Headlined U.S. Seeks Other Ways to Stop Iran Shy of War, the article wastucked awayon page A9 of a recent_New York Times_. Still, it caught my attention. Here’s the first paragraph:

American intelligence and military officers are working on additional clandestine plans to counter Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, pushed by the White House to develop new options that could help deter Tehran without escalating tensions into a full-out conventional war, according to current and former officials.

Note that Iranian aggression. The rest of the piece, fairly typical of the tone of American media coverage of the ongoing Iran crisis, included sentences like this: The C.I.A. has longstanding secret plans for responding to Iranian provocations. Im sure Ive read such things hundreds of times without ever really stopping to think much about them, but this time I did. And what struck me was this:rareis the moment in such mainstream news reports when Americans are the provocative ones (though the Iranians immediately accused the U.S. military ofjust that, a provocation, when it came to the U.S. drone its Revolutionary Guard recently shot downeitherover Iranian air space or the Strait of Hormuz). When it comes to Washingtons never-ending war on terror, I think I can say with reasonable confidence that, in the past, the present, and the future, the one phrase youre not likely to find in such media coverage will be American aggression.

I mean, forget the history of the second half of the last century and all of this one so far. Forget that back in the Neolithic age of the 1980s, before Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein turned out to be thenew Adolf Hitlerand needed to be taken down by us (no aggression there), the administration of President Ronald Reagan actively backed his unprovoked invasion of, and war against, Iran. (That included his use of chemical weapons against Iranian troop concentrations that American military intelligencehelped himtarget.) Forget that, in 2003, the administration of George W. Bush launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq, based onfalse intelligenceabout Saddams supposed weapons of mass destruction and hissupposed linksto al-Qaeda. Forget that the Trump administrationtore upa nuclear agreement with Iran to which that country was adhering and which would indeed have effectively prevented it from producing nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. Forget that its supreme leader (infatwashe issued) prohibited the creation or stockpiling of such weaponry in any case.

Forget that the Trump administration, in a completely unprovoked manner, imposed crippling sanctions on that country and its oil trade, causinggenuine suffering, in hopes of toppling that regime economically as Saddam Husseins had been toppled militarily in neighboring Iraq in 2003, all in the name of preventing the atomic weapons that the Obama-negotiated pact had taken care of. Forget the fact that an American president, who, at the last moment,haltedair strikes against Iranian missile bases (after one of their missiles shot down that American drone) isnow promisingthat an attack on “anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force… In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.

Provocations? Aggression? Perish the thought! And yet, just ask yourself what Washington and the Pentagon might do if an Iranian drone were spotted off the East Coast of the United States (no less in actual U.S. air space). No more need be said, right?

So heres the strange thing, on a planet on which, in 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to149 countries, or approximately 75% of all nations; on which the U.S. has perhaps800 military garrisonsoutside its own territory; on which the U.S. Navy patrols most of its oceans and seas; on which U.S. unmanned aerial dronesconductassassination strikes across a surprising range of countries; and on which the U.S. has been fighting wars, as well as more minor conflicts, for years on end from Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Yemen, Iraq to Niger in a century in which it chose to launch full-scale invasions of two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), is it truly reasonable never to identify the U.S. as an aggressor anywhere?

What you might say about the United States is that, as the self-proclaimed leading proponent of democracy and human rights (even if its president is now having a set oflove affairswith autocrats and dictators), Americans consider ourselves at home just about anywhere we care to be on planet Earth. It matters little how we may be armed and what we might do. Consequently, wherever Americans are bothered, harassed, threatened, attacked, we are always the ones being provoked and aggressed upon, never provoking and aggressing. I mean, how can you be the aggressor in your own house, even if that house happens to be temporarily located in Afghanistan, Iraq, or perhaps soon enough in Iran?

A Planet of Aggressors and Provocateurs

To mine the same_New York Times_piece a little more, heres another paragraph:

Some officials believe the United States needs [to] be willing to master the kind of deniable, shadowy techniques Tehran has perfected in order to halt Irans aggressions. Others think that, while helpful, such clandestine attacks will not be enough to reassure American allies or deter Iran.

