Monday, March 19, 2012

Do You Really Want Another War?

Let's think clearly about this. Do we really want to get into another war in another Middle Eastern country? Do we really want to take on another regime that supposedly poses some great threat to our safety? Do we want to go down this road again?

Do we have the money to go and invade another country? Have we been cutting spending and reducing our debt? Is our economy improving? Are employers hiring? Is our standard of living rising? Do we have the financial resources to topple and install a new regime?

Have we studied and do we know the enemy? Do we know what their people are like? Do we know generally how they feel about their government? Do we know their religion? Are they Sunni or Shiite? What is the difference between a Sunni or Shiite? How does the Iranian government feel about the new Iraqi or new Afghani government? Do they support Hamas, Hezbollah, or neither?

As to the actual threat, do we know that they are building a bomb? What type of bomb are they building? Where are they building it? Do they have the resources to actually pull it off? Are they even enriching uranium for weapons? Are they allowed to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes? How does the Ayatollah feel about acquiring nuclear weapons? Do the people of Iran like the idea of their government acquiring weapons?

Before we even begin a hot war, how would we asses our cold war? How effective has our intelligence been recently? How well do they know the area of Iran? What effect have our sanctions had? Have they crippled the government? What do the people of Iran think about our sanctions? What do they think about the US national government? What do they think about American people?

Have we remembered one of the most famous quotes from Sun Tzu's Art of War, "It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle."?

And this is just a short list of question. I would hope that at the very least we would be able to answer these questions before we push for war with Iran. I think that most people who are agitating for it cannot answer even half of these. And if history teaches us anything, it is that this does not matter, and we will invade anyway and ignore the consequences of our actions. Iraq was only 10 years ago. Do we really want to do what seems to be almost the exact same thing?

2 comments:

  1. If Israel takes matters into their own hands, you can bet we will be drawn into it.

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  2. Though I don't understand why that is necessarily the case. These foreign entanglements really are killing our economy. I worry that it will do to our government what it did to Russia when it came to the aid of Serbia during WWI.

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