I prefer local issues, but the recent international topics are driving everyone’s interest, so I’ll add my two bits.
Unlike many of my friends, I am not a fan of Trump’s personality. I would prefer a more genteel leader like Ronald Reagan. But Trump is the duly elected leader of our nation.
I do like the fact that Trump is a man of action. One of the greatest problems of the huge U. S. government bureaucracy is that nothing gets done. Perhaps that’s a good thing. When the press complained about President Calvin Coolidge’s long afternoon naps, he responded that the less he did, the better it was for the country.
Coolidge also said, “If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they get to you.” And he said, “The words of the President have enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately.” And he said, “It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.”
Trump is no Coolidge, that’s for sure. Whether the Iranian problem would have run into a ditch before it got to us, nobody knows. But we are in it now.
For over a decade, the esteemed editorial page of the Wall Street Journal has been demanding that the United States stop Iran before they build a nuclear bomb. The editorials have been consistent, measured and reasoned. Trump was the only President to heed this call.
Like it or not, the Middle East controls a huge percentage of the world’s oil supply, as we are learning once again when the Strait of Hormuz is shut down, causing the price of everything to go up.
The world runs on oil and it’s not just gas for cars. Oil derivatives are used in virtually every product made. The world doesn’t function without oil and gas. So what happens in the Middle East simply cannot be ignored.
Given the fractious nature of the Middle East countries, with no dominant power, it is only human nature that a tyrant and his henchmen attempt to control the great riches of the Middle East oil reserves.
We saw that with Saddam Hussein, a cruel man who ruled by terror and murder, who eventually invaded Iran and Kuwait until the United States finally intervened and stopped his march to Middle East domination.
U. S. forces dragged Hussein from a hole in the ground where he was hiding, tried him, and hung him. The world is a better place as a result. Nearly 5,000 U. S. soldiers lost their lives in this effort.
With Iraq defeated, it was only a matter of time before Iran’s dictator and henchmen stepped into the void. Iran has been amassing military power for decades, threatening its neighbors with missile attacks and funding rebel groups such as Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen and Badr in Iraq. This was a clear sign that Iran strove to dominate and conquer the Middle East.
As Bruce Springsteen sang in "Badlands," “Poor man wanna be rich. Rich man wanna be king. And a king ain’t satisfied ‘til he rules everything.”
Iran poses a scarier threat than power/money hungry tyrants like Hussein or Venezuela’s Maduro. Iran’s leadership is founded on religious fanaticism. This is more dangerous.
I dislike fanaticism of any kind. I am a moderate. Every nation on the planet has some balance between socialism and capitalism. The exact nature of that balance is grounds for debate, but it’s not grounds for fanaticism.
Jesus, our Lord and Savior, understood the lure and dangers of political and religious fanaticism. In his day the Zealots wanted immediate violent overthrow of the Roman authorities. Jesus would have none of it, saying famously, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.” Jesus knew that the raging quest for each man’s soul would never be won or lost on the military battlefield.
Islam, in its fanatic form, is a militaristic religion. There is no turning the other cheek or loving your neighbor as yourself. It is about conquering and converting the infidels. To the Muslim fanatics, infidels are like animals and deserve to be treated as such.
Despite this ongoing, developing threat in one of the most economically crucial chokepoints in the world, the United States has been timid to intervene, even as Iran fomented terrorist acts against us and even plotted to kill our leaders, including the President. The U. S., if anything, has been patiently working diplomatic channels for decades.
The U. S. put this off as long as we could. We would have put it off forever except for one thing: the nuclear bomb, that weapon of mass annihilation that can never leave the paranoid imagination of every soul who walks our planet, a weapon that can vaporize millions in an instant.
We now know what happens when we don’t stop fanatics hellbent on acquiring the bomb. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, a communist fanatic, never stops threatening the United States with its ballistic missiles. We had a chance to stop him. We didn’t and now we have to live with the consequences of our inaction. Just last week Kim Jong Un paraded his tactical nuke launchers.
As for Iran, the government has often threatened to “wipe the Zionist entity off the map” (referring to Israel). They regularly refer to the United States as the “great Satan.” It’s just not a good idea to threaten the most powerful nation on the planet.
Meanwhile, Iran has been refining weapons grade uranium and plutonium at a purity level far greater than necessary for peaceful use. There is only one purpose for this: to build a nuclear bomb.
The U. S. has a special forces team already trained to retrieve this weapons grade fissionable material, which could all fit on one 18-wheel truck. But most of the material is buried under rubble from our bombs. We would need time and boots on the ground to excavate the material.
Iran's refusal to hand over the plutonium and uranium triggered this war. The U. S. offered to supply Iran with free non-weapons-grade uranium and plutonium in exchange.
Whether Iran would ever use a bomb is unknown, but clearly, they would use the bomb as leverage over the oil-rich Middle East. The threats and attacks would never end. Given the level of religious fanaticism, who knows?
But there are equally damaging threats that Iran still has available. The U. S. is still playing a poker game with the highest stakes possible. There are 1,000 tankers trapped in Hormuz. If just one big oil tanker leaks its oil cargo into the strait, the water supply of 60 million people will be threatened.
Even a tiny amount of oil in the water will shut down hundreds of desalination plants that provide 95 percent of the water to the populace around Hormuz. This would be a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Several major cities have no more than a week or so of underground backup water storage. This is a red line that Iran dare not cross, but they could.
The U. S. could wipe out Iran’s oil infrastructure in a few days, destroying Iran’s source of income. causing a humanitarian crisis. Another red line. High stakes poker.
Or the U. S. Navy could stop Iranian tankers from bringing oil to China. That would create a superpowers conflict
Can mere aerial bombing topple the Iranian government? It remains to be seen. What can you say about a country that shoots 10s of thousands of demonstrators, mostly young students?
Forty years ago the Iran-Iraq war killed a million people. This war has killed maybe 1,500 so far. That’s an improvement. The technology being deployed is mind blowing.
Welcome to real time history. It’s mesmerizing. Keep praying daily.
