WI: American War in the 1980s

[ThePest179]

But at least initially, it'd be that flag waving feeling mixed with a mood of fear over another Vietnam which is nonetheless lessening as the years progressed. It depends how the war goes on whether there is a backlash.

Initially, yes, Americans are going to support a hypothetical conflict but let's list the ones people suggested:

Nicaragua: As I've repeated, it depends on the scope, lenght, and scale of the intervention. The shorter and less Americans involved, the better people will find it.

Lebanon: Vietnam syndrome will likely come into play the more peacekeepers Reagan sends. Progress is slow and difficult.

Libya: Depends on what Qaddafi does to piss off the US, and how long and/or difficult the war is. I'd say the US does well and support stays high.

Iran: Going off the "Hostage Crisis goes wrong" scenario, the US public would be livid for at least a few years, demanding an invasion and occupation. Their wish is granted, but the war will likely become Vietnam 2.0 and people get tired of it eventually.

What do you think? Agree, disagree?

 

[ThePest179]

One last thought:
Technically, an East German crackdown on pro-democracy protesters could lead to a war if some jumpy East German units attack West Berlin, either on purpose or by accident.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

How well could the Soviets exploit an American war in the 1980s from a propaganda perspective? Both globally, and to their own people. The Soviets had a tendency to tell their people of how the Americans wanted war and were exporting propaganda for it, and trying to bring down down foreign nations like Libya (yet Libya holds firm in resolve and *blah-blah-blah*). Could this undermine in anyway some of the progress the Soviet people made in terms of freedom and eventually ending the Soviet Union?

 

[riggerrob]

Perhaps Saddam announces he's got Nukes early than OTL, and instead of Gafaddi doing Lockerbie in '88.....

P.S. I claim the right to reserve a TL on that!

........................................................................................................

Lockerbie was a military strike.
There was never much love between Washington and Colonel Khadaffi (sp?).
In 1988, a team of USAF Combat Controllers had just completed three months of surveys of ... cough .. cough ... North African airfields and were fling home on that Boeing 747.
Libyan intelligence agents downed the plane to prevent the Pentagon from using survey data to invade/bomb Libya.
The only reason the USA did not bomb the bejesus out of Libya was that NATO allies (e.g. France) were too dependant upon Libyan oil.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

I think American pop culture was getting itchy for a war in the 1980s. There was the malaise of Vietnam still lingering. But at the same time, I think America had prepped itself for a war where it could wave the flag and fight the bad guy and be the action hero. You had films like Red Dawn and Top Gun. And even in regards to Vietnam, we had Rambo kicking ass and going back into the jungle to punish the evil Vietnamese. And you had Missing in Action ripping that off. I'd argue that was a psychological freeing of America from the malaise of Vietnam, and revealing that the Vietnamese were the bad guys all along and we could have won the war. The troops were just told to go easy on the enemy, and the politicians botched it and left men behind. That is total bull, but it resonated. The MIA/POW issue and the Congressional investigations are testament to it. And for a number of years in the 80s, a majority of the population believed there were men left behind in Vietnam because of those films and the culture it spawned. You can still find the POW/MIA flag. In reality, that flag is not just support for POWs or MIA personnel; it was part of a conspiracy theory that people were left behind in Vietnam, and the politicians covered it up and ignored it. I made a thread here I had to abandon because that still lingers. I asked what if that really happened, with the assumption that no one would assume it did. And there were all too many responses that of course it did.

That all lead into the Gulf War. Whether America would feel that patriotic as the war got underway is another issue. It could easily fade. However, if we kick butt in the war, it will be like the Gulf -- we feel good about ourselves, and everything is fine. Even if there are protests, as there were for the Gulf war, the media will ignore them if the war is popular.

 

[Matt Wiser]

The POW-MIA flag was adopted in 1972, a year before the war ended and the POWs came home.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

The POW-MIA flag was adopted in 1972, a year before the war ended and the POWs came home.

