Is It Too Much to Ask of Our Leaders to Put America First? Leave Us Out of Another Middle East War [View all]

[Better Believe It]

Weekend Edition April 13-15, 2012
Is It Too Much to Ask of Our Leaders to Put America First?
Leave Us Out of Another Middle East War
by JAMES G. ABOUREZK
JAMES ABOUREZK is a former Democratic U.S. Senator from South Dakota.

Today our government is arguing with Israel as to whether or not we will support Israel’s threatened attack on Iran. What is as certain as the sun will come up tomorrow morning is that, no matter what our position is, if Israel attacks, America will be blamed for it. I guess that, because we furnish money and weapons and protection in the U.N. for Israel, such collaboration would be difficult for us to deny.

For those who make such decisions, we can only hope that our government will do what it can to protect American interests with respect to Iran. I know it’s difficult in an election year to say no to Israel, but we are talking here about saving American lives, and saving our economy, which will surely go deep into the tank when crude oil prices spike to unheard-of levels as a result of such an attack.

Even more, gasoline prices currently are shooting up to the heavens because, as the press blandly reports, of “the tensions around Iran.” No one yet, either in the media or in the government, has asked exactly who is creating the tensions which drive up gasoline prices and, consequently, the prices of everything else we buy. It’s as though we are witnessing a Grimm Fairy Tale where, although the king has no clothes on, virtually everyone swoons because of the beautiful (invisible) robe worn by the king.

And there is almost no protest here against Israel’s saber rattling about Iran. But our government could, if it could somehow grow a pair of gonads, tell Israel outright that both American money and American political and military support will end should it decide to drag America into another Middle East war as it did in Iraq. It is my view that Bibi Netanyahu would drop the question of an Iranian threat once he has to consider the greater threat posed by the U.S. cutting off the gift of billions of dollars each year.

Read the full article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/13/leave-us-out-of-another-middle-east-war/