War Drums

Sometimes there’s nothing worse than a successful little war. Gulf One went so well we had Gulf war Two. That didn’t go quite so well. The Libya no fly zone worked pretty well for the US and NATO. They might try it again.

The US just parked an aircraft carrier next to Syria. Oh oh. There’s talk of a no fly zone. Syria is having a civil war right now. It’s no longer just demonstrations. The resistance is fighting back. It’s ugly there, and getting nastier. Just to make it interesting, Russia has sent ships to Syrian waters. Let’s just say they aren’t there to help us.

Why the hell are we getting involved in Syria? That country has nothing we can’t do without. Yes, it’s having a revolution. It can do that just fine without us.

Does it make sense in the lager context of the region? Israel wants to attack Iran so bad it can taste it. Actually, they want the US to get involved on an attack on Iran. Israel might be an old friend, but is it a good friend? The CIA lot of a bunch of its agents in Lebanon, probably due to poor trade craft. (hubris?) Hezbollah is heavily supported by Iran.

Don’t forget about Egypt. There’s people protesting and dying in the streets once more, calling for the end of military rule. The military has close ties with the US. My guess is that in the end, the real winner from all this will be the Muslim Brotherhood -not quite so good a friend of the US. When democracy yields a pro-US government, we are all for it. When it doesn’t, it seems a friendly dictator is much better.

Why is the US beating the war drums? What benefit is it to the government? Is it to distract us from the economy falling apart? It would be a good pretext to crack down on US protests. Historically, governments in trouble turn to foreign wars to dampen down domestic resistance. All those people in uniform would stay in uniform rather than come home to be unemployed.

How about rising oil prices? They are going up. War won’t bring them down, but it could redirect the blame. It’s much easier to blame dastardly foreigns than examine the likelihood of Peak Oil being real. No doubt Iran has the ability to close the Straights of Hormuz where a significant portion of the world’s oil is shipped. Should that happen, expect the restrictions on drilling in wildlife refuges, the sensitive arctic, and off shore regions to be lifted. War has some big returns for the oil companies. They get to charge more for the oil they do have and get to drill in places now off-limits.

The argument goes that we must prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. Why? What would they do with them? Attack Israel? That would only insure Israel’s 300 or so nuclear weapons would rain down on them. Give terrorist a bomb? Not likely. They know it would blow back on Iran. Terrorists are much more likely to get a bomb from Pakistan as it suffers its own unrest. To prevent the world from becoming radioactive? Then maybe we should have done something about poorly run nuclear power plants built in risky areas. What a nuclear armed Iran would do is insure other countries would not attack. That’s pretty much it.

They are beating the war drums. That doesn’t mean we have to dance.

-Sixbears