If You Want Peace, Prepare for It (The Iran Airstrikes)

By Wayne Allensworth

I hope the “Midnight Hammer” airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities are the end of American involvement in this latest Middle East embroglio, but we have reasons to fear that we could be dragged into another quagmire. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have all stated that the United States does not intend to get involved in a boots-on-the-ground regime change war. And despite his call to “Make Iran Great Again” (MIGA), the president denounced the neocons and “nation-building” efforts during his recent visit to Saudi Arabia. But a very large fly is in the ointment. The United States still has thousands of troops in the region — and no apparent plan to get them out of harm’s way or to reduce American interference in the Middle East.  

Retaliation by Iran or any of the groups who are supported by Tehran or sympathize with the Islamic regime would require a U.S. counterattack, a situation that could easily spiral out of control. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would love to see that happen. His plan all along over the last 25 years has been to hype a perceived nuclear threat, first in Iraq, then Iran, to provoke an American response. He got his way in Iraq and the region has been in turmoil ever since. Regimes in Libya and Syria were toppled. Result: The region is less stable — not more. Netanyahu wants regime change in Iran, though no one seems to have any ideas about what might come next or how invading and occupying Iran, a taller order than Iraq, might make the Iranians less hostile to Uncle Sam — an uncle who constantly backs the Israelis.

The argument from those who support the strikes is this: If Washington allows Iran to develop nukes, Tehran would threaten us with a nuclear attack. A few points are worth considering. First, the United States has a vast nuclear triad precisely to act as a deterrent to such an attack. Any enemy risking an attack on the U.S. — even with, say, the “suitcase” and “dirty bombs” that are the McGuffin in so many post-Cold War thrillers — would also risk nuclear annihilation. Such a threat, and some personal diplomacy by Donald Trump, prevented nuclear escalation with North Korea, also on the list of “rogue” regimes during Trump’s first presidential term. I don’t think the Iranian mullahs are any more unhinged than Kim Jong Un. Individual religious martyrdom is one thing. Seeing your entire society destroyed is quite another. In any case, Iran has no delivery systems that threaten America. Moreover, as I observed earlier, if an “Islamic bomb” is the specter that haunts us, Pakistan, which harbored Osama bin Ladin, is a nuclear power. It possesses land, air, and sea-based nukes, and has condemned the US attack, warning about escalation of the conflict.  

If the United States government goes down the road of reacting violently to every perceived threat that could materialize, this country will commit itself to the “forever wars” MAGA supposedly doesn’t want. Another point that I’m sure the War Party will bring up: As a friend told me, the only way to be 100 percent sure there are no nuclear weapons in Iran is to invade and occupy it. Nobody wants to repeat the Iraq debacle or Afghanistan, but a slippery slope argument can be made. We may get boots on the ground, want it or not. 

And has anyone considered just why they, in this case, the Iranians, hate us? As I noted above, the hatred of the U.S. in the Islamic world that drove the 9/11 fanatics and motivates the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah is a direct result of our backing of Israel, of American weapons being used to kill Muslims, and of endless U.S. interference in the Islamic world.

The Cold War era geopolitical rationale for interfering in the region — countering Soviet influence — no longer works. The U.S. is not dependent on the region for energy in the way that Europe is, especially as the EU seeks alternatives to Russian oil and gas. As Vance observed in his texts that emerged during the Signalgate affair, only a very small percentage of the ships that pass through the Suez Canal are American. Europe, Russia, and Turkey all have a much bigger stake in what happens in the Middle East. It’s time for the U.S. to reassess its policy in the region, to remove the US troops that are a tripwire for a potential war, and to stop subsidizing, much less carrying out, Israel’s wars. 

As I’ve stated many times, the conflict we must win is here — at home. It is demographic, social, economic, and spiritual. “National security” in its most meaningful sense is not wrapped up in nebulous “interests” thousands of miles from home. The only truly vital interests we have are much closer to us, in our own neighborhoods, at the southwest border, and in combating the Blob and its massive bureaucratic machine. If you want a real and proximate threat to U.S. security, look no further than the narco-state that is Mexico. Media propaganda has largely ignored the real story of America’s dangerous erosion, of declining birth rates, the collapse of marriage, increasing suicides, drug addiction, declining life expectancy, de-industrialization, and the massive national debt, which approaches $38 trillion.

We have made some initial progress in Trump’s second term, progress that could easily be frittered away in another war. Trump should turn down the bluster and bravado a notch or two. By issuing ultimatums on the international scene, he risks painting himself into a corner. He might end up going to war for the sake of “credibility” instead of urgent necessity. The Iran strike has already caused some serious cracks in the MAGA coalition. The Deep State, the Blob, the globalists, the neocons, the Zionist lobbyists … all are arms of the same Octopus that is strangling us. And they do not want to see America First as a reality.

For my MAGA friends, Fox News, with a few exceptions, is largely an Israeli mouthpiece. Americans have a bad habit of supporting or condemning U.S. policy based on whose policy it is. If Kamala Harris were in the White House and bombed Iran, many of them would get back to denouncing the neocons and their forever wars. And the Dems attack Trump about the bombings because it’s Trump who ordered them. It’s not like previous presidents of both parties haven’t been all too ready to drop bombs on distant countries. The only real question we must ask is whether any policy is good for the country. Americans seem to think of politics as a game, one in which fans support “their team.”

We have all heard the old maxim: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Yet, contrary to Robert E. Lee, we have grown to love war too much. We prepare for it all too readily and wage war in a knee jerk fashion. Bombing distant lands isn’t immediate enough to shock our collective conscience. It seems like a video game as we watch the bombs fall and explode. Too many of us have learned very little from the last 25 years of lies, deceptions, and disastrous wars. The version of American greatness to which too many of us subscribe is wrapped up in superpower status, in militaristic shows of strength, in missiles, high technology, and super weapons. A love of country based on jingoistic chest thumping is shallow, abstract, and equivocal.

We can’t seem to love our country for herself, because she is ours, because we and our children and grandchildren live here. We need to concentrate on setting our own house in order and not burning up billions of dollars, psychic energy, and political capital on wars that will do nothing to set us right and only create more enemies who hate us. We need peace abroad to carry out the necessary struggle at home. That struggle will require all our resources to win. After decades of hand wringing about the state of our country, we don’t seem to take the internal threat, the only one that really counts, seriously enough. That is the existential threat we actually face.

 I do not believe that President Trump wants American troops in Iran. I believe him when he says he wants to work toward peace. On Monday evening, Iran and Israel agreed on a ceasefire, but both sides are violating it. Trump is not happy about that. I’m sure Trump believes he can force the Iranians to conclude an agreement now that he has dropped some bombs and perhaps satisfied Rupert Murdoch and Miriam Adelson. In the meantime, Vance appeared to say that the Iranian enriched uranium stash is still intact. Vance further claimed that the U.S. would have “conversations” