Tehran and Testosterone

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you want to wage war on Iran, feel free to head to Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad, Tabriz or any other Iranian city and have at it – but leave my country out of it.

Yes, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is an arrogant, unlikable little sh*t who apparently sees nothing wrong with murdering young Iranian women in the streets of Tehran when they get out of line and protest his disputed election.

And yes, Israel, which controls American foreign policy and is the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid – the U.S. gave Israel more than $113 billion in direct aid from 1949 to 2008; the $3 billion or so per year that it receives from the U.S. amounts to about $500 per Israeli – hates Iran and would love for the U.S. to concur with its puppets supporters in Washington who demand that President Obama grow a pair and launch a military strike (as if active troops, military advisors or drone attacks in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria and Uganda – and until recently, Iraq – haven’t made enough of a mockery of his Nobel Peace Prize).

But it’s not like they’re feuding next-door neighbors or anything – Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait all lie between Israel and Iran, and the two countries’ main nuclear and missile sites are 1,250 miles apart. In the words of Rodney King, can’t we all just get along here, people?

Iran refuses to recognize Israel, which is silly. But what’s sillier to me is that anybody thinks we have the right to tell Iran that it can’t have nuclear weapons even though Israel, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and the United States do. Iran is more of a threat than North Korea or Pakistan, which harbored Osama bin Laden for ten years? Seriously?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said “it’s the policy of this administration that Iran cannot be permitted to have a nuclear weapon and no option has ever been taken off the table” and Vice President Joe Biden is on record insisting that Israel has the right to attack Iran. (I wrote about this in a post entitled, “Sorry, Iran” on November 19, 2011.)

This is why Iran just threatened to seal off the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 17 percent of the world’s oil passes – because the European Union decided to tighten sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. (The U.S. just tightened our unilateral sanctions as well.) This has our testosterone-driven military dudes rattling their sabers and vowing to preserve oil shipments; Pentagon spokesman George Little recently said, “Any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz will not be tolerated. This is an economic lifeline for countries in the Persian Gulf region.” Our Navy’s Fifth Fleet – which consists of more than 20 ships, combat aircraft and 16,000 personnel – has what one source described as a “robust presence in the region.”

Adding to the tension is former vice president and shooter-of-hunting-pals Dickhead Cheney, who said back on December 12 that President Obama should have ordered an “air strike” on Iran after they recently captured a U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel surveillance drone. Obama asked for it back but Iran wants us to apologize, saying we broke international laws by violating its airspace.

Maybe we did. It’s not like our record of honoring laws and treaties is unblemished.

Incidentally, does anybody else find it interesting that Cheney’s former employer, the Halliburton Company, “sold key components for a nuclear reactor to an Iranian oil development company as recently as January of 2005,” according to the Media Freedom Foundation? (Cheney was Halliburton’s chairman and CEO from 1995 to 2000 and received a $36 million severance package when he stepped down. He reportedly still owns stock.) Seems like somebody ought to tell the old man to refrain from urging military attacks on any Islamic republics with which he has ties.

I sure wish the less-endowed among us – yes, Lieberman and Cheney, I’m talking to you – would STFU about war with Iran and focus on solving the Lake Superior-sized problems that are going unaddressed here at home. Y’all are making me embarrassed to be an American again.

I was just about to turn off my laptop after writing this when I decided to sign in to Facebook for a second. My friend Will Sanborn posted something that caught my eye: a December 21 article in the Telegraph newspaper entitled, “US military ‘ready to engage in a conflict with Iran'.” Apparently military officials just need a green light from Obama and we’re ready to go.

Here we go again.

Sources: USA Today, Reuters, Raw Story, IfAmericansKnew.org, Media Freedom Foundation’s Project Censored.