Other Voices | Tom Callaghan: Iran and the American Compulsion to do Dumb Stuff

Posted on August 4, 2021
The Biden Team has an early opportunity to do something stupid in Iran.

It’ s an American tradition. Caused, in large part, by a school of thought that holds that there should never be any “daylight” between American policy in the Middle East and Israeli policy in the same region.

Huh? What’s up with that? What’s the point of being a “sovereign” country if we have to adjust our strategic aspirations anywhere to accommodate a country that we generously support, who has spied on us to our severe detriment and has never put a soldier, of their own, at risk with us to fight in any of the wars they’ve advocated. They prefer to hold our coat.

If Israel is our partner, they are a very Peculiar Partner.

Harp on this subject very much and you’ll find yourself the guy with vacant seats on both sides when attending one of those silly assed meetings about “Strategic Imperatives in a Changing World.” It’s considered bad form to bring these matters up. It embarrasses folks who want to think of themselves as warriors for what is right and true, but who know our policy vis-a-vis Israel is indefensible but don’t want to lose their job or welcome in polite company by making a big stink about it. At least they haven’t been willing to do so, so far.

But, let me make a prediction. (Disregarding Yogi Berra‘s advice that “one shouldn’t make predictions, especially about the future.”) My prediction is that Israel has one last misadventure to urge upon us before it hits the fan big time. Which is the working man’s way of saying “sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.”

The Biden Team has already done one stupid thing to Iran. On June 22 of this year they seized an Iranian website that many folks curious about the world would consult. I mean you can’t watch Wolf Blitzer 24/7. The site, www.presstv.com came out of Teheran and I’m sure the Iranian Government dictated its content.

So what? What a juvenile counterproductive thing to do. It was an interesting source on how the Iranians looked at the world. I checked it out occasionally. Does our deeply unimpressive Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, have such a low opinion of American citizens that he doesn’t trust our ability to discern sense from nonsense without his very Israel-Centric guidance? Is Blinken, less in favor of the free flow of speech, than Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who never shut the site down?

C’mon Mr. Blinken. People are starting to talk. Continue Reading……

6 thoughts on “Other Voices | Tom Callaghan: Iran and the American Compulsion to do Dumb Stuff”

  1. There is an article up in the Washington Post, right now, reporting that the Israel’s Secretary of Defense
    threatens military action against Iran because of alleged actions by Iran in the Gulf of Oman. The
    Secretary, Benny Gantz, is scheduled to be Prime Minister in two years.

    There are exactly two comments up on the article which has been up for several hours.

    If Israel was serious, and if the Israel support community in the US was serious about this matter, there
    would be several hundred comments up supporting a hit on Iran.

    This doesn’t mean peace in the mideast. It does indicate that Israel is unlikely to push all its chips into the center of the pot on this particular incident in the Gulf of Oman.

    1. Correction:

      Benny Gantz is the Defense Secretary. Lapid is scheduled is scheduled to be Prime Minister in two years.

  2. Last night, 60 Minutes confirmed what I said about Iran’s retaliation for our hit on the
    Iranian Military Leader Soleimani. They hit us back, in one of our bases, with severe pain but no fatalities.

    Sixty Minutes did not mention that they warned us that the strike was on the way.

    The point is that no matter how big the adversary Iran will respond when hit without asking a bigger
    party to help them.

    People make the point that he (Soleimani) had “blood on his hands.” No kidding, he was a soldier. He killed other soldiers that were trying to kill him.

    I would argue that he was a far more honorable soldier the the late Ariel Sharon of Israel who was called
    out by our President Ronald Reagan for his butchery of civilians in Beirut, Lebanon, 1982.

    Look it up. It’s in Reagan’s Autobiography up around pages 416-419.

    1. There is a reason Jewish folks get included in so many conspiracy theories. It would help if the US media would cover the middle east accurately but that doesn’t happen too much outside of a few far left news sites.

      Speaking of the Southern American compulsion to shoot ourselves in the foot and do stupid stuff Mississippi is slap out of ICU beds as of this morning with a new Covid case count from over the weekend that our State Health Officer said implies another 500 hospitalizations within the week. There are currently 200 people housed in emergency rooms waiting for a regular bed. Things are fixing to get very ugly and that doesn’t count the unfortunate saps that have strokes, heart attacks or are injured in traffic accidents.

      I’ve lived over 50 years in Mississippi and have never seen the locals act quite like the special brand of selfish imbeciles they are today. Things are fixing to get far worse given the trajectory of the uncontrolled spread of the Delta variant in a population ripe for the taking.

      1. I saw Rep Taylor Greene the other day asking for a show of hands on who HADN”T been vaccinated
        and everybody gave them a round of applause.

  3. Let the “Blame Game” begin on Afghanistan.

    Remember, sometime around August 24, 2001, the CIA went down to the Ranch to brief
    George W Bush. They carried a paper entitled “Bin Laden to Strike in US.” Bush’s response,
    “you’ve covered your ass, you can go home.” A couple of weeks later, 9-11.

    It took Barrack Hussein Obama, the only President since Eisenhower to win over 51% of the Popular
    Vote twice, to bring Bin Laden to Justice.

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