. We watched CNN for news on these disasters.

Actually, I rather think the real disaster in the bomb scene was the character who built the "bomb." Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American, had it all worked out. He had placed a vehicle where an explosion would have caused destruction of property and many casualties. His explosives were amateurish at best. But he had transportation to JFK International Airport.

There was an announcement by some government agency representative extolling the various groups involved and how alert they were. Homeland Security had all of the bus stations at the Port Authority covered, but at JFK, Shahzad got through security. That pretty much put the wraps on those characters as the heroes in this made-for-TV drama in which, just as the villain is about to escape, somebody notices that he is on a plane. I can hear the dramatic music build, until the plane is called back to the gate. I suppose it was TSA who went on board and trundled Mr. Shahzad off to be interrogated.

Then the story changed. It seems he only got through security once and hadn't been on the plane after all. The plane was called back because there were "suspected accomplices" on board. I suppose they looked Middle Eastern, which is racial profiling and only permitted in Arizona.

As I have continued watching and listening to the news I have come to a conclusion. It seems that all of the agencies involved were working together. That's good. But it's not so much that they were smarter than the bomber, as that they were very lucky. This guy was just plain dumb.

Luck reminded me of something a friend of ours wrote and I dug it out of one of the many piles of papers around the house. Dr. Phil Trapp is Emeritus Professor of Psychology from the University of Arkansas. He wrote a letter to the Northwest Arkansas Times in 2007 in which he gave some examples of "dumb luck."

In World War II he commanded a flotilla of landing craft destined to invade Japan. They were to invade right after a third Atomic Bomb was "dropped on the beach just ahead of" them. They were to wear goggles to protect them from the "brilliant light" of the bomb. Nobody back then knew about radiation fallout. Fortunately Japan surrendered before the invasion.

Another example he gives of "dumb luck" is the chlorine compound in aerosols and car air conditioners being discontinued before the ozone layer was completely destroyed. Professor Trapp also commanded Marine landing craft at Red Beach on Iwo Jima Island. He survived. And that was really luck.

We can't count on luck, but we can remember (if our attention spans aren't too short) the words of the man who alerted police to the suspicious SUV in Times Square. He was a street vendor and disabled Vietnam War veteran who sold T-shirts. When asked what he had to say about the event, he replied, "If you see something, say something." He saw something different and said something for sure. He told a police officer and thus the comedy began. In the classical sense, comedies all have happy endings. This one did. And a clown for the central character.

Question authority. It's the American way.

[Budd Saunders is a Vietnam veteran who lives in Arkansas and writes a regular column for the Durham Dispatch.]

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