Gentle reminder: You can be both patriotic enough to love the members in our armed forces and intelligent enough not to want them in an utterly useless, protracted conflict.
If you follow in the steps of senator Lindsey Graham, please recognize your selective memory before it’s too late. If you don’t know what I mean , he declared Iran’s retaliatory strike, which did not injure or kill Americans, an act of war. Asking you to care about our Iraqi allies killed or injured in that attack is too much, I know (see how quickly we dismissed the Kurds). It was a response the Irani leadership was forced to make in order to save face. And we should all be thankful because, if that attack is the extent of their response, they will have shown us more thoughtfulness than any of our rightwing media is willing to do, let alone our dear Commander-in-Chief.
Look at Hannity, parading 14-year old footage of his visit to Al-Assad air base, to show his “connection” with our military there. True bravery. And senator Lindsey Graham, “57 times” he’s visited Iraq and Afghanistan, no doubt under the strictest security detail. It’s like when I’m supposed to feel gratitude when long-time, millionaire senators are described as public servants and praised for their sacrifices, as if they lived in squalor every day they held public office. 57 times–shouldn’t Lindsey Graham, of all people, be more critical about our presence there? Shouldn’t he be asking himself why he’s making so many trips and seeing so little progress?
We don’t want regime change, Graham says. We’re not doing what Obama did in Libya. Obama—Obama! We’re not doing what Obama did. What we’re asking the Irani leadership to do is something that will make themselves obsolete. That’s not regime change. As long as Fox News doesn’t call it that, it’s not that. Please, consume the media you wish, but do so through a critical eye. Fine, no regime change. What are the goals America is trying to achieve?
- “Their ballistic missile program needs to change.” They have short and medium range missiles. What do you mean by change? They shouldn’t have any missiles? Is that fair to ask a sovereign nation?
- “They need to stop being the largest state sponsor of terrorism.” In other words, they should not be trying to influence events outside of their country, in order to serve their interests. Break through the selective memory and ask yourself, “Is terrorism objective?”
- “And we need a nuclear deal that does not ensure them a pathway to a bomb, Like Obama’s.” Easier said than done, we’re all finding out now.
America and Iran, right now, are playing Minesweeper. They’ve been forced to do so and each side is very carefully pressing on a block, hoping that it doesn’t blow the whole thing up. We have 52 sites in our sight, Trump says, to represent the 52 hostages taken by the Iranians in 1979. Break through the selective memory and ask yourself, “Why did the Iranians take those hostages?” Might that also have been in response to something instigated by the United States? Even a cursory study of history will show our fingerprints in just about every major conflict in the last 70 years, many of which continue to hound us to this day: Cuba, North Korea, Russia, instability in Central America caused by CIA-backed coups, instability caused by the War on Drugs, domestic strife caused by the War on Crime, international strife caused by the War on Terror, Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan—oh, the monstrous sins of our fathers!
Iran will be smart to keep their strikes over there, far away, because if there’s any sort of strike here, it’s game over. Trump will tweet “OBLITERATION” and blow away the façade behind Graham’s “no regime change.”
