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How many of the hostages do you think would have died? How many soldiers would it have cost them?
Those are the questions hawks don't want to ask. Carter got all 53 hostages home alive.
Carter gave the US a reputation of being a Paper Tiger. Carter did nothing by doing nothing. The hostages were freed a day after Reagan entered office.
Carter gave the US a reputation of being a Paper Tiger. Carter did nothing by doing nothing. The hostages were freed a day after Reagan entered office.
That goes to my point that the student radicals who took the embassy staff hostage were partially driven by their malice towards Jimmy Carter. They delayed releasing the hostages so that it didn't occur during the Carter presidency.
I recall that another motivation for freeing the hostages was that there was no more mileage to get from holding them. Whereas President Carter put the hostage crisis as front and center to his foreign policy focus, the incoming Reagan administration had already signaled that the hostages were going to be a lower priority as the Russians and the Cold War were seen as a more important foreign policy matter.
If a Russian embassy were taken over instead, there is no doubt Russia would have gone in within days to get their people out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by markg91359
How many of the hostages do you think would have died? How many soldiers would it have cost them?
Those are the questions hawks don't want to ask. Carter got all 53 hostages home alive.
Remember in 2002 when Chechen radicals seized a Moscow movie theater? Instead of storming the building with armed forces, the Russian FSB instead pumped a poison gas into the theater, killing all 40 Chechen terrorists - and also killing 140 of the 850 Russian hostages.
My guess is that if a Russian embassy in Iran had been taken over, there is no doubt that the "Russians" (who were the Soviet Union in 1980) would have been incapable of projecting any meaningful military power into Tehran to mount a rescue. These guys couldn't even save their own people in a Moscow theater. Heck, in the 1980's the Soviets were getting manhandled by the Afghan mujahideen.
I just don't agree an earlier contention that no president could have bested Carter. Despite all his good intentions, he was a weak and vacillating man who truckled to the Iranians. As a result, he was neither respected nor feared by anyone on the international scene. Even his one military effort to rescue the hostages was half-hearted and badly planned.
The person who likely would have done best under the circumstances was the first President Bush, the most underestimated foreign policy president in modern American history. If you look at the issues that arose in his presidency, from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, any of those could have resulted in a global conflict had they not been handled with finesse and the touch that only comes from years of diplomatic and intelligence experience. The first Bush was the classic combination of iron fist and velvet glove.
Had it occurred under Reagan's watch, he would have most probably given the Iranians a deadline, then considered the embassy workers to be casualties of war as he commenced hostilities. Not sure how the Soviet's would have responded, given the quagmire they were encountering in Afghanistan.
I think Bush II would have dithered along with neither the finesse of his father nor the steely resolve of Reagan and would have wound up doing the wrong thing. Clinton would have offered a diplomatic solution that might have worked. Obama would have been incredibly ineffectual, given how the foreign policy accomplishments during his administration were almost nil.
This really was not difficult. The response of the US should be give them 30 days and then start blowing Tehran off the earth. if possible drop the 101st to protect the hostages. But after 30 days Iran begins to turn to dust. This is simple stuff. You do not seize a US Embassy without going to war.
Carter was too Christian and not enough US.
And it was a terribly bad decision that did and will cost many American lives. We do not abandon our people. Ever.
And in my mind if the hostages died so did Tehran and surrounds. They could then gloat over the graveyard.
The rescue mission he mounted failed and perhaps that was a good thing. Had the helocopters reached the landing zone and gone in after the hostages, there amost surely would have been more casualties among the troopers and the hostages.
The rescue mission he mounted failed and perhaps that was a good thing. Had the helocopters reached the landing zone and gone in after the hostages, there amost surely would have been more casualties among the troopers and the hostages.
Once he committed Carter was on the hook. It should have ended with the rescue of the hostages or the annihilation of Tehran. there should have been backup plains dumping an airborne division on the scene.
Casualties at this point are not an issue. The Iranians have volunteered that Tehran was available. We simply should have collected their wager.
it is a terrible ugly thing that all of these innocent should die. But that is the decision of Iran not the US.
This really was not difficult. The response of the US should be give them 30 days and then start blowing Tehran off the earth. if possible drop the 101st to protect the hostages. But after 30 days Iran begins to turn to dust. This is simple stuff. You do not seize a US Embassy without going to war.
Carter was too Christian and not enough US.
And it was a terribly bad decision that did and will cost many American lives. We do not abandon our people. Ever.
And in my mind if the hostages died so did Tehran and surrounds. They could then gloat over the graveyard.
So, it would have been better if all the hostages had died rather than the solution Carter chose?
I wonder if any of the 53 hostages would have agreed with you.
I guess it depends on the metric you measure "success" by.
In my view, Carter's policy was largely successful. He got all the hostages home alive.
The rescue mission shouldn't have been launched. I have heard some speculate that it was best that it ended as it did. Their argument is that more American lives would have been lost had the helicopters made it to Tehran and attempted to capture the hostages from their guards. I suppose Carter deserves some blame for that. However, the mission would never have been authorized if the Army, Colonel Beckworth (who was in charge of the mission) and others had not told the President it had a high likelihood of success. In one of his books, Carter outlines what the general public did not know. He stated that America had agents who were Iranian nationals in high positions near the hostages. Had the rescue mission reached Tehran, these agents would have assisted in the rescue.
Carter failed to read minds and guess that the Iranians would try to take our embassy personnel hostage. However, asking him to do this is to imagine something that had never happened before. No other country has ever had its embassy personnel taken hostage by another sovereign nation. Why should Carter have anticipated this would be the first time?
Perhaps, we should have anticipated that the Shah of Iran would fall when he did. However, there were five presidential administrations prior to Carter who dealt with the Shah and he seemed a secure ruler during all of those administrations.
Typically what I hear when people criticize Carter for the hostage situation are vague and general statements like "He was weak" or "No one respected him". However, those same people never make clear what they mean when they make those kinds of statements. Should Carter have bombed cities in Iran and killed thousands of people? That would almost certainly have resulted in the hostages being killed not to mention tens of thousands of Iranians. Iran is a country that borders the former Soviet Union. A war in Iran could have rapidly spilled over in a way that would have brought America into conflict with the USSR. Preventing such an occurrence took precedence over the 53 American hostages.
The American intelligence agencies failed Carter and failed the country by not being able to predict how quickly the Shah of Iran would fall and what America should be doing as a result.
In the end, the hostages were released unharmed on the first day of the Reagan Administration. I think Carter handled the hostage crisis as well as it could have been handled. I only wish that America could have forseen the fall of the Shah of Iran and acted in a different manner before the embassy personnel were taken hostage.
IMO, Jimmy Carter was a president much like Herbert Hoover. Things went wrong during both administrations. However, the President didn't have much to do with their going wrong. Since things went badly wrong (economic troubles, etc.) the President got the blame for it. It was sad that both men were blamed for things that were largely beyond their control. That's how our system of government works though. As a result, both men only served one term in office.
Very well said, and to touch on the last point you made about Hoover and Carter, timing is also important in how successful your administration is. It makes a world of difference, Hoover was President when the Great Depression hit, and Carter was President during a foreign crisis and economic malaise in the late 70s. If either men were President at another time, SAY Hoover in the 50s or Carter in the 90s, then they probably would have been two term presidents.
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