Why the hell are we so in love with war? What is wrong with the people of this country that they just aren’t happy unless our kids are risking their lives and ending others in places that have nothing to do with us?
We have barely gotten out of a stupid, illegal, non-productive war in Iraq, we are still engaged in an even more senseless, unwinnable mess in Afghanistan and we are already looking for an excuse to start another war in Iran. The Pentagon has decided that the 30,000 pound bomb they developed at a cost of $330 million isn’t up to the job of cracking Iran’s secret nuclear labs so they are asking for another $82 million to develop a bomb that s even bigger. No wonder people who can still think logically, want to cut the Pentagon budget. That bunch of fugitives from Dr. Strangelove, down in the five-sided building have gone completely over the edge. No one has ever accused the military of being logical thinkers but it seems to be time for those who are, to put the brakes on this bunch of hair-brained war-mongers before they go over the cliff again and we find ourselves involved in another senseless war in the Middle East.
Let’s just try to take a calm look at the whole picture because if we don’t the same crazies who got us into Afghanistan, Iraq, Nam and Korea will have us in Iran and undoubtedly with the same, destructive to the USA, results. These pseudo patriots don’t care how much they damage the nation as long as they can rattle their sabers, wave their flags, make some serious money and shout phony patriotic slogans to a mesmerized faithful. Did I say serious money? Yeah, I did, because that’s what it’s really about, oil and guns, that’s where the big bucks are.
I think the first question we have to ask ourselves is why would Iran want an atom bomb. What would they stand to gain by having one? They’ve had plenty of chances to see what happens to a country like Iraq, when it is falsely accused, by our Pentagon warmongers, of just having a little yellow cake. Do they really want that to happen to them? Are you dumb enough to think the answer is yes? They are already pretty much at the top of the heap in the Middle East. Now that Iraq is off the board, no nation in their region can threaten them militarily except Israel and even the few level heads in Israel don’t want to start a war.
The Iranians aren’t stupid, well, not all of them. They know that Israel fearing any kind of military advance by a nation that hates it, will act, as they are doing now, to stop that advance. There is no way they will give Israel an excuse to attack them on a larger scale. Everyone knows that Israel has a nuclear capability and no one doubts that they will use it; given the fact that they are surrounded by millions of Muslims who want to see them buried under the desert sands.
Our government knows this. We know that there is no real evidence that Iran is pursuing a weapons program. Our Intelligence Community, the Obama administration and IAEA report that Iran’s nuclear program is civilian in nature.
Why aren’t we all bent out of shape about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons? Pakistan is the most unstable nation in the region. What about North Korea’s?
No one in the Middle East wants another war, least of all Iran, which has the most to lose. The Iranians look at what we did in Iraq and they quake with fear. We took a functioning country with a nasty dictator and using the excuse of non-existent WMDs, we turned it into a trash heap with no stable government and no prospects for decades. Does anyone really think the Iranians want that?
And what about Israel? Do they want a war? I think not, at least I think that the sensible people don’t. Right now they have nothing to gain by a war. They have an economically thriving country with a serious Palestinian problem that has been pretty stable for the last thirty years. They know they can’t solve the Palestinian problem but they have been successfully living with it for so long that it has become like piles; they itch but they won’t kill you. Yes, there is a far right, religious element, (why is it always a far right religious element), that thinks war is the answer to everything. Of course most of them are too young to remember what happened to the Jews in the last big war so they think back only on the triumphs since 1947 instead of what happened before that in Germany and Russia.
No one, not Iran, not Israel, not the United States, not anyone has anything to gain by a new war in the Middle East and they all know it. Iran isn’t building a bomb because it is more dangerous for them to have one than it is for them not to have one.
Israel isn’t looking to attack Iran because that act will absolutely start a war in which all the surrounding countries will have a stake and right now the Israelis are too fat and sassy to risk what they have on such an unstable endeavor.
The sane heads in the US don’t want a war because we don’t want to lose any more of our kids just to give the nut cases in the Pentagon something to do. We don’t need another war that we can’t afford on either a human or a financial basis.
In the last ten years we have fought two wars that we didn’t need to fight. They broke our country economically, they caused untold heartbreak to American families who lost loved ones for no good reason. They resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of civilians who had no reason to die. When is it enough? When will the murderers who preach war have drunk enough blood? As American’s we have a just pride in our military but when will they finally be used to keep peace in the world instead of as a tool of those who pursue oil, power and the wealth assured by the needs of the military war machine?
The Republicans will now be demanding that the President endorse an Israeli strike against Iran. Obama must resist doing that. He doesn’t have anything to prove on the defense front. In fact he has spent the last three years cleaning up the two wars that the Bush gang started and getting rid of bin Laden and most of his commanders, something the Republicans were unable to achieve. He has gotten us out of Iraq and if he continues on the current track will have us out of Afghanistan in another year. It’s time to put wars behind us and concentrate on building a working world peace.