Iran: The War They Desire

It's fairly obvious by now that, once again, the Republicans don't want accurate intelligence about a problematic country: they want to twist intelligence in order to bring about the next war on their checklist.

And the principal writer of their most recent war prelude is Frederick Fleitz. He's a handmaiden of Dick Cheney, who never met a war he didn't like, except he didn't like to fight the one he was of age to be a soldier in.

They want a war with Iran. I hope they don't get it.

As Martin Walker (via Steve Clemons) points out, the US is playing poker and Iran is playing chess. Iran is so much stronger than it was when Bush came to office, and the US is so much weaker in nearly every important way.

It's a pathetic situation for a great nation to be in. But I'm thinking that a country that could install GW Bush as president twice may not be as great as it once was -- the guy is obviously way over his head. It's sad to be governed by such a dolt when we're facing incredible challenges that towel-snapping and bluster will not deliver us from.

We may eventually actually have to go to war with Iran. But if we do, we should know what that means.

It would not be like Iraq, where we'd just be inconveniced by "bad pictures" on our TV sets.

Iran really will retaliate--on our troops in Iraq and against the US and the West anywhere else they want.

In all likelihood, they'll hit petroleum chokepoints in various canny ways that will increase the price of oil to something we'd have thought of as science fiction just a few years ago. Oil in three digits a barrel. And when one thing gets sorted out, another chokepoint would blow.

Remember: Israel thought their recent war would eliminate Hezbollah. It didn't. Israel is in worse shape than before. War with Iran would be like the Lebanon skirmish writ globally.

I'd figure a war (even a "limited bombing campaign") against Iran would have a great chance of setting off a global depression.

It's very possible that gas would be going to the military, at very expensive prices and increasing our debt (the Chinese would buy more of our debt). Putting gas in your car would be staggeringly expensive. Getting goods to stores would be, too -- consumer prices would skyrocket.

For those who still have relatives who lived through the Great Depression, ask them how much fun that was. The Bushes, the Cheney's and their friends could probably weather it. The rest of us would be screwed in unimaginable ways.

Instead of talking to Iran, as repugnant as that regime is, it seems that Cheney and Bush and the Republican crazies are committed to a path that will leave Iran hurting but the US is in dire straits.

Scares the shit out of me, these freaks. They learned nothing from their failures in Iraq.

England was once a global empire, too. Perhaps Niall Ferguson can tell us how the British Empire weathered decades 1-4 of the 20th Century, since he is urging the US to become more of an empire in this century.

It's like the grinding occupation of Iraq: they wanted a nice little limited war: instead, the war they got is not quite the war they wanted.

But this time it wouldn't just be bad pictures on the television. It could well be a total transformation of the US way of life via a global depression brought on by the war they want.

These Republicans have learned nothing. I hope the country has but, hell, it elected an idiot prince as President twice.