The Drumbeats For War Grow Louder

Former CIA Chief Michael Hayden says a United States military strike against Iran “seems inexorable” because diplomacy is failing.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen says the U.S. military has a plan to attack Iran.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives last week introduced Resolution 1553 which would give Israel the go-ahead to attack Iran. The resolution grants support for Israel to “…confront nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force…”

The neocons have never seen a war they couldn’t support, no matter the President’s party affiliation.

The end is near—so President Barack Obama tells us—for former President George Bush’s incursion into Iraq. He said last week that America’s combat mission in Iraq will end by Aug. 31. But that doesn’t mean all troops will come home. There will still be 50,000 there as August turns into September. And it’s going to be 18 more months before they all come home… if he sticks to his timeline.

We can only hope 50,000 troops are enough to prevent that governmentless nation from descending further into chaos.

For those troops that do come home, it appears they will only be home long enough to change their underwear and restock their ammunition belts before heading off to another Mideast hellhole to die… for what?

To blow up suspected nuclear sites, even though a 2007 U.S National Intelligence Estimate said that Iran had halted work on developing a nuclear warhead in 2003. Meanwhile, an unclassified military report submitted to Congress in April concluded, “Iran is developing technological capabilities applicable to nuclear weapons and, at a minimum, is keeping the option to develop nuclear weapons,” as The Washington Post reported.

A May report by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran hasn’t sufficiently cooperated to allow the agency to determine if Iraq’s nuclear activities are solely for peaceful activities.

Conflicting stories of weapons of mass destruction: Haven’t we heard this before… during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq?

If HR 1553 were to pass and Israel does strike at Iran’s nuclear reactors and nuclear sites, what then? If Iran strikes back—which President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad has said they would—and is joined by Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah, would the U.S. then be obligated to intervene?

Obama has pledged America’s undying support of Israel no matter what… even if he did treat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu badly during his visit to the White House earlier this year. And Israel maintains it is convinced that Iran is working to acquire nuclear weapons.

Much of the international community also seems convinced Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. The feckless U.N. Security Council has been trying to agree on sanctions against Iran for some time. China and Russia continue to hold out.

But aren’t Americans growing sick of war? Apparently the political class isn’t.

Nine years later we remain in Afghanistan, NATO allies are abandoning us and more and more of our troops are dying. Obama, with no clear-cut strategy to fight what he considers the good war, vows to continue fighting on, and any timelines he may mention mean little.

Seven years later we are still in Iraq, and at least a few thousand troops will remain there for the foreseeable future. Nineteen years later we’re still in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, even though the first Persian Gulf War supposedly ended with a good outcome.

Sixty-four years later we still have troops stationed throughout Eastern Europe and in Japan. Fifty-seven years later we still have troops stationed in South Korea. That war has not ended—no official peace treaty ever signed—and there have even been some drumbeats sounding from there. Just not as loud… yet.

But the recent U.S.-South Korea joint air and sea military exercises in the Sea of Japan intended to send a message to a recalcitrant North Korea—who has been accused of torpedoing a South Korean ship—antagonized China. And who can blame them?

What would we think if China or Russia conducted military exercises in the Gulf of Mexico or off the coast of New York or San Francisco? Either Obama and the Pentagon were naive to the implications of conducting war games in the area, or they conducted them intending to raise tensions in the area.

According to the think tank Foreign Policy In Focus, there were 865 Pentagon-confirmed U.S. troop base sites located off U.S. soil in 2009. But this number doesn’t include all of the bases being used in Iraq and Afghanistan—as many as 150 more.

There are 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan and 87 in Korea. Others are scattered around the globe in Aruba, Australia, Bulgaria, Bahrain, Colombia, Greece, Djibouti, Egypt, Qatar, Romania, Singapore and Cuba, to name just a few.

The bases are draining our economy of billions of dollars a year. Isn’t it time we ended Empire America? Isn’t it time we brought our troops home?

There would still be work for them to do. Our border with Mexico is under assault.

But the military-industrial complex might not be as happy about that. Stopping Mexican paramilitary units and drug cartel thugs isn’t as lucrative as dropping bunker busters on Iran and North Korea… and maybe China.

It has certainly opened my eyes to the cyclical common patterns of history and of generations of people. I found it a fairly academic read with a lot of mind-grinding detail which is necessary to get a complete picture of how their premise works together over a long period of time.

With that said, I'm very glad I've read it and will probably continue to review over it from time to time to refresh my knowledge of their observations and to compare it to current events to see how today lines up with what they expected was coming in '97. I certainly don't think I'll look at our history or in different generations of people the same way again.

ran’s nuclear program is quite open. They are enriching uranium past the point needed for civilian uses. They refused an offer of cheap refined uranium that would be under Russian control. They are openly developing ICBMs.

Nothing would guarantee WWIII more than Iranian nukes. It has already lead to Saudi and Egyptian nuclear programs.
And with multiple nuclear nations in the region, it just Tel Aviv that is toast, NYC and DC are too. It suddenly becomes rational for Iran to nuke us using Hizbollah. They can rationally believe that tracing the bomb would be difficult and given the uncertainties we would not retaliate.
In turn, this would lead to a massive nuclear war.
And putting aside the threat to the US, Iran would gladly use Hizbollah to nuke Israel. This would also lead to theater wide nuclear war.

But the truth is worse. Iran is not a rational country. President Rafsanjani made this clear years ago when he said
“If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.”

And this doesn’t even begin to deal with the idea of the Twelvers who think that the Mahdi will come only when the Islamic world is purified by fire. Some of them think a nuclear exchange would be a precursor to their bloody messianic era.

So the issues is not whether war, but when. It is far more moral to act now, when casualties would be low.

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