We are hearing talk about Iran that sounds like the talk that preceded the invasion of Iraq. “Iran might be developing a nuclear weapon.” “Iran wants to destroy Israel.” “We must sanction Iran.”
Iran is a modern developed country. Take a look at the pictures on this site http://www.examiner.com/nonpartisan-in-national/iran-s-people-video What right do we have to tell Iran what it can or cannot do?
I think we are seeing a grand war strategy being followed. Iraq is west of Iran, Afghanistan is east of Iran. After invading both those countries, our top leadership are focused on Iran. Why? We know that the most obvious answer is oil. But there is a deeper more troubling cause; the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in 1960. His original farewell address called it the military-industrial-congressional complex, but he deleted congressional so as not to offend congress.
Many people in our country have become dependent on military weapons contracts. Look at the huge contract Boeing in St. Louis just got to produce F16 fighter jets for Saudi Arabia. It was greeted with joy that people working for Boeing will have jobs for years to come. But what kind of jobs, arming another country. Who is the enemy?
We are following the same path that led to World War I and World War II; we are building weapons day after day, year after year. France and Germany did that before World War I, the war that was supposed to end war. Germany, tortured by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, armed itself to conquer all of Europe in retaliation.
We bombed Iraq to hell. Why? I believe it is because we had a huge stockpile of weapons that needed to be used to make room for more newer ones. Congress just passed the National Defense Authorization Act with a price tag of more than $600 billion. The “cuts” in the military just announced are not cuts at all. They are reductions in the increases that were expected to occur over the next 10 years. We are spending more than ever on weapons of mass destruction, including “modernizing” our thousands of nuclear missiles. What right do we have to tell Iran that they cannot build a nuclear bomb when we have thousands of them and Israel has dozens?
We cannot kill our way to peace. Have we learned nothing from the two World Wars we have already had, and Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The United Nations was created with the strongest support of the United States to end the scourge of war. Yet today the United States wants nothing to do with the United Nations unless they do what we tell them to do. People in the rest of the world believe that the United States today is the greatest threat to international peace. I agree. We need to disarm worldwide with the United Nations getting all nations to do it because we know a third world war will be worse than anything we can imagine.
Iran is connected to Russia and China by strong commercial ties for oil. If we attack Iran, I cannot imagine Russia China just idly standing by. And what good would come of any such attack? What good ever comes from punishing another country with sanctions? Our foreign policy needs to be do no harm. We need a strong Peace Corp, not War Corp.
What do you think?
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