To understand the full context of this piece, you may want to go to my article "Speaking for the Dead." Do a find on "Iran."

The Left - and most other political "activists" - like to talk. Ranting is the be-all and end-all, and if it boils down to a competition for a tiny core audience, then any tactic that works is justified in the name of the revolution.

In point of fact, in 1980, when Reagan took office, the local left, centered around KPFK (which was just then starting the slide into the Claire Spark era, in which a bunch of truly intolerant ideologues of the radical left completely took over Pacifica for a couple of years and almost destroyed it) hosted a huge rally in support of the Sandinistas (Nicaragua). Reagan wanted to invade Nicaragua so o o o o bad. And the Marxist Sandinistas had been giving him every excuse, bringing in Cuban "advisors," arresting and imprisoning political dissidents, shutting down independent press, forcing atheism upon the children of the black, largely Protestant Christian, English-speaking Bluefields area on the Caribbean coast, persecuting the Mosquito Indians, trying to export their Marxist revolution to the rest of Central and South America.... etc., etc., in general acting like a bunch of baddies who ought to be shut down before they caused real problems.

So, Reagan could have done it. He was in his "honeymoon" period with Congress. The Sandinistas were playing intransigence as their theme song and looking remarkably like great Marxist martres to be, destined to be hung on the dorm walls of female English Lit majors, right alongside Che, and the local left here in L.A. was ecstatic about the coming great sacrifice (of Sandinistas, not them, for sure), which they saw as potentially reviving the moribund anti-war movement that had been the core of most of their popular support. They wanted Reagan to invade - so o o o o bad.

Prior to their big rally, they had a radio show at KPFK with special guest Umberto Ortega, brother of Daniel Ortega, and head of the Sandinista military, who would be speaking at the rally, of course. They called for listener questions or comments. I took a real risk in attempting to be the last caller, succeeded, and told Umberto how to avoid war....

"Listen," I said, ~"If you follow your friends' lead here and play intransigent, then Reagan WILL invade, and then, you WILL lose, you and your friends will likely be killed, your revolution will be over, and your leftist friends will be popular again here in the U.S.. What do you want? If you want you and your revolution to live, here's what you do."

"LIE LIKE A DOG! ... Send a thousand Cuban advisors home. You can always slip them back in later. Release a bunch of political dissidents. You can always re-arrest them. Announce discussions to resolve issues with the Mosquito Indians and the Bluefields Christians. Announce that you support freedom of the press and let "La Prensa" reopen. Just be patient. All you have to do is temporarily convince the gullible world press that you're sincere. Create a delay while Reagan's people work frantically to discredit you. In six months, Reagan will have lost the initiative, his honeymoon with congress will be over, and then you're scot-free."

So, Umberto went home and the Sandinistas did every last thing I suggested and it worked perfectly, because Reagan's people never expected it, and my KPFK leftist friends wouldn't speak to me for months, and a lot of people didn't get killed. Of course, I had no love for the Marxists as such. I just didn't want to see the U.S. involved in a stupid war that would only justify Marxism here and abroad, spread the revolution all over Central and South America and Mexico and revive the Marxist left popularity here in the U.S. Hey, the Contras, who were no angels, for sure, were doing a spectacularly great job of keeping the Sandinistas tied up. So, just keep sending them money and guns, and keep buying their drugs, and that whole festering boil would stay contained.

In addition, Nicaragua provided a perfectly splendid example of all the wonders of Marxism. People from the U.S., and from all over Central and South America could go there and see for themselves. Why spoil it? They were the best possible argument against Marxism, and, I figured, eventually the Nicaraguans themselves would see the light and overthrow them, which is what happened, eventually.

Hey, reader! You can do this, too. So much of what happens in the international arena is just hype and manipulation. If you can point it out at the right moment to the right people, then you can change history. Just try to be sure you know what you're doing, and why, ok?

The other war I stopped was the one we almost had with Iran, when Khoumani took over and the students seized the American Embassy in Teheran and held the Embassy personnel hostage until the day Reagan took office. See my "Speaking for the Dead" for details. The stakes were a lot higher there, with the Soviet Union right across the border. Again, as I describe in the other article, I wasn't doing it for the Iranians or their silly religious state. I was doing it for us. We didn't need a major war with a few million religious fanatics with a military that we trained and equipped and a 7,000 mile supply line. And right on the Soviet border. No, no, no.

As a futurist with a physics degree and post-grad work in computer programming and decision theory, as well as one of the very early micro-computer enthusiasts, I had a pretty good idea that the U.S.S.R. was down the tubes anyway in a decade or so, due to the onrushing information revolution, which would hugely empower all the semi-free societies, such as the U.S., but would put all the top-down authoritarian cultures at a severe disadvantage. The Ruskies would have a limited window of opportunity during which, if we gave them a lucky break - like tieing up our military fighting Muslim fanatics(!) - they could move to confront us in 3rd World countries all over. Once that window was shut, the information revolution would never give them another shot, as they would find themselves more and more an isolated backwater technologically and ultimately militarily as well.

I was fairly sure that their intellectuals would understand this and push to open up their society. I was also fairly sure that the old hard-line Marxists in the military would understand the basic proposition as well and would jump at any opportunity during that window. (I've been told that Buckminster Fuller came up with the same analysis before me, but I haven't ever had the time to track that down.) The U.S. invading Iran to reinstate the Shah would have been the perfect opportunity for the hard-liners in every respect.

So, if you're interested in how to do realpolitic at home - and why you may not want to, check out "Speaking for the Dead." Or, for further consequences and ramifications of personal political activism, take a look at my "Living on the Street." Have fun.