A New Cold War? We Had Better Hope So

As anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock over the last week or two knows, there has been a massive buildup of military hardware in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea. These arms come from a wide variety of countries, all of whom, if you believe George W. Boosh are our “allies.”

Who is Coming to the Party?

Ships and war items are arriving in the arena from the long list of the following countries:

Turkey, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Denmark, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Poland, Bulgaria, Egypt, Canada, Great Britain, Israel; plus assets from members of the Selective Security Treaty Organization, Russia, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Belarus. Venezuela is backing the effort with supplies but thus far no troops.

As you can see, this is quite a list of folks who I presume Boosh is speaking of when he tells the Iranians and North Koreans that the “world is against you.” Though I would love to believe that he is right, the problem is I don’t. What I foresee happening with this group of “amassed thunder” in the Persian Gulf area and in the Mediterranean Sea is far different from the vision Boosh has of the same group. I will explain.

Over the course of writing the Real Deal, I have said too many times to count that the world has had enough of our arrogance, bullying and presumption that they will stand for us telling the rest of them how to live. Who are the rest of them? Take a look at the list above. How many of those countries do you believe that we can count as true allies should the unthinkable occur, the unthinkable being George W. Boosh deciding that it is wise to fire upon Iran? I would say three, and two of those are tenuous at best. Maybe none, when push comes to shove. The three are Great Britain, Canada, and Israel. The citizens of Great Britain have shown that they will not tolerate for much longer the blind faith that their soon to be ex leader, Tony Blair, has placed in the United States and specifically the Boosh administration. Canada joins us almost by default; since they join borders with us they really have no other option at this point. Israel, on the other hand, may or may not be with us. I wrote long ago that I am suspicious of their true alliance, and remain so today.

North Korea

To do this subject true justice, you must consider what has occurred recently in the fiasco with North Korea and the proposed UN sanctions. At the behest of the United States, with the usual Boosh cowboy “my way or the highway” rhetoric, the UN pushed through emergency sanctions against the PRNK. To see how meaningless these sanctions will be, one only has to look at the Republic of China. After the US gave up most of what it really wanted, a full embargo of the North, the Chinese announced that they would not inspect cargo headed into or out of North Korea. They did this before the ink was dry on the sanctions document, thus immediately rendering void any hope of these sanctions having any meaningful deterrent. Now Condi Rice will go through the song and dance of visiting Asian countries, attempting to get them on board, something that should have been done long before now. Keep this situation and the Chinese stance in mind when considering the rest of this subject.

The Showdown

It is time that the façade came down and that the Boosh administration stop pretending that the upcoming standoff with Iran is about anything other than what it is really about, and that is OIL. To suggest anything else is beyond believability. Not that I need to tell you guys, but this is what Iraq was about, Iran is about, and the future of this country is about. It has nothing to do with democracy, caring for the people of other countries or any other such nonsense that this administration spews. End of story. The problem is that other countries, including large and powerful countries such as China and Russia need oil as well. They are also not overly fond of the fact that we use much more than our fair share of this resource. To think for one second that they are going to stand by and watch us ramrod our way through the Middle East to continue our current status as the largest user of imported oil in the world and continue the status quo is naïve at best, deadly at worst. So, what might happen?

Go back to the above mentioned countries that are arriving in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea. Take a close look at who is there, what alliances have been building over the last 5 or so years, all 25 of them. Then try to imagine who is on who’s side. Boosh would like to pretend that all of these nations are arriving in the region in step with the US to show massive force to Iran and Syria, proving once and for all that the world will not stand for anyone other than Israel being a nuclear power in the region. Like most of his thinking, this is simply delusional. These other powers assembled there are not afraid of admitting the real reason that this is happening; they don’t have to try to fool their electorate. Not being worried about mid-term elections or legacies affords these countries the luxury of being there simply to protect their interests, and of saying so aloud. And, regardless of what this administration chooses to believe, catering to the United States of America, the bully on the block, is not an exercise that they wish to continue following. They have bowed to us and feared us long enough, and now it has become a life or death struggle. Not just for us, but for the entire world, as we all best position ourselves for a share of the last of the worlds dwindling oil supply.

My guess is that once everything is in place, once all countries have arrived and have their weapons directed at Syria and Iran, and that once the US decides to make the final take it or leave it offer to the Iranians, we are going to be in for the shock of our lives. I foresee the ships, warplanes and missiles of our “allies” to change targets and turn directly towards the US. Why? Because everyone likes a winner and the US will not be the winner in this situation. We will not be the winner because we have lost the moral authority to rule this planet, something that we have talked about on numerous occasions in the past. We will not be the winner because THE WORLD HAS HAD ENOUGH OF US.

Can you blame them? What have we done for the rest of the world lately? We have promised untold amounts of aid for everything from food to AIDS money and medication, and delivered none of it. We have blown Afghanistan and Iraq to hell and back, with nothing to show for it other than a resurgent Taliban in one, a Civil War in the other, and a whole bunch of dead people, including American kids in between. We have destabilized the Middle East, never a bastion of stability in the first place, to the point that it has become a powder keg, a powder keg that happens to hold the future of the world in its fragile hands. That is because it has the oil that we all need simply to survive. If you look around the Middle East today, can you tell me who is in charge? On second thought, don’t bother. I know you can’t. I can tell you a few folks who are NOT in charge though, that being the new democratic governments that we have put in place in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor the United States of America. Beyond that, chaos is the rule of the day in those two countries. Should we begin the same type operation in Iran and Syria; the entire Middle East will go up in flames, resulting in similar chaos throughout the region. The world can’t afford that, and everyone seems to get that fact but Boosh and his cronies. Business as usual is not an option anymore, and we are the last to realize it.

Saving Grace?

The good thing is this. China, Russia, and most of the above mentioned countries will not allow us to further destabilize the world or its oil supplies. They won’t because, like us, their very survival depends upon those supplies. The bad news is that we don’t have a clue how Boosh or his administration will react when faced with the very real possibility of being given the middle finger by the rest of the world. Hopefully, he will do the sane thing and we can have the 21st century version of the cold war. A long term standoff with warships poised and ready to go, staring each other down, much like the soldiers in the Korean DMZ. Boosh can then continue talking tough and doing nothing and maybe we can all stay alive for a little while. That is the best possible result that can come from this latest Boosh atrocity. The alternative is his arrogantly calling what he perceives as a bluff and triggering today’s version of the shootout at the OK Corral. We all know how that turned out.

Conclusion

This upcoming showdown was and is inevitable. We as a nation cannot continue to march around the world and tell others how to live, taking what we want and think we need along the way. Boosh said that he had “political capital” and that he was going to spend it. Whether or not he actually had any political capital is doubtful, but regardless he has more than spent his share. He spent it from Abu Ghraib to the shameful legislation that was recently passed allowing us to torture prisoners at will. There are simply too many examples of where he has overdrawn his account, and you all know where they are anyway. So do others in the world, which brings us to where we are today.

I will say it one more time. The world has had enough of us, and they will not take it any more. We have pushed and shoved, bullied and rattled our saber one too many times. Now we have forced the showdown of all showdowns. The forces are assembling as we speak, and they are assembling in close proximity to one another for the first time in the history of this world. In mass quantities, from more nations than one should care to count. The question is, in whose direction will the guns be aimed? I shudder to think.

Cyclone