War Stories

Today is 112 days before the 250th birthday of the United States of America.  Commit yourself to extra effort to save our democracy between now and then, especially.

This begins the third week of “Epic Fury”.  I’m near 86 years of experience as a United State citizen and what we seem to have now, which is new, is a reality tv production of the first War as a Video Game.  Frankly, my frame of reference now is to calendar time since fury was unleashed two weeks as I started to calendar events after September 11, 2001: both dates were ground zero catastrophes, in my opinion.  We’ll see what the future holds.

This post purposely gives short shrift to “War Stories” relating to Vietnam (1961-75) and 9-11-01/Afghanistan/Iraq/Afghanistan (2001-21).  There is such a glut of information (and misinformation) available about the brand-new Iran War mindful of the information we were dealing with in September, 2001.  What follows is a small diversion of sorts from the daily dose of ‘news’.

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First, here is another old (1982) map of the setting for Epic Fury.  See also earlier posts (Feb 24 and Mar 3, 2026)

Below map in pdf format: Iran 1982 focus Saudi Arabia.  Note especially Kuwait and the Strait of Hormuz at opposite ends of the Persian Gulf.

I have noticed that the official conversation about the history leading to today’s war seems to focus on events about 47 years ago – the year the U.S. Embassy staff were taken hostage in Teheran.  I was in my 30s then, and followed political developments carefully.  Of course, there is lots of preceding and subsequent history in the country and region, but that gets little emphasis.  The apparent coalition of Israel and the U.S. and recent history with the government of Iran is also in the forefront.  (Of course, the other 47 is the 47th President of the United States.  Everything for PR….)

With this in mind, I offer a couple of short ‘snips’ I took from the 51 pages in my 1978 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica: Iran 1978 Britannica.  1978 was the year before the hostage stage.  The snips – the pdf is about one page – relate to the people of Iran, and Iran petroleum  history.  Remember, this information is near 50 years in the past.  It is only a small part of a 51 page article about Iran, a large country with lots of history.

Personal thoughts today: Our country is no stranger to war; and my family is no stranger to military service, including myself in the earliest Vietnam era years of 1962-63 (Cuban Missile Crisis came on my watch as an Army Private).

Currently, my nephew is a Marine Sergeant who’s been in service since 2018.  In about three weeks we’ll be at his wedding.  His spouse to be is daughter of a Marine family.

On and on.  The military, and how it functions,  is not something abstract to me.

For whatever reason, my thoughts recently have gone back to another less sexy U,S. war called Desert Storm,   It was a short war in early 1991, and it involved aggressive moves by Iraq towards neighboring Kuwait.  (The battle theater then was probably generally from Saudi Arabia into Kuwait.  For the combatants, their theater was a tiny speck of sand, even as compared with Kuwait, small as it is.)

I don’t recall many judgements against that war in 1991.  I’ll leave that to individual opinions.  It wasn’t an impulsive move.  Desert Storm was so short that the anti-war coalition had little time to get organized and do anything.  Best I recall, Iraq didn’t really. jump into the public war conversation again until after 9-11-01, 10 years later, when Iraq/Saddam became the U.S. target even though they seemed to have nothing to do with 9-11 itself.

For me, I remember being in my car in early evening when the war began; I recall where I was at the time. The car radio announced U.S. action against Iraq.  Back home I quickly got familiar with Wolf Blitzer, who was just getting started with the also youthful CNN, giving non-stop reports on what he was seeing on the ground in Saudi Arabia.

The next morning I was going down the stairs from my condo and there was a strong smell of alcohol.  In the stairwell I came across a paper bag full of booze bottles.  Somebody had had far too much the night before, and I was smelling the remnants of last night.  Whoever had the bag was probably still drunk, and dropped the bag enroute to the dumpster in the garage.  I’m guessing the bombing and the booze had some direct relation to each other.  At least that’s my story, over 30 years later.

In the next days, I happened to be at the West Bank of the UofM and an anti-war presence had settled in.

Back home, Newsweek included an invitation to write letters to soldiers at the front.  I wrote, and early on got a reply from a guy who’d dropped out of the UofM months earlier and went in the Army to what he had planned to be safe duty in Germany.  He was about finding himself – an honorable course for lots of collegians then and now.

Bruce found out what those in service all learn.  Your assignment is part of your responsibilty – you go where you are told.  In his case, it was the sands of the Arabian peninsula, dealing with all the uncertainties facing a boots on the ground GI.  From Germany he’d been assigned to war in the desert.

Apparently, he’d shared my address with another GI, who also wrote me a letter.  In all there were several, and they came in envelopes like this:

Years later I tracked found where Bruce lived and sent the letters to him.

He responded.  By then he was apparently pretty successful, I gathered, in the money business.  We hd only that single exchange.

I wonder what he thinks of what is going on today in the same area of the world?

That’s my “war story” for now.  Does it remind you of one of yours?

Etcetera

Paul Krugman and Heather Cox Richardson discuss the oil situation, March 10, 2026

Friday, March 6, was Jesse Jackson’s memorial in Chicago.  Here is President Barack Obama’s powerful eulogy.