Wag The Ayatollah
February 15, 2012 by John Myers
“Why [wage war against] Albania?”
“Why not?”
–From the movie “Wag The Dog”
The power brokers who dictate our future and destroy the freedoms they claim to protect are hell-bent on engaging America in another war. The tom-toms that Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul warns of are thunderous. This year, they summon more of our young men and women to wage war against Iran, a country smack-dab between Iraq and Afghanistan.
Expect President Barack Obama’s impending war to look very much like the conflicts that George W. Bush launched a decade ago. But don’t be surprised if the new war isn’t bigger and more bitterly contested than the one against Iraq. After all, there are only nine months until the Presidential election. Obama and his backers understand that millions of Americans will resist abandoning the Nation’s Commander in Chief when U.S. troops are engaged in combat.
That brings us back to why America went to war against Iraq. Few people noticed that the Bush Administration fabricated lies regarding weapons of mass destruction, and they even spread falsehoods that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was fast friends with the terrorists who struck on 9/11.
Coming Soon: Thirty Seconds Over Tehran
American jingoism could reach a fever pitch. Already, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is selling us on war with Iran. Earlier this month, he boasted to U.S. troops stationed in Germany that U.S. armed forces could wage and win simultaneous conflicts against North Korea and Iran.
“We could be fighting a land war in Korea and suddenly Iran moves to close the Straits of Hormuz,” Panetta said. “We’ve got to have the capability to be able to confront each adversary, to not only deter them, but defeat them. And we can do that with the force that we’ve put in place.”
It wasn’t hard for Panetta to find U.S. troops in Germany or almost anywhere else. A 2010 report showed there were 1,000 U.S. military bases outside the United States. The cost, not including bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, was more than $100 billion per year. According to anthropologist Hugh Gusterson, U.S. bases “constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country’s territory.”
It is beyond me why our government keeps wasting men and materials in Europe two decades after the Cold War ended. Exactly whom must we brace ourselves against?
Perhaps the ruling elite that Bob Livingston alerts us of will not permit us to stand down regardless of the circumstances.
According to Institute for Policy Studies fellow Phyllis Bennis, the Pentagon has been brilliant at spreading military production across virtually every Congressional district. As a result, even the most antiwar members of Congress won’t challenge big Department of Defense projects no matter how high Federal debt levels reach.
Last summer, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of the The Nation, concluded that: “The staggering resources we spend to support an empire of bases isn’t making us more secure. Instead, they fuel resentment and consume resources desperately needed to invest here at home”
The members of the ruling elite don’t care an iota about such deficit spending that is eroding our future while encouraging anti-American sentiment. Whether they are our elected officials or behind-the-scenes puppet masters, their goal is to increase their wealth and influence. As billionare Ted Turner once remarked: “War has been good to me from a financial standpoint.”
In 1947, the Federal government introduced doublespeak when the Department of Defense of War became the Department of Defense. Since then, the United States has not been engaged in much defense, nor has Congressional approval been required for what Presidents are apt to call either a “police action” or “terrorist interdiction.”
Fast-forward to today. How can another President, this one a Democrat, proclaim two additional enemies just as America has pulled out of one war (Iraq) and has announced the pullout of another (Afghanistan)? Yet the groundwork is being laid. Iran is a threat to world peace.
Is it possible that George W. Bush and Barack Obama are really pawns to a secret establishment, perhaps a military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against? I can only speculate, but I wonder if those people really calling the shots ever took an Oath of Office or ever had their names on a ballot. America seems to be falling toward a blueprint that George Orwell predicted in his novel 1984.
As I thought about what seems the inevitable march toward more war, I re-read 1984. I first read it 40 years ago after my English teacher made it compulsory. Over the years, the world has changed and not for the better. This from 1984 struck me hardest:
“To understand the nature of the present war — for in spite of the re-grouping which occurs every few years, it is always the same war — one must realise in the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive… The labor of the exploited peoples… is not really necessary to the world’s economy. They add nothing to the wealth of the world, since whatever they produce is used for purposes of war, and the object of waging the war is always to be in a better position to wage the next war.”
Consider the impending war with Iran. On Jan. 31, The Washington Post reported that U.S. spy agencies are providing information to the Obama Administration that Tehran may be actively planning to attack U.S. targets on U.S. soil.
Let’s give that idea a quick examination. No sovereign nation has attacked U.S. soil since World War II. (Of course, this doesn’t include U.S. embassies or other American targets on foreign soil.) Let us remember that 9/11 was undertaken by renegade terrorists who were offered protection by the government of Afghanistan. The government of Afghanistan did not attack New York and Washington, yet even its tacit support of al-Qaida resulted in swift and terrible retribution.
Are we to believe that the leadership in Iran is stupid enough to attack Americans within U.S. borders? It sounds like a recipe for Iran to be wiped from the map.
I don’t believe for a moment that Iran’s leadership is stupid enough to launch an attack on American soil. I do believe our government is planting such misinformation to make us fearful and to drum up support for another war. How handy with a Presidential election approaching.
Yours in good times and bad,
–John Myers
Editor, Myers’ Energy & Gold Report
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