The Eve of WW III?

Joe Lieberman and John McCain seem determined to start World War Three. Lieberman's motives seem clear enough, he is an avowed and uncritical Zionist. McCain seems to suffer from the delusion that if we just send enough troops into Iraq "victory" will eventually be ours. It is not clear to me just where these two think we will find enough troops to add to those we have in Iraq now. If they think they can just institute a draft and send more and more of our fine young people there to die for Bush's ego and corporate friends they must be clearly insane. There is, happily, no support for their absurd ideas on the part of the American public or virtually anyone else.

When you consider their desires, along with the rumor that Israel is planning to take out Iran's nuclear facilities with nuclear bunker-buster bombs, you can see this is not something to take lightly. This would be madness in the extreme. Assuming that Iran is even close to having nuclear bombs (which apparently they are not), and assuming that Israel could destroy their capacity (for a time), this would not prevent Iran from retaliating in all sort of ways - not the least of which would be to drive the price of oil out of sight, to say nothing of promoting terrorist attacks all across the world. And as much as the Arab world might not be enamoured of Iran they would certainly not condone such Israeli actions. If this did not lead immediately to another world war it would inevitably lead to the eventual destruction of Israel. The Israelis, having failed so far to get the U.S. to attack Iran, apparently believe that if they attack the U.S. will support them, which, given the mindless support we ususally give Israel, we might. It will be Israel and the U.S. against the entire world as it is highly unlikely that anyone in Europe or Asia would be sympathetic, including Britain. The Israeli tail is wagging the dog of disaster.

Obviously there is nothing that can be done about it now, but does it not occur to anyone that trying to establish a Jewish homeland on purloined land in the heart of the Arab world was not a very good idea? Ah, Colonialism, you will never rest in peace, you will haunt us forever.

In the meanwhile we go on continuing to ignore the permanent bases and the half billion dollar embassy we are building in Iraq, evidence of our own colonial desires. Somehow, when anyone speaks of withdrawing our troops they never even mention this obvious problem. To this day, to my knowledge, no one has ever officially stated that we will not establish permanent bases in Iraq, not the Democrats and certainly not the Republicans. Iraq is to have a puppet government and become for all intents and purposes a U.S. colony. This is the "victory" that must be achieved before all else. Do not expect to see our troops coming home until they are literally forced out as in the case of Vietnam. We may get a raise in the minimum wage. We may get some kind of ethics reform. We may get some tax reform. We might even eventually get universal health care. We are not going to get out of Iraq. I truly hope I am wrong.