I don’t think I’ve ever, in the 40 years I’ve been doing this, have heard of another of an American ally trying to push us into war as blatantly and trying to influence an American election as blatantly as Bibi Netanyahu and the Likud party in Israel is doing right now. I think it’s absolutely outrageous and disgusting. It’s not a way that friends treat each other. And it is cynical and it is brazen. And by the way, a little bit of history here: In December of 2006, George W. Bush went over to the Pentagon, met with the joint chiefs of staff and asked them, “What do you think about military action in Iran?” They were unanimously opposed to it. And as far as I know, the United States military, the leaders of the United States military, are unanimously opposed to it to this day. This is a fool’s errand. It would be a ridiculous war with absolutely no good coming of it.
Excuse me, Joe, you’ve been there, frequently, and I haven’t, but Iranians don’t “loooovvvve” us. When you’re top dog, people don’t love you. They may envy you, emulate you, even admire or respect you, and they may even miss you a little when you’re gone, but they don’t love you. What they love is seeing you fall on your big fat ass.
In his blog, Joe is far more temperate, putting it this way:
It [Iran] has the best-educated population in the region, outside of Israel; and that population is extremely proud of the country’s heritage while also being generally pro-American (especially American culture, which is received on the satellite dishes that mushroom every rooftop). It is a complicated culture, ironic and poetic and deeply paranoid, especially about the machinations of former colonial powers.
Afterwords
We imposed similar sanctions on Iraq in the Nineties, for the same reasons, which led almost inexorably to the invasion of Iraq under Bush fils. Basically, we’re trying to make Iran beg for mercy, and nations don’t like to beg for mercy. Since we’ve been doing this for a long time—we’ve been saying “We really mean it this time! We’re not kidding!” for a long time—our “credibility” is at stake. That is to say, we’ll look like fools if we stop, which is to say that we’ll have to admit we’ve been behaving like fools for a long time, and nations, particularly important nations like the U.S. no more like to admit that they’ve been behaving like fools than they like to beg for mercy. Which means that at some point we’ll take some form of military action against Iran—“measured, responsible action,” of course, and, of course, it will all be all Iran’s fault.
*According to Wikipedia, the U.S. didn’t have anything to do with Iraq’s chemical weapons, unlike Great Britain, Austria, Holland, Egypt, India, Luxembourg, Spain, and China. Again according to Wikipedia, the U.S. did send samples of anthrax, which Saddam was not supposed to use to manufacture biological weapons, which of course he did use to manufacture biological weapons. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Reagan Administration decided that Saddam was not such a bad guy after all, and traded freely with him, in part as payback for Iranian hostage-taking under President Carter, and, it is likely, with the hope of weakening both sides.