Of course, such clandestine American attacks would, by definition, not be aggression, not given that they were directed against Iran. Forget the grim historical humor lurking in the above passage, since the present Iranian religious hard-liners probably wouldnt be there if, back in 1953, the CIA hadnt usedjust such techniquesto overthrow a democratically elected Iranian government and install its own autocrat, the young Shah, in power.

As that_Times_piece also emphasizes, Iran now uses proxy forces throughout the region (indeed it does!) against U.S. (and Israeli) power, a tactic Americans evidently just hadnt thought about employing themselves in this century – until now. Americans naturally have no proxy forces in the Greater Middle East. Thats a well-known fact. Just out of curiosity, however, what would you call the local forces our special ops guys aretrainingand advising in so many of those 149 countries around the planet, since obviously they could never be proxy forces? And how about the Afghan and Iraqi militaries that the U.S.trained, supplied with weaponry, and advised in these years? (You know, the Iraqi army thatcollapsedin the face of ISIS in 2014 or the Afghan security forces that have been unable to staunch either thegrowthof the Taliban or of theAfghan branchof ISIS.)

Now, dont get me wrong. Yes, the Iranians can (and sometimes do) provoke and aggress. Its an ugly planet filled with aggression and provocation. (Take Vladimir Putins Russia in Crimea and Ukraine, for instance.) The Chinese are now aggressing in the South China Sea where the U.S. Navy regularly conducts freedom of navigation operations – though no provocation there, as the Pacific’s an American lake, isnt it?

In short, when it comes to provocation and aggression, the world is our oyster. There are so many bad guys out there and then, of course, theres us. We can make mistakes and missteps, we cankillstaggering numbers ofcivilians, destroycities, uproot populations, create hordes ofrefugeeswith our never-ending wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa, but aggression? What are you thinking?

One thing is obvious if you follow the mainstream media: in our world, no matter what we do, were still the good guys on a planet filled with provocateurs and aggressors of every sort.

War to the Horizon

Now lets think for a moment about that remarkable American comfort level, that unprecedented sense of being at home practically anywhere on Earth we choose to send armed Americans – and while were at it, lets consider a related subject: Americas wars.

If, in the early 1970s, you had told me or any other American that, in the nearly half-century to come, the U.S. would fight wars and other lesser conflicts of almost every imaginable sort in startling numbers of places thousands of miles from home, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, countries most Americans couldnt then (or now) find on a map, I guarantee you one thing: we would have thought you were nuts. (Of course, if you had described Donald Trumps White House to me then as our future reality, I would have considered you beyond delusional.)

And yet here we are. Think about Afghanistan for a moment. In those distant days of the last century, that country would undoubtedly have been known here only to small numbers of young adventurers eager to hike what was then called the hippy trail. There, in a still remarkably peaceful place, a young American might have been greeted with remarkable friendliness and then spaced out on drugs.

That, of course, was before Washingtons first (covert) Afghan War, the one theCIA oversaw, with the help of Saudi money (yes, even then!) and a major hand from the Pakistani intelligence services. Do you remember that conflict, which began in 1979 and ended a decade later with the Red Army limping out of Kabul in defeat, heading for a land, the Soviet Union, which would implode within two years? What a victory that proved to be for America, not to speak of thegroupsof extremist Islamic militants we helped to fund and support, including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden.

And keep in mind as well that that was our short war in Afghanistan, a mere decade long. In October 2001, soon after the 9/11 attacks, instead of launching a police action against Osama bin Laden and crew, the administration of George W. Bush decided to invade that country. Almost 18 years later, the U.S. military isstill fightingthere (remarkably unsuccessfully) against a thoroughly rejuvenated Taliban and a new branch of ISIS. It now qualifies as thelongest warin our history (without even adding in that first Afghan War of ours).

And then, of course, theres Iraq. By my count, the U.S. has been involved in four conflicts involving that country, starting with Saddam Husseins invasion of Iran in 1980 and the ensuing war, which the administration of President Ronald Reagan supported militarily (as the present one does the Saudi war in Yemen). Then there was President George H.W. Bushs war against Saddam Hussein after his military invaded Kuwait in 1990, which resulted in a resounding (but by no means conclusive) victory and the kind of victory parade in Washington that Donald Trump can onlydream of. Next, of course, was President George W. Bushs 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq (mission accomplished!), a grim and unsatisfying eight-year conflict from which President Barack Obama withdrew U.S. troops in 2011. The fourth war followed in 2014 when the U.S.-trained Iraqi military collapsed in the face of relatively small numbers of ISIS militants, a group that wasan offshootof al-Qaeda in Iraq, which didnt exist until the U.S. invaded that country.That September, President Obama loosed the U.S. air force on Iraq and Syria (so you can add a fifth war in a neighboring country to the mix) and sent U.S. troops back into Iraq and into Syria where theystillremain.

Oh, yes, and dont forget Somalia. U.S. troubles there began with the famed Black Hawk Down incident amid the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 and never, in a sense, really ended. Today, U.S. Special Operations forces arestill on the groundthere and U.S. air strikes against a Somali militant Islamic group, al-Shabaab, have actually beenon the risein the Trump era.

As for Yemen, from the first U.S. drone strike therein 2002, the U.S. had been in an on-again, off-again low-level conflict there that included commando raids, cruise missile attacks, air strikes, and drone strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, another offshoot of the original al-Qaeda. Since, in 2015, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates launched their war against Houthi rebels (backed by Iran) who had come to control significant parts of the country, the U.S. has been supporting them withweaponry,intelligence, and targeting, as well as (until late last year)mid-air refuelingand other aid. Meanwhile, that brutal war of destruction has led to staggering numbers of Yemeni civiliancasualties(andwidespread starvation), but as with so many of the other campaigns the U.S. has involved itself in across the Greater Middle East and Africa it shows no sign of ending.

And dont forget Libya, where the U.S. and NATO intervened in 2011 to help rebelstake downMuammar Gaddafi, the local autocrat, and in the process managed to foster a failed state in a land now experiencing itsown civil war. In the years since 2011, the U.S. has sometimes had commandos on the ground there, has launchedhundredsof drone strikes (and air strikes), often against a branch of ISIS that grew up in that land. Once again, little is settled there, so we can all continue to sing the Marine Hymn (…to the shores of Tripoli) with a sense of appropriateness.

And I havent even mentionedPakistan,Niger, and god knows where else. You should also note that the American forever_war on terror_has proven a remarkably effective_war for terror_, clearly helping to foster and spread such groups, aggressors and provocateurs all, around significant parts of the planet, fromthe Philippinestothe Congo.

Addicted to war? Not us. Still, all in all, its quite a record and lets not forget that looming on the horizon is another possible war, this time with Iran, a country that the men overseeing the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (includingpresent National Security AdvisorJohn Bolton) were eager to go after even then. Everyone wants to go to Baghdad, so thesayingreputedly went in Washington at the time. Real men want to go to Tehran. And its just possible that, in 2019, Bolton and crew will be able to act on that much delayed urge. Considering the history of American wars in these years, what could possibly go wrong?

To sum up, no one should ever claim that we Americans arent at home in the world. Were everywhere, remarkablywell fundedand well armed and ready to face off against the aggressors and provocateurs of this planet. Just one small suggestion:thank the troopsfor their service if you want, and then, as most Americans do, go about your business as if nothing were happening in those distant lands. As we head into election season 2020, however, just dont imagine that were the good guys on Planet Earth. As far as I can tell, there arent many good guys left.

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of theAmerican Empire Projectand the author of a history of the Cold War,The End of Victory Culture. He runsTomDispatch.comand is a fellow of the Type Media Center. His sixth and latest book isA Nation Unmade by War(Dispatch Books).