Ike was Right

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” ~ Albert Einstein

Did anybody see the story entitled, “U.S. does not believe Iran is trying to build nuclear bomb” that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday?

The story opens, “As U.S. and Israeli officials talk publicly about the prospect of a military strike against Iran's nuclear program, one fact is often overlooked: U.S. intelligence agencies don't believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb.”

Kind of begs the question, “Then why are we threatening to bomb the crap out of them?,” doesn’t it?

I guess those who profit from war – the arms and commodity dealers, military and civilian contractors, politicians and black marketers – need to find additional ways to keep the dough rolling in now that we’re finished in Iraq and things are winding down in Afghanistan.

In his farewell speech to the nation on January 17, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower, our 34th president and a former five-star general in the U.S. Army, warned us about the military-industrial complex:

“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Too bad we didn’t really listen to the good general.

Our country’s involvement in Vietnam lasted from 1959 until the fall of Saigon in April of 1975. We invaded tiny Grenada in October of 1983. That same year, we bombed Lebanon in response to an attack on U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 soldiers. We carried out air strikes on Libya in April of 1986. We invaded Panama in order to oust Manuel Noriega a few days before Christmas in 1989. The Persian Gulf War began in 1990. U.S. troops participated in a United Nations “peacekeeping mission” in Somalia beginning in 1992. But wait. There’s more.

“Operation Uphold Democracy” took place in Haiti in 1994 and 1995. Our military “operated” in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s during the Yugoslavia War and bombed that country in the spring of 1999 during the Kosovo War. The “War on Terrorism” – perhaps the most ridiculous of names since terrorism is a concept, not a country or an enemy – began in Afghanistan in 2001, extended to the Philippines in January of 2002 and included the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. (We didn’t leave Iraq until last December and our troops won’t be out of Afghanistan until 2014.)

Oh, and last March we turned our sights on Libya and its evil dictator from Central Casting, Muammar Gaddafi. He was tortured and murdered on October 20 by “Libyan rebels.”

I’m not even referencing the fact that our military flies unmanned aircraft, referred to as “drones,” in Pakistan, Ethiopia, Yemen and elsewhere and maintains troops in 150 countries, including Germany, Japan, Korea, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Now, aided by the same corrupt corporate media that helped Dubya lie about Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction (the Los Angeles Times and a few other outlets excepted), we’re rattling our sabers at Iran for various reasons:

1) Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons (but it’s not),
2) Sanctions aren’t working (but they are),
3) Iran has threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz (but it hasn’t done so),
4) Israel doesn’t like Iran (so?), and
5) Iran doesn’t respect human rights as much as we want it to (like we have room to talk, right, Bradley Manning?).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not an anti-American, flower-waving peacenik who thinks our Armed Forces are unnecessary and pacifism is always the answer. I’m thankful for the sacrifices made by our soldiers and I recognize there are times when conflict is unavoidable and military action is justified. But not in this case. Not with Iran.

We know war with Iran is unjustified. We know it’s wrong. We know it will lead to unjustified death and destruction. Yet we allow ourselves to be distracted by abortion and “American Idol” and lulled into complacency because it’s easier than writing a letter or calling a politician. And when we do rally at our state capitals and march in our streets, it sometimes seems like it doesn’t matter.

But it does matter. As Dr. King said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” We need to refuse to be distracted. We need to vote and question and never give in. We need to keep fighting this country’s insatiable need to fight and bomb and maim and kill. It’s not about liberal vs. conservative. It’s about war vs. peace.

President Eisenhower also said, “I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

Let’s make our politicians get out of the way this time.

P.S. Speaking of politicians, I find it disgusting that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called for war against Iran last Thursday, telling CNN, “We need a president who can say the words ‘bomb them’ and actually can do it....” You’d think a guy who pranced around the Big Apple with his entourage in the days after September 11 wearing a surgical mask, dodging rubble and comforting grieving families would be a little more sensitive to the damage caused by myopic ideology.


Sources: Los Angeles Times, GlobalPost, Addictinginfo.org.