Give peace a chance
By Dr. Robert Owens
web posted July 1, 2019
Since the oil embargo of the 1970s we’ve been told by our leaders that energy independence would free us from the never-ending cycle of Mideast wars. Today after two and a half years of Trump’s “Drill-Baby-Drill” policies we’ve unshackled our vast resources from the climate worshiping Eco-fanatics. And what is the result? We’ve not only achieved energy independence we’ve become a net exporter of energy.
Yet today America is still embroiled in several wars in the Mideast. Our troops are bogged down in the Forever War in Afghanistan. Everyone in the world knows that sooner or later we’ll leave and the next day the Taliban rolls into Kabul as our puppets fly 747s filled with cash to Switzerland. We still have troops in Iraq doing who knows what. Our forces still haven’t left Syria even after the President ordered them to return home. We provide logistical and moral support for Saudi Arabia’s devastation of Yemen. And we have major assets of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines stationed in Qatar.
And day-by-day we ratchet up the pressure on Iran. We’re strangling them with economic sanctions which are themselves acts of war. We’ve cut them off from exporting oil, the life-blood of their economy, saying that anyone who buys their oil will no longer be able to do business with us. As the world’s largest economy that shuts off the spigot and chokes the Iranian economy to near asphyxiation levels.
Which brings up the question, how far can you push someone until they push back? And if they finally push back can we actually call that push back unprovoked aggressive action? It was our America’s oil embargo against Japan the produced FDR’s unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor.
Using bluster, bluff, and brinksmanship are all good negotiating tactics when it comes to making vast real estate deals. And they can also be useful in diplomacy but they can also lead to miscalculations written in blood, treasure, and tears.
Osama Bin Laden’s secret strategy was to prod America into following the USSR into bankruptcy through endless unwinnable war in the Mideast. This succeeded in sinking the presidency of George II and giving us the eight year Obama debacle. We’re still bleeding and paying as the Forever War drags on. Trump turned the heat down from a boil to a simmer but we’re still firmly seated on the burner. Now the Chinese have adopted the death by a thousand cuts strategy leading us to bankrupt ourselves in the Forever Wars of Shia versus Sunni.
And what of the push back provocations nudging us to cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war against a foe four times the size of Iraq with forty-three million more people.
The circumstances of these so-called clear cut provocations are murky at best. Look at the recent downing of a drone by Iran. They claimed the drone was in Iranian airspace. We claimed it was over international waters. Yet there are no international waters in the Straits of Hormuz. The accepted territorial water of all countries extends 12 miles from their shore. The straight is 21 miles wide and thus straddled between the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. This alone should be enough to make the issue worthy of debate.
As always Pat Buchanan, the Godfather of Paleoconservatism in a recent article summed up the situation perfectly regarding the two disputes we have with Iran; nuclear weapons and supporting terrorism.
Monday, the president tweeted: “The U.S. request for Iran is very simple — No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror!”
But Iran has no nuclear weapons, has never had nuclear weapons, and has never even produced bomb-grade uranium.
According to our own intelligence agencies in 2007 and 2011, Tehran did not even have a nuclear weapons program.
Under the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA, the only way Iran could have a nuclear weapons program would be in secret, outside its known nuclear facilities, all of which are under constant U.N. inspection.
Where is the evidence that any such secret program exists?
And if it does, why does America not tell the world where Iran’s secret nuclear facilities are located and demand immediate inspections?
And …
“No further sponsoring of terror,” Trump says.
But what does that mean?
As the major Shiite power in a Middle East divided between Sunni and Shiite, Iran backs the Houthi rebels in Yemen’s civil war, Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon, Alawite Bashar Assad in Syria, and the Shiite militias in Iraq who helped us stop ISIS’s drive to Baghdad.
Why should we go to war to ensure the energy resources needed by Japan and Europe? Let them secure their own national interests.
War doesn’t produce prosperity. It impoverishes those who worship at the altar of Mars.
The unprecedented prosperity flowing from the Trump program of encouraging entrepreneurship and cutting regulations is turning the 2020 election into a choice between Keep America Great and Make America Miserable Again. A stark choice between capitalist can do-ism and socialist cradle-to-grave do for me-ism.
Peace and prosperity is the formula for four more years regardless of the media megaphone and their progressive lackeys’ witch hunts and state persecutions.
However, a war with body bags arriving and resources evaporating would inevitably birth an anti-war movement trying to recapture the left’s glory days of Vietnam. The plummeting poll numbers would smell like blood in the water to the well-financed impeach now industry.
Mr. President don’t be lured into a war that will be your war. It will be the ruin if not the end of your presidency. How will it benefit Americans? How will it make America great again? Pull out of the Mideast. Use the troops and resources to gain control of our own borders and let the enemies of our enemies devour each other. Confound the disloyal opposition and the Never-Trumper fellow-travelers with the shimmering success of your policies.
Or as John Lennon said in long years past, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” 
Dr. Robert Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2019 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens