Unnecessary Roughness

U.S. Foreign Policy, the Conrad Dobler Way


Arash Norouzi

The Mossadegh Project | September 29, 2017                     


Conrad Dobler, National Football League offensive lineman (1972-1981)

“Dirty”. “Filthy”. “Nasty”. In his nine-year football career with the St. Louis Cardinals, New Orleans Saints, and the Buffalo Bills, NFL offensive guard Conrad Dobler reveled in his well-earned reputation. Though not regarded as a particularly talented player, Dobler’s underhanded style was, as the late Merlin Olsen of the LA Rams once put it, “his way of compensating for a lack of some basic skills”.

“Widely regarded as the dirtiest player in NFL history” reads the jacket description for his own 2009 memoir, Pride and Perseverance, “Conrad Dobler was nothing short of a pit bull out on the gridiron. Whether he was leg-whipping, head-slapping, chop-blocking, kicking, kneeing, punching, eye-gouging, or even biting, the three-time Pro Bowl offensive guard terrorized opposing defensive lineman by any means necessary.”

In a November 21, 1980 interview with the Pittsburgh Press, Dobler made a topical reference that mirrored his philosophy on the field:


“The Buffalo Bills’ guard doesn’t play football; each Sunday he declares conventional war. Dobler loves standing toe-to-toe with his teammates, punching, kicking, biting or whatever it takes to win. Some have called him the dirtiest player in football. He has called himself the dirtiest player in football.”

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“Like the Steelers, the Bills like to intimidate, but like the Steelers they are a loose group that loves practical jokes. “We have so many dedicated young players who make you think you’re on a high school team,” Dobler points out. “Everybody is a little looser now. America has loosened. Twenty years ago we would have taken Iran if they held 53 Americans hostage.”


Conrad Dobler, National Football League offensive lineman (1972-1981) What Dobler didn’t seem to grasp at the time was that the reason the United States found itself in that mess in the first place was because it had been unnecessarily tough and ruthless to the Iranian people, crushing its democracy in its infancy and underwriting their political oppression for over 26 years. Dictatorships are by their nature a cruel, monstrous, thing; America ought not have unleashed and fed that beast to begin with.

Today, Dobler’s political doppelgänger inhabits the White House — a real brawler with no moral compass, more preoccupied with the NFL than the desperate, suffering people of Puerto Rico recently devastated by Hurricane Maria. If Puerto Rico (a U.S. territory) had suffered a terrorist attack, pugnacious Trump would have pounced on it, but natural disasters just aren’t that arousing for him.

Under the failing leadership of arguably the nastiest, dirtiest, angriest, sleaziest President in American history, we shall now get to witness how beneficial this bad-ass, foaming-at-the-mouth approach proves to be with regard to taming U.S. adversaries like Iran and North Korea.


"They Call Me Dirty" (1989) by Conrad Dobler, National Football League offensive lineman (1972-1981)


Boxing legend Muhammad Ali’s efforts to free Iran hostages (1979-2015)
Boxing legend Muhammad Ali’s efforts to free Iran hostages


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Related links:

The Tyranny of Words — Republican Bruce Barton on Aggression (1951)

The Negro Press Should Do Its Utmost to Destroy Racial Evils in America (P. L. Prattis, 1951)

Vindictive, Racist Journalist Lauds Hossein Fatemi’s Execution By Firing Squad (1954)



MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”

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