Return of the War Party?
Is a vote for the Republican Party in 2012 a vote for war?
Is a vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich a vote for yet another unfunded war of choice, this time with a nation, Iran, three times as large and populous as Iraq?
Mitt says that if elected he will move carriers into the Persian Gulf and "prepare for war." Newt is even more hawkish. America should continue "taking out" Iran's nuclear scientists—i.e., assassinating them—but military action will probably be needed.
Newt is talking up uber-hawk John Bolton for secretary of state.
Rick Santorum has already called for U.S.-Israeli strikes: "Either we're going to stop them ... or take the long term consequences of having a nuclear Iran trying to wipe out the state of Israel."
But if Iran represents, as Bibi Netanyahu is forever reminding us, an "existential threat," why does not Israel itself, with hundreds of nuclear weapons, deal with it?
Bibi's inaction speaks louder than Bibi's words.
He wants the Americans to do it.
For the retired head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, calls attacking Iran "the stupidest thing I have ever heard of." He means stupid for Israel.
Why? Because an Israeli attack would be costly in planes and pilots, and only set back Iran's nuclear program. And such a pre-emptive strike would unify Iranians behind the regime.
Moreover, Israel would be inviting Tehran's ally Hezbollah to rain down rockets on Israel, igniting another of the bloody Lebanon wars that Israel was desperate to end the last time.
As for the United States, the only way we could eliminate Iran's nuclear program would be days of air and missile strikes.
Iran could retaliate by cutting off oil exports and mining the Strait of Hormuz, tripling the world price of oil, and hurling the European Union and United States into recession.
Iran could also turn Hezbollah loose on Americans in Lebanon and urge Shias to attack U.S. troops, diplomats and civilians in Bahrain, Iraq and Afghanistan, and here in the United States.
No one knows how this would end. A U.S.-Iran war could force us to march to Tehran to remove the Islamic regime and scour that huge country to ensure that it was shorn of weapons of mass destruction—for an Islamic regime that survived a U.S. war would be hellbent on acquiring the bomb to pay us back. Yet, we lack a large enough army to occupy Iran.
And why should thousands more Americans have to die or come home to be fitted for metal limbs so Israel can remain sole proprietor of a nuclear weapon from Morocco to Afghanistan?
And where is the hard evidence Iran is acquiring nukes?
The U.S. intelligence community declared in December 2007, with "high confidence," that Iran was no longer seeking nuclear weapons. It has never rescinded that declaration.
And there is no conclusive evidence in that media-hyped report last week from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran is for certain building nuclear weapons. Indeed, that report was exposed as the work of incompetents within hours.
Relying on intelligence agencies, the IAEA said a top Russian nuclear weapons scientist had been instructing Iranians for years. The scientist turns out to be V.I. Danilenko, who has no expertise in nuclear weapons, but is a specialist in using conventional explosives to produce nanodiamonds for the manufacture of lubricants and rubber.
Are we being lied and stampeded into yet another war by the same propagandists who gave us the yellow-cake-from-Niger forgeries?
Bibi calls Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another Hitler and says we are all in 1939 again. But is this credible?
True, Ahmadinejad hosted a Holocaust conference featuring David Duke and said Israel should be wiped off the map, but he does not control Iran's military, has lost favor with the ayatollah, and has been threatened with impeachment. Ahmadinejad is a lame duck with less than two years left in his term. Is mighty Israel afraid of this man?
Told that the IAEA said Iran was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad laughed: "The Iranian nation is wise. It won't build two bombs against 20,000 (nuclear) bombs you (Americans) have."
Does he not have a point? How would an Iranian bomb secure Iran, when Israel's nuclear arsenal would be put on a hair trigger, and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt would then rush to get their own bombs?
In that South Carolina debate, Ron Paul, the one person there proven right on Iraq, was given less than 90 seconds to speak.
Under the Constitution, said Paul, no president has the right to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran without congressional authorization.
Before America goes to war with Iran, let Congress, whose members are forever expressing their love for the Constitution, follow it, and vote on war with Iran. And before we go to the polls in 2012, let's find out if the GOP is becoming again the same old War Party that bankrupted the nation.
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Mr. Buchanan speaks my mind. He should be the one asking questions of the GOP candidates.
"In that South Carolina debate, Ron Paul, the one person there proven right on Iraq, was given less than 90 seconds to speak."
Pat,
Well, that's ninety seconds longer than they gave you in 1996 or 2000. The gentlemen in grey calling the shots for the GOP nowadays say that when times change, the party must apply a different color of lipstick to the elephant. The only problem with this explanation is that the red on their hands is American blood, not lipstick. Mitt has named the same folks to his foreign policy team that designed the policy for George Fix Bayonets Bush.
If Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz and the price of oil goes up threefold, there'll surely be more than a recession to pay when foreign held dollars flood the markets. So much for the canard that we're in these wars to secure our strategic energy interests. I wonder if Iran hasn't been warned that if it closes the Straits and starts sinking tankers it'll be nuked. There's no doubt in my mind that our government's been usurped by essentially American-hating Zionists, as the Republican lineup of Zionist stooges proves. Innocents in Muslim lands are being incinerated from the sky and blown to pieces by the tens of thousands, babies are quite likely being horrifically deformed by depleted uranium munitions, with the strong possibility that compact enriched uranium munitions are now in use, and this moral scum calls for more of it. I agree that Islam may be at war with Christendom, what's left of it, and I look forward to reading the Rockford Institutes book by Prof Mattei, but this is genocide and, if there is a just God, there may well be hell to pay for it. Where are the Christians in this country?
Anyone who votes in November 2012 has either no brain or no heart.
There are also a large number of Iranians in these United States. It is doubtful that all of them would remain passive during a massive attack on their homeland. The War Party blunders onward, while ignoring the dangers of domestic blowback. They are the true isolationists.
We are given two false choices every election. Unless a significant number of voters coalesce into a third party and break up the duopoly, then this evil militarism and corporate statism will continue ad infinitum. The irony of common opinion is that a vote for a third party is wasted........... as if vote for a Dem or GOP establishment candidate is going to make a difference. The difference in the two parties in minimal but magnified by the ideologues in both parties. Abortion? What has the GOP done in 50 years to abolish it except to make noise every four years? Don't like Obamacare.........well Old 'Bain and Burn' Mitt has a slightly different prescription for you called LDScare! BTW, both parties are corrupt as hell and boy o boy do they love war and sending 18 y/o's off to lose an arm or leg for the petroleum oligopoly........
Isn't amazing that in a nation with hundreds of top universities and colleges that we get a choice between draft dodging and chickenhawk candidates from Harvard and Yale every four years?
I continue to be aghast and appalled at my fellow conservative and Christian Southerners who support the foreign adventures of the general government even as the general government in those foreign adventures kill and maim a disproportionate number of Southerners whose martial prowess and sense of loyalty are usurped to the nefarious ends of those who control the general government. As Christians, we should be outraged that the general government, in our name, has been, is and likely will be waging immoral, unconstitutional (as if the Constitution matters), unnecessary and ultimately unwinnable wars. As Southerners - against whom an aggressive war was waged, a war and the plundering in its aftermath which impoverished us in ways from which we have not yet really recovered - we should be the last to support the killing of innocents for "noble causes." Many, likely most, of my fellow Southerners cannot distinguish between the profession of the soldier and the misuse of that profession by the politicians. It is held that to criticize the war is to demean the soldier. The usurpers have gotten into our very minds. The Democratic Party abandoned the South; then, by turning to the Republican Party, the South abandoned itself. It seems that we will continue to bleed in blood and treasure for the empire which "drove ol' Dixie down," even as the empire airbrushes our traditions, our customs, our habits and therewith our very identity from history, the airbrush being quite powerful from its settings of "political correctness," to "statutory intimidation," to "demographic warfare" with legal and illegal aliens.
I have a sinister hope that the empire will make one stimulus too many or initiate one war too many, sinister in that for such a collapse many innocent people must suffer; yet, as some Germans came to say as WWII closed: Besser ein Ende mit Terror als ein Terror ohne Ende! (Better an end with terror than a terror without end.)
I don't like to trouble myself it's neither about my ego nor being clever at this point. Love. Check out my friend Brother Nathanael Foundation.org/videos ... I like him. I wish I spent as much time in a Greek Orthodox Christian monastery. (If they'd have me)? ... No doubt improve my posts.
Does this Rick Santorum person merely talk like a foreign shill or is this Rick Santorum person actually a foreign shill?
I have seen very very very little of him, just snippets on what is linked on the YouTube front page, but his shrill rants about how United States must protect a you-know-what foreign power make you wonder whether he is a paid dupe or a willing dupe.
I wholly agree with your opinion Mr. Peters. We won't get out of this racket without paying a heavy price. The complete dissolution of the ruling class is our only hope for the future.
"As Christians, we should be outraged that the general government, in our name, has been, is and likely will be waging immoral, unconstitutional (as if the Constitution matters), unnecessary and ultimately unwinnable wars. As Southerners - against whom an aggressive war was waged, a war and the plundering in its aftermath which impoverished us in ways from which we have not yet really recovered - we should be the last to support the killing of innocents for "noble causes." Many, likely most, of my fellow Southerners cannot distinguish between the profession of the soldier and the misuse of that profession by the politicians. It is held that to criticize the war is to demean the soldier. "
My sentiments exactly, Mr. Peters. My country was invaded 150 years ago, unconstitutionally, illegally, etc. By what right do I go marching around in someone else's country? Our patriotism has been corrupted! I am like you in that I hesitantly pray for collapse of the entire empire, realizing many innocents will indeed be hurt. God have mercy on us!