I didn't say it was created for the Vietnam POW/MIA theory. However, it became embroiled in it.

On August 10, 1990, the 101st Congress passed U.S. Public Law 101-355, recognizing the National League of Families POW/MIA Flag and designating it "as a symbol of our Nation's concern and commitment to resolving as fully as possible the fates of Americans still prisoner, missing and unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, thus ending the uncertainty for their families and the Nation." Beyond Southeast Asia, it has been a symbol for POW/MIAs from all U.S. wars.
The flag is ambiguous as it implies that personnel listed as MIA may in fact be held captive. The official, bipartisan, U.S. Government position is that there is "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia".[6] The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) provides centralized management of prisoner of war/missing personnel (POW/MP) affairs within the United States Department of Defense and is responsible for investigating the status of POW/MIA issues. As of August 5, 2010, the DPMO lists 1,711 Americans as MIA from the Vietnam War:[7] 969 cases being pursued, 117 cases deferred, and 625 cases not being pursued due to the circumstances and/or location of loss. The DPMO has received 1,997 first-hand reports of live sightings of purported U.S. POWs since 1975, of which only 55 (2.75%) remain unresolved.

After the war, the National League of Families became the leading group requesting information about those still listed as missing in action. It was led by Ann Mills Griffiths. Its stated mission was and is "to obtain the release of all prisoners, the fullest possible accounting for the missing and repatriation of all recoverable remains of those who died serving our nation during the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia." The League's most prominent symbol is its POW/MIA flag. This group was more established, less radical, and more connected to the government.[12]
The National Alliance of Families For the Return of America's Missing Servicemen was founded in 1990. Its goal was and is to resolve the fates of any unreturned U.S. prisoners of war or missing in action from World War II on forward, not just Southeast Asia, and to gain the return of any live prisoners. It is a 1980s-origined splinter from the National League of Families,[13] created by members who were dissatisfied with Ann Mills Griffiths' leadership.[13] Compared to the older group, the National Alliance took a more activist, radical stance, especially towards belief in the existence of live prisoners in Southeast Asia.[12]
The chair and co-founder of the group is Dolores Apodaca Alfond, whose brother Major Victor Joe Apodaca, Jr. was shot down in 1967 during the Vietnam War.[14] The group was visible during the Kerry Committee hearings of the early 1990s,[14] but disagreed with the committee's findings that there was no compelling evidence of any live prisoners in Southeast Asia.[15]

 

[redlightning]

May Gaddafi finances a terrorist attack against the West which hits the American mainland, but is done through indirect means which he hopes will not be detected. I like the idea of someone setting off car bombs across select targets in Washington D.C., killing tourists, residents, government officials, etc. Maybe bombs go off in front of the White House, Capitol building, State Department, etc.

The CIA tracks the financing back to Libya, unlike the Lockerbie bombing, and Reagan orders an invasion to remove Gaddafi. The US occupies Libya for several years, forms a provisional government, which then breaks down into civil war among different factions which lasts into the 90s.

 

[Matt Wiser]

An escalation of the tanker war in the Gulf is another possibility: the Iranians were caught mining the Gulf (and the minelayer seized, put on display by the USN, then scuttled in Aug '87), and there were several clashes between USN and Iranian Rev Guard forces after that. So...the Iranian Silkworm SSM batteries on the north side of the Straits of Hormuz fire on a convoy, and hit a USN ship. The U.S. response is to take out the sites with carrier air strikes and a shore bombardment from the battleship Missouri (which was on station at that time). Iran fires Scuds at Bahrain and the UAE, and Marines seize Iran's islands on the west side of the Strait (Sirri, Sassan, Abu Musa, Larak, Qeshm), while the 82nd Airborne jumps to seize Bandar Abbas. Follow-on operations seize Jask and Chah Bahar on the Gulf of Oman and Arabian sea, and with nearly all of Iran's military tied down with the war with Iraq, taking and holding those targets is quite possible. If Iran wants these areas back? Stop interfering with the free flow of shipping.