It is a beautiful, bright spring day in Bellingham, WA. Here at the edge of contiguous United States, busy educated professionals mingle with international visitors who are mostly British Columbian shoppers, but anyway...at least they're polite most of the time. Lulled by the serenity of North Puget Sound, the Salish Sea, Bellingham Bay...and protected by Joint Base Lewis McChord, Everett Naval Station, Bremerton and Bangor/Kitsap Nuclear Submarine Base, Whidbey Island Air Force Base. Here in the topmost corner of what was anti-communist Henry M. 'Scoop' Jackson second WA congressional district, most of us don't often think too much about being the gateway to the most important West coast naval bases in the United States.
Even most war protesting here is often a sedate affair. But a new war in the Middle East could change this. The drumbeats for 'War with Iran' have been beaten by two U.S. Presidential administrations for almost ten years now. For my money (which mean free analysis only), William Engdahl covers the roots of the Iranian-U.S. conflict with as little nonsense as possible (1, 2, 3, 4) . I will sum up his viewpoint: 'Never mind all the crap you read about a nuclear Iran threatening Israel. Our government wants a friendly client state in the Middle East so they can neutralize Russia and China.' It looks like Russia and China have no illusions about about our imperial motivations. So will Iran become the flashpoint that re-ignites the cold war? What would the effect of such a war be on our national and local economy? Not exactly topics that the main stream media is covering now, are they? Perhaps there won't be any media build up to such a war. After all, trying to rationalize the Iraq war through the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" logic wasn't a stunning publicity coup last time round.
Is the Obama administration militarism based on getting American imperialism done as quietly as possible while mollifying domestic liberals with leftist social policies? Hard to know, I suppose. However, we can know that war with Iran (and indirectly with Russia and China) could have unique international and domestic consequences. Clearly, Russian under Putin is signalling it will respond. Here are some recent links on War with Iran:
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