I used that quote just today, Dr. Peters. Great one to remember.
As for "conservative Christian" Southern warmongers, I am afraid the South has been invaded in more ways than just militarily. The spiritual invasion may or may not predate the military invasion, but you yourself say that you have witnessed an almost Puritan sort of fundamentalism creeping into Southern Protestantism. The concurring millenarian militarism is no coincidence.
As for wiping out the "ruling class," that will be much more difficult than any of us know. Ruling classes are not wiped out or supplanted so easily. The well-known French Revolutionary violence aside, the bourgeoisie overshadowing of the aristocracy in Europe did not happen overnight. It began in earnest in the 18th century and wasn't complete until 1918 or arguably 1945.
Mr. Smith,
Sometimes, in my weaker moments, I panic and think to search for a candidate, who, if elected, can "turn this all around." I have been, however, at least until now, called by the gentle voice of my old pastor of nineteen years, the first nineteen years of my life, Br. Moses Eli Mercer, away from this false god. He told us boys who came to his study that in the end, all we could do is what we were purposed to do: to glorify God, to edify the Church, to honor our parents, to remain faithful and loyal to kith and kin, and to practice charity within the scope of the stewardship by which we had been graced. So, I have given up on optimism, for it is an "ism," but remain full with hope, of which optimism is a counterfeit, because charity, the expression of hope, is not possible without hope, and hope is not possible without faith, and faith has no value save that it originates with our Lord and finds its end in Him as our Kinsman Redeemer. I too often fall short of my purpose, but I am sustained, I firmly believe, by the prayers of Br. Mose, as he was called, and by those of other old saints as their prayers resound across eternity on my behalf and on behalf of a number of kids of my generation who were reared in that little commonwealth, a village, wedged between Sugar Branch, Sandy Creek and Big Creek in the uplands of North Louisiana where we played, we fought, we got hurt, some of us died, and where we worshiped.
By Providence and not by any virtue of my own, those nineteen years are a treasure of mercy and grace to sustain for the locust years which are likely to come. One thinks the locust years to be upon us.
Mr. Peters:
As usual, I find your meditations here full of grace and wisdom, reminders of simple, sustaining virtues that we would all do well to cultivate with God's help. As I believe your comments here heavily imply, He is not surprised by any of this and only desires that we trust in Him and do the next right thing within our circle of responsibility. As I've grown a little older, I believe the Lord has given me a little more of a glimpse at what He has saved me from. To say I'm a sinner saved only by grace seems indeed to be a gross understatement. In my all too frequent bouts of narcissitic melancholia I despair of the world around me and of myself. Add to this the increasing vulgarity and barbarism on every hand, and it's easy to feel that it's all completely futile.
It is left to us to be faithful, not to get results. My prayer is - and needs to remain - that He would give me the strength, wisdom and the encouragement to do this. Again, within that circle of responsiblity He has given to each of us, there are prayers, simple acts of charity and decency, meals to be shared, stories to be told, etc.that will do more for the extention of the Faith and the preservation of civilization than much of the worrying we do over the "Big Things."
Gratitude and blessings again for your thoughts.
Mr. Peters: I second Mr. Smith's comments. I read your posting before heading off to work this morning and it helped keep me focused on first things.
Mr. Smith: I often tell friends that God does not require that we be "successful," but only that we be faithful to Him. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36)
This is a sidebar but not at all unrelated. There was somewhat a first in our little nook of the South yesterday. An independent conservative, a man whom I know who had rejected the evil of two lessers - the Republicans and Democrats - defeated a Republican incumbent, a former Democrat, who had cast himself war hawk among other things allegedly conservative, for the office of state representative in our region. The newly elected independent did not play the Christian card, although he is a devout Christian; did not play the Southern card, although he is a card-carrying Southerner; he did not play the anti-abortion card, although he opposes it. He simply went around and visited people; had coffee with them; and listened to them. One can do that in a small district. He understands that he will likely change nothing in Baton Rouge; but he is willing to do his civic duty for the time allotted him. He has my prayers, for he, the independent, willfully goes into a roaring den of lions: the Legislature of the State of Louisiana, one of the seats of the two-headed Democratic/Republican beast.
Mr. Peters, your last post reflects a good deal of my thinking as well. If indeed we express our faithfulness in all that God has given as a stewardship within our respective circles of influence, then it follows that our real hope on the somewhat larger scale is at the local level. Imagine that, a local politician quietly taking his responsibilities seriously!