Call it by any other Orwellian name you wish to, but the United States and Iran are at war.
It is Donald Trump’s war, started when he ordered the assassination, by a drone missile strike, of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
The assassination pre-empted a NATO-led international campaign in Iraq to crush ISIS.
The U.S.-Iran conflict is not a conventional 20th century war of uniformed armies in the field, but a 21st century asymmetrical war in which the weapons are drones, missiles and bombs, there are no battle lines, and there are more civilian casualties than deaths and woundings of armed forces.
However, it is “the continuation of politics by other means,” as 19th century Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz defined war.
In the fog of this war, on Jan. 8, 138 Toronto-bound university students, professors and their families, including 63 with Canadian citizenship, were killed when Ukrainian Airlines flight PS752, a Boeing 737-800 passenger jet with 176 souls on board, including a crew of nine, crashed.
The airliner was struck by an anti-aircraft missile fired by Iran.
This tragedy is collateral damage of the war between the U.S. and Iran.
On the night the Ukrainian 733-800 exploded in the sky two minutes after takeoff, the Iranians were attacking two U.S. military airfields in Iraq with a dozen ballistic missiles.
The date Jan. 9, 2020 has a parallel in American military history to Aug. 4, 1964, when American destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy fired on fishing boats in the Gulf of Tonkin, claiming that they were North Vietnamese torpedo boats.
President L.B. Johnson used that incident to justify escalating American participation in the Vietnam War.
According to the independent, non-partisan United States Naval Institute, “once-classified documents and tapes released in the past several years, combined with previously uncovered facts, make clear that high government officials distorted facts and deceived the American public about (Gulf of Tonkin) events that led to full U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War."
The war took down the Johnson presidency in 1968 and ruined his reputation in spite of his domestic achievements.
Johnson, who met three times with Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson, also had a broad range of successes in foreign affairs – détente with the Soviets, advancing NATO’s influence, persuading Israel to restrain its military after the victory in the Six Day War, and increasing American influence in Latin America.
This counted for little for President Johnson when weighed against the cost in money and blood of the profitless Vietnam War.
Donald Trump has no such achievements to stand on.
Trump’s bluster about the strength of his military and war with Iran is a reminder of the words of the Celtic chieftain Calgacus who fought invading Roman legions in Northern Wales.
He said of his Roman rivals, “they ravage, slaughter, and usurp empires, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
Donald Trump tweets peace but sends his military to make a desert.
Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author.