B. U. G. S.

Someone asked me a few years back about the possibility of war with Iran. He found my answer dead accurate and has asked me about it in the light of present events.

Clausewitz said that  war was diplomacy by other means. From the only point of view Ole Bob has anything special to tell you, war is politics by other means.

You will note that Obama’s first act after the election was to go to Afghanistan. This got him out of the country AND appealed to those who had opposed him. It was a good solid political move, on which this advisor-expert congratulates THEIR advisor-experts.

As Howard Hughes pointed out in 1940, “Roosevelt wants to get into this war and he will get us into it.” Once FDR was reelected in 1940, Hughes began transition to war production.

Sure enough, Roosevelt finally got his war by an oil boycott against Japan.

Before World War I, Europe was an armed camp. Bismark, “If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.”

Neither Hughes nor the Iron Chancellor were looking at the thing from the point of view of Thoughtful Commentators.

In response to 9/11, Bush invaded Iraq. If a nuclear device is used in the US or Israel, the United States will go to war against Iran. Iran is first on our War List, as the Axis was in 1941 and as Iraq was in 2001.

But the idea that the CIA can create such an incident is hilarious to me, not because I laugh at Conspiracy Theories like a Practical Man is supposed to, but because I have seen those Keystone Cops in action.

Roosevelt created his incident entirely by himself, by imposing an oil boycott on a country at war, which is an act of war. I predicted something like 9/11 long before it happened, right here.

Iran is now number one on our list of countries to go to war with. I am a bit suspicious that Israel has not bombed Iranian atomic facilities. They may be betting on an Incident, or they know Iran could hit them back, or a combination of the two.

But no one can predict the Incident. Many times countries were number one on our war list and nothing triggered it.

What I have said here is simply a plain English statement of what you already know. Iran is a war waiting to happen.

Will it happen soon?

That, too, is political. Obama is not interested in foreign policy. Obama, or his group I should say, do not like the military. But after the last election, he is much more likely to react to The Incident the way Republicans would because it would commend him to the part of the electorate he needs to appeal to.

Respectable conservatives today have never met a war they didn’t like. Anything that lets them see a guy in uniform is as popular at the Republican Convention as it is in San Francisco.

Since the 1979 embassy seizure a war on Iran has been much more likely, but real Incidents are rare in history.

But all this is looking at things very differently from the way you will see them anywhere else.