"HISTORY ET AL"

  The Iran Iraq War 1980-1988: Still Influences the Region Today BACKGROUND The Iraqi armed forces invaded Iran on 22 September, 1980. Thus began the most horrific war in the history of Middle East. The war lasted almost eight years and was ultimately terminated on 20 August, 1988. The war saw armored battles, missile attacks against cities, the use of chemical munitions, trench warfare, attacks against merchant shipping and human wave infantry attacks. The cause of the war was two-fold:  Iraq’s expansionist policies combined with a desire for regional dominance politically. Saddam Hussein thought a ‘preemptive’ attack was warranted against the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary regime. The war, outside the orbit of the U.S.-Soviet ‘Cold War’ would impact these two nations and many others as this war had grave consequences on the international petroleum industry and commerce worldwide. At noon on 22 September, 1980, the Iraqi Air Force deployed over 190 combat aircraft across the I...

  The Totalitarians: Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin Polish Air Force engages the new Luftwaffe 1939, Poland.   Perhaps the clearest demonstration of where exactly the Western countries stood in 1939, with respect to Adolf Hitler and Germany, is that after the Germans finally invaded Poland in the dark hours of 1 September 1939, it took until 3 September for Britain and France to declare war on Germany. The British waited while the French delayed. A summation, then, of all that was both France and Great Britain with Poland suffering the first blows of what would become the most costly, horrific, and all-consuming World War the engulfed millions of lives. The end of the Great War left the European continent unbalanced. Of the Allies, the French believed the Germans guilty and that war reparations were hardly enough to compensate for the devastation France had suffered. Of the many by products of the Great War, cranage and devastation was visited across Eastern France and th...

  The Battle of Okinawa: Prelude to Downfall   The 1945 Battle of Okinawa saw the most organized, planned, and resourced use of “kamikaze” or suicide attacks by the Imperial Japanese Army, Navy and Air Force against the United States Armed Forces and her allies. “2,000 Japanese pilots were lost in sorties that killed almost 5,000 American sailors.” [1] Okinawa saw not only the most concerted effort and use of the “kamikaze” by the Japanese, but ultimately, the only campaign in the whole of the Pacific Campaign.   The US forces across the Pacific Theater had seen the Imperial Japanese use “banzai” or human wave attacks during the 1942 Guadalcanal campaign and again during the 1944 Battle of Saipan. Martial history does indeed have many instances of ‘suicidal’ combat with the famous stand of the Spartans against the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae.  But these desperate and, often last-ditch stands were and are rare. The human condition almost always seeks su...