Here We Are, Back in a 'Cuban Missile Crisis' Moment
Hopefully not my last article...
I never thought I’d have to write about the possible end of the world.
And yet, the bone-headed prep-school boys advising the bumbling Biden have allowed the Middle East powder keg to reach a point that it could very possibly ignite a global nuclear war.
With Iranian missiles reportedly already raining down on Israel and a fleet of bomb-carrying Iranian drones making their way slowly over Iraq, Syria and Jordan towards the Jewish state in retaliation to Israel’s criminal air strike on a. Iranian consular building in Damascus Syria, President Biden is said to be “talking with” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
If what he’s saying isn’t something along the lines of “Don’t you dare launch an attack on Iran if you ever want to see another god-damned bullet from the United States!” then he should be run out of office on a rail (assuming we make it to November).
Biden didn’t scold Israel for bombing a foreign consulate as he immediately should have. That attack went uncondemned by the allegedly “rules-based” US government. Instead he warned Iran not to retaliate against Israel for its attack on Iran’s diplomatic property — despite that attack being a grave violation of international law as such property is by agreements dating back to the 19th Century considered part of an embassy’s home country. Instead of blasting Israel for this egregious provocation, Biden assured Israel “We have your back,” and that “America’s support for Israel is iron-clad.”
What did he think Iran would do in response to that attack? Sit on its hands? Of course not! It said it would retaliate against Israel. And what does Biden think Israel will do now?
The likelihood is another step up the escalator: perhaps an aerial assault on Iranian military bases, or worse, a nuke dropped on Iran’s uranium enrichment site. What do Biden and his grossly over-confident and out-of-their-depth national security and foreign policy advisors think Israel attacked the Iranian consular building for, killing several top Iranian generals? Netanyahu and his war cabinet want to push the US into a war against Iran. They knew Iran would retaliate and hoped such an attack as is now undeway would draw the US into attacking Iran—especially if Israeli civilians were killed.
Cold logic, but at that point it’s game on. And then where does the escalation stop?
Have these idiots thought past step two before taking step one?
World War One, one of the most destructive conflicts in human history, began with the killing of Austrial Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Because of a network of international military mutual-aid agreements, that onw act of a terrorist quickly spiraled outward until most of Europe was at war.
The current situation, incredibly given the incredible slaughters that have occurred twice since then, is quite similar. Iran has mutual-aid agreements with both Russia and China. Israel has close ties with the US, and Biden has all but promised to come to Israel’s aid if it is attacked, as is now happening.
Unless someone says, “Stop! This is madness!” we’ll be in World War III in a matter of days or even hours, given that things move a lot faster now than back in 1914.
The world came close to disaster in the 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when only President Kennedy’s backing away and agreeing to a secret deal to pull Jupiter missiles aimed at Moscow from a base in Turkey convinced the USSR’s Nikita Khrushchev to remove missiles out of Cuba. Only a courageous Soviet sub captain’s refusal to okay an order to launch a nuclear torpedo at a US Navy ship that was dropping depth charges on his vessel prevented all out nuclear war.
In this case, only the United States can actually put a stop to the catastrophe. Netanyahu has been playing Biden for a fool ever since his genocidal IDF assault on the people of Gaza began. Biden pleads publicly for him to “kill fewer Palestinians” but privately keeps sending the Israeli Defense Force more F-35 fighter-bombers, more two-ton bombs, more tanks and howitzer shells. It’s a joke!
Only halting all arms shipments to Israel can stop the killing in Gaza, and only stopping all arms to Israel can eliminate the risk of an Israeli attack on Iran.
Netanyahu certainly knew that Iran would seek to kill some Israelis in retaliation for Israel’s killing of Iranian generals in a raid on its main diplomatic compound in Damascus. He wanted that attack on Israel to happen, assuming it would increase US domestic pressure for US retaliation against Iran.
The US can stop this catastrophe. It can tell Israel to stand down. No retaliation. It’s time to bring the United Nations in, both to enforce a cease fire in Gaza, and to cool tempers in Israel and Iran. Israel should be told that there must be a lasting peace settlement with the Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank, and the beginning of negotiations toward an agreement to create a viable and independent Palestinian state. No ifs, ands and buts, and no more military support if those terms cannot be accepted fully. Iran can be warned that having retaliated for the grievous attack on its embassy compound it must step back too, on pain of being attacked by the US should it engage in further attacks.
An eye for an eye ends in blindness for both sides.
And in a world with nuclear weapons, tit-for-tat military escalation ends in one giant global nuclear disaster.
I hope to be able to write a more positive piece about this crisis using the past tense, but right now all I’ve got is the “tense” part. Tjhere ae more ways for this to go wrong than to go right.
And so far Biden has been doing everything wrong in this crisis.
He doesn’t have the luxury of getting the next step wrong.
Everyone in the Middle East needs to cool it, and only the US can make that happen.
American leaders are fond of saying that the US is the “indispensable” nation. It isn’t really, but in this instance, it is: With the most powerful military arrayed around and across the Middle East, and with Israel, the strongest military nation in the Middle East, dependent upon it for its weaponry and the financing of its military, it is the only country that can control Israel’s behavior.
II’s time for the US to do something that doesn’t come naturally to its leaders: to try and cool things down instead of exacerbating conflicts.
Okay, its Sunday morning, and we're still not in a nuclear war. It seems clear that Israel was deterred from launching an attack on Iran, at least for the moment. It instead is attacking Iranian forces in sites within Syria. That is likely the result of US pressure not to have a direct conflict between Iran and Israel. We're still not out of the woods on this though. Clearly the key to getting the threat tamped down is an end to the slaughter in Gaza.
So true. Peace.