Just a Short "Excursion"

   George W Bush – 2003

                  Hegseth & Trump – 2006 

Just a Short “Excursion”

I’m one of those over-traveled, US born Americans, who, as a US diplomat’s stepson, has journeyed to what are currently Middle Eastern regions representing the hotbed of global financial instability (from Beirut to Tehran), the plunge in American influence, the failure of announced military victory to match the reality on the ground – or should I say the reality on critical shipping lanes – and perhaps the beginning of a good old fashioned recession… which were quite foreseeable. Since a seriously misinformed Donald Trump elected to wage WAR – what else can you call an all-out effort to decimate every facet of Iran’s military assets and demand “unconditional surrender”? – from Iran’s effort to attack US regional military bases to the de facto paralysis of that global passageway for 20% of the world’s oil and gas, the obvious has come to pass.

We still have not heard a clear and consistent Trump explanation of why this WAR started. Since the GOP-controlled Congress – lackadaisical in operating as a Constitutionally-endowed equal branch of our government – never authorized this WAR, but Israeli PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu did, you would have to believe that Trump is simply following Bibi’s masterplan. To do otherwise, if you listen to too many senior members of Congress, would be, as the increasingly meaningless use of the term suggests, simply antisemitic. That so many American Jews are equally against this WAR would suggest otherwise.

Yet an objective look at what Israel’s unsubtle goal for Iran has been for years – crippling of her ability to apply any force beyond her borders and accept total subservience to Israel’s needs – compared to US goals focused more basically on regional stability and a predictable global petroleum marketplace, you can readily spot the obvious inconsistency. There’s very little in Bibi’s plan that benefits the United States. And as our departing Trump-appointed counter terrorism Tsar has stated, Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.

Efforts to analogize this to our application of American force to Venezuela – where a tiny US military force removed a single, corrupt figurehead with no other bona fide governance changes – or even as seemingly mentally challenged South Carolina Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, suggested that a nation that took Iwo Jima in WWII should have no problem seizing key coastal areas of Iran’s oil pumping port facilities – miss so many points. That the US military took 27,000 casualties (of which 7,000 were fatalities) to take that small island atoll seems to have slipped Graham’s failing mind. Iran is a heavily militarized surveillance state, a theocracy where slaughtering its own citizens is viewed as God’s will (hey, Pete Hegseth, you are hardly alone in your God-justified perspective), where Trump’s call to overthrow this regime pits innocent but completely unarmed Iranian patriots against a powerful, unwavering but massive set of well-trained soldiers.

As the current drone warfare suggests, pitting these cheap Iranian weapons again truly expensive defensive American and Israeli defensive missive systems, is not working well. But wait, there’s more. That Iran also launched a sophisticated missile, reaching a joint UK-US base (Diego Garcia) 2500 miles away, came as shock, particularly to Europe, which is within range, even as that strike did not do any damage. Insurance carriers have let their shipping companies know that no matter the pledges of Trump and friends, traversing the Strait of Hormuz would vitiate coverage.

Inasmuch as the theocratic leadership – infinitely replaceable even as they are serially killed – does not measure “victory” in terms of US/Israeli inflicted damage, but rather in staying power and the complete controlled passage through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran stubbornly maintains it is winning this conflict. Tehran has managed to draw a bevy of US Arab allies into this conflict as well, with strategic attacks on military and civilian targets in those countries. Oh, and this: the price of oil has skyrocketed globally, and the damage to Iran’s infrastructure suggests that a return to normal is not in the short-term cards, and just might trigger a global recession, since just about every commodity and product on earth is shipped. This is not a momentary blip in oil prices!

There is this misperception that since the US is one of the major oil producing nations on earth, we are immune to huge price fluctuations in distant petroleum products we neither need nor import. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Oil and gas are global commodities, and a price rise anywhere is a price rise everywhere. It is as if all the oil in the world is dumped into a massive communal bathtub where it is priced for all purposes everywhere. This is why the cost of gasoline/diesel at US filling stations is soaring. Texas oil billionaires are happy; they benefit rather dramatically from this global pricing.

But reminiscent of George W Bush’s “mission accomplished” Iraq War declaration on May 1, 2003, ironically aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln – one of the two US aircraft carriers deployed in this WAR – Christian nationalist Secretary of WAR, Pete Hegseth, has joined the President in stating that we have won this conflict. Really? Our European allies did not join this WAR, because their intelligence services told them that this could easily escalate into one of those “forever wars” and that despite the damage in Iran (and knowing the regime would not fall or be taken over by unarmed protesters – read Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ “fodder’), Iran would never surrender.

But the Trump administration has maintained that we have already won. A few Marines have been sent to “hang around,” but a ground WAR is not what most Americans would tolerate. Been there, done that. As Trump and his mini-minion Pete declare victory, perhaps they should go to the WAR room and look at all those satellite images of tankers jammed together unable to cross the Strait of Hormuz… and ask themselves whose definition of victory actually matters. Wreaking global havoc, impacting the US economy like no other, increasing the wedge between the United States and its allies, and shutting off 20% of the world’s oil and gas supply, seems more like a genuine victory to me.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while having moved out of Los Angeles has impaired my ability to keep putting out the volume of blogs I have been used to writing, if the US can embrace facts… and if our democracy can right the ship, we do have a good shot of making America truly great again.