With the U.S. Military’s latest foray into Iraq now over, and interest with the fighting in Afghanistan waning, the last thing our government should be doing is gnashing their teeth in preparation for an all new war, but that is just what they are doing with Iran.
With the oil fields of Iraq now properly divvied up among international interests, the insatiable thirst for a new source of petroleum is turning the greedy eyes of Western nations to Iraq’s bitter rival to the East, Iran, and they are reading from the same script they did when they tried to scare the U.S. people into supporting an invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In 2002 and 2003, the U.S. government was using the unproven threat that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) as the reason to immediately invade the Middle East nation. This threat turned out to be a fabrication. When an Associated Press reporter in 2004 asked the man who headed the U.S. weapons-hunting team in Iraq, Da– vid Kay, about the severity of Iraq’s chemical weapons arsenal, Kay said, “It is less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point.”
With Iran, the US is testing the waters of public opinion by ceaselessly mentioning Iran’s bourgeoning nuclear program at every opportunity. This is a similar tactic to the one used by President George W. Bush’s administration to create an environment of alarm that eventually won over the public’s support for invading Iraq in 2003. During his third State of the Union address in January, President Obama said, “Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from get- ting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.”
Has America been at war so long and often that it cannot imagine its existence without it, or does our economy need war to stay afloat? Our economy used to be based on science and innovation that in- creased our lifespans and improved our quality of life through higher education and improvements to health care, but ever since the early 1960s, our economy has come under the control of the military industrial complex and most of the latest advances seem to be military related. We must heed the lessons from our own history in order to stop this vicious cycle.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex,” warned President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation in 1961. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
As a nation, we have been at war for 33 of the last 100 years. Do you ever wonder how nations like Sweden and Australia can provide free college educations to their citizens, well; one of the reasons is that they are not constantly invading other countries. With cuts to our education budget, a crumbling infrastructure, and record unemployment being just a few of the vexing problems grip- ping our nation, it’s time we stop the constant march to war and take time to build up our own nation, instead of having to rebuild the countries we unjustly destroyed.
