AaronMichaelGordon.com           Voice of Degeneration
AaronMichaelGordon.com: Voice of Degeneration

On "Why We Won't Really Invade Iran."

Print the article

This entry was posted on 2/23/2007 12:25 PM and is filed under Politics, Environment, Global.

There’s a lot of speculation in the media about Iran these days, with many pundits wondering when Bush and Co. are going to mount a ‘pre-emptive strike’ against the country. Aside from the very obvious reason why ‘Operation Iran’ is off the table (take a look at the unending money hole that is Iraq,) I offer you another: energy dependency. No American stare-down is going to stop the Iranians from enriching uranium and supplying Hezbollah with weapons and tactical support. No doubt Condeleeza will whip out her “stink-eye” and hope for the best, because giving an opponent the “stink-eye” has proven to be such an effective strategy in the past (“Stink-eye”® is a registered trademark of Aaron Michael Gordon, all rights reserved.)

Furrowed brows aside, there’s no way the United States can combat Iran and its nuclear ambitions without taking out their main source of funding: oil sold to Europe and Asia. Following this thread, there’s no way that Israel can stop Hezbollah from continuing to re-arm their arsenal against Israel unless they stop Iranian cash from flowing into Lebanon. Where is this money coming from?

Well, it ain’t hummus.

So why aren’t we bombing the living hell out of the Iranian oil fields? It’s not like we have any particular cultural aversion to blowing people and places up. After all, we’ve been churning up debris in Iraq since the first Bush presidency, and aside from our own dead soldiers, the good people of the United States don’t seem to be concerned about the tens of thousands of Iraqis we’ve turned to hamburger meat. If this is the case, why are we not trying for a repeat performance in Iran?

Oil.

Let’s all have a brief lesson about the globalization of the energy marketplace, shall we? Iran supplies Europe and Asia with much of their oil supply. Since America has strict trade sanctions with Iran, our tanks aren’t filled with their crude…but what would happen if we decided to have a repeat of our military action in Iraq? (We would also have to fashion entire legions of soldiers out of thin air as well, but I digress.) Europe and Asia would then start to actively compete for our “stable” oil supply on the market (those clit-chopping Saudis are very good at stifling popular consent, no?)

Which means that the price of our black gold goes through the roof. Since the modern, electrified world is utterly and hopelessly dependent upon cheap oil, Bush and his cronies can’t exactly go and attack Iran without ending the vaunted American Way of Life™. If citizens are having trouble buying T-shirts at Wal-Mart today, imagine how nude and unfashionable we’ll all be when gas hits $10 a gallon. Or $20. Don’t get me wrong…it’s going to be a whole lot worse for the Iranians if we do this, since their oil basically buys their country food, clothes and all other supplies…but let’s not kid ourselves. The vast majority of Americans don’t give a rat’s ass about the state of the Arab world…beyond all of our oil beneath their sand. And yet, the only way America will stop the Iranians from funding their nuclear program and Hezbollah is to cut off the spigot.

Remember, this is a global marketplace: without something to sell, the Iran we fear would become an Arabesque Uganda or Ethiopia. And as we’ve seen, the West has given such a crap about those humanitarian disaster zones, no? In addition, Israel is going to have to get used to continued Hezbollah aggression unless… ta-dah! The organization formerly known as “threatening” no longer has the money with which to purchase weapons. And where is that cash coming from?

Iran.

Western Civilization has quite a little pickle tickle on their hands. They can only “suggest” and “stare down” Iran. This from the culture that fights for oil wherever there’s trouble (the new G. I. Joe doll has no body armor.) All Israel can do is hope that last year’s utter destruction of the southern half of Lebanon buys them a few years or so before the next wave of bombs begins to fall (in this region, it appears that the four hundredth verse is exactly the same as the first.)

Don’t get me wrong. I am not for another endless battle in the Middle East. I think going to Iraq violated so many of the fundamental precepts of our great nation that it’s going to take a great deal of time and work for this scar to heal…if it ever will. But that’s preaching to the choir, no? This message is for the rest of the country. The unfortunate majority that voted for style over substance. The cabal of people that don’t see the contradiction in electing a party standing for free market deregulation paired to social constriction. The heartland, “Right to Life” folk who see nothing wrong with blowing some “sand niggers” away for oi--…excuse me, for “freedom.” This is for that SUV-driving fat ass who just wants gas to cost $1.50 again!

Ethanol.

Seriously. The only way the United States is going to control the world energy market again is by changing the marketplace. As luck would have it, we killed a whole shit load of Native American Indians so that we could be blessed with the world’s largest, most fertile plot of land on the planet. Why not grow the fuel that makes the world turn on and off? There’s obviously a need to pursue an ethanol economy for environmental and internal market reasons…

...but it takes a village.

If I need to get the neocons over to the bright side, then so be it. Salivate over this: outside of perhaps South America, the United States has the land and resources to grow fuel on a global scale. Without firing a shot, America would secure the planet as one huge client-state. Without falling in line, the power goes off. It’s just that simple. Of course, many of the neocons are really aching to blow more shit up…so I offer this prize to them: a booming, growing American economy (buoyed by inexpensive ethanol fuel) that wouldn’t mind at all if you blew the oil fields of Iran away. That's the very reason these folks are Proud To Be An American. Heck, that’s just good business! Think back to General Motors and their purchase and closure of hundreds of streetcar lines throughout the nation and you get the idea. Competition is bad…it’s our fuel or no fuel at all.

Plus, imagine how secure Israel will be, as the only country in the area with electricity and the ability to launch weapons. Sure, they’ll be some “liberal” benefits to the switch to ethanol as well. Clean air. Energy independence. Jobs that by their very nature can’t be outsourced to Asia. A larger, more complete respect and protection of the land. It’s kind of hard to look at a farm and see “housing development” when that land can grow fuel, eh?

But…I’m sure the liberals are already onboard with the ethanol plan. That whole “cooking the atmosphere” thing was more than enough to get the Dems to go green. Sadly, we need the rest of the country to see the benefits of this conversion, and for them, saving the earth is much less important to them than saving the V8 engine or making certain that we're all in place for the upcoming Rapture. The switch to ethanol has to be as much for them as it is for us (maybe we should just call it "Christahol.")

So, c’mon America! We can have cheap gas AND bomb countries! We can ebb global warming AND still retain global dominance. We can own the most important market in the world…AND never have to worry that a bunch of crazed religious nuts will extort our mighty land. (Well, at least foreign crazed religious nuts.) We can have suburbia and the useless yards work for us, not against. If America is all about messy compromise, this one is perhaps the cleanest around. Who knew one could ever be an environmentalist FOR war? Or a capitalist that offered a tax write-off to a corn or sugarcane grower? Welcome to the next phase of America. Where we can be mean. AND green.

Aaron Michael Gordon
 

What did you think of this article?




Trackbacks
Trackback specific URL for this entry
  • No trackbacks exist for this post.
Comments
    Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

    Leave a comment

     Name

     Email (will not be published)

     Website

    Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.



      
    Copyright . http://aaronmichaelgordon.com. All rights reserved.