The View From Olympus: The Next Stupid Neocon War

Last week’s most important news event received remarkably little press.  According to the February 14 New York Times, shortly after landing in Poland for a major international conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed truth.  

No sooner had he landed that the prime minister’s Twitter account announced “an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries, that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”

In case anyone doubts that this was a case of committing truth, the Times reported that “An hour later, the Twitter posting was changed to ‘advance the common interest of combating Iran.’”

So Israel wants war with Iran, and so do several Arab states with loud voices in Washington, especially Saudi Arabia.  From an American perspective, the problem is that both the Israelis and the Saudis will want the United States to fight the war for them.

This promises to be the Iraq war all over again.  American neocons were major players then in devising a new strategy for the destruction of every Arab country that could be a threat to the Jewish state.  Iraq was first on the list.  But then, as now, America was supposed to do the fighting, take the casualties and pay the bill.  The neocons worked on a president who had little understanding of foreign policy (though Trump is a great deal brighter than W.) to do their bidding, and he fell for it.  The result was a disaster for America and the region (and, ironically, Israel).  We lost more than 5000 young Americans dead, tens of thousands wounded, trillions of dollars wasted, and the Iraqi state destroyed, to the benefit of Fourth Generation, non-state entities such as Al Qaeda and ISIS that are real threats to the U.S. and Israel, which Saddam’s Iraq was not.  We also destroyed the main regional power that was blocking Iran’s quest for regional dominance.

Now, we are supposed to make up for that blunder by going to war with Iran.  The result would likely be even worse.  Iran has three times Iraq’s population, is more competent militarily, and can cut off the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf, creating a major gas crisis here.  The Pentagon will think it can restrict the war to an air and sea contest, which we could easily win.  But the Iranians can strike back on land, going after American troops in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan and potentially ending up with thousands of American hostages.  At that point, what’s our next move?

There is also a good chance a defeated Iran would disintegrate as Iraq did, creating yet another happy hunting ground for 4GW entities.  Those entities, once again, would be far more threatening both to the region and to us than is Iran.  Indeed, it is hard to see how Iran is today such a threat to the U.S. that we must go to war.  Iran threatens Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, but a war among those countries would probably not suspend oil shipments from the Gulf for very long because they all need to export oil to keep their economies functioning.  Beyond that, how is Iran a threat to us?  Terrorist incidents in the U.S. and Europe have overwhelmingly been carried out by Sunnis, not Shiites, often Sunnis trained in madrassas funded by Saudis.

But there is a real danger to Israel here, and it does not come from Iran.  Heartland Americans are tired of wars where their kids get crippled or killed for reasons no one can explain.  The fact that the U.S. was manipulated by unregistered Israeli agents into the war in Iraq is not widely known, at least to the public.  But public reaction against a war with Iran would develop quickly and strongly.  Can Israel be certain the American people will not figure out that our troops are serving as Israel’s unpaid Hessians?  In the age of the internet, control of the mainstream media may no longer suffice to sweep the truth under the rug.  What happens if ordinary Americans in large number start pointing the finger at Israel as the cause of our latest disaster--and when they are correct to do so?

By attempting to repeat its “success” in pushing America into war with Iraq, using the same technique, Israel risks revealing the man behind the curtain.  Should the American public turn against Israel, to whom will Israel look for the external support without which it cannot survive?  It would not be the first time Israelis brought the temple down on their own heads.

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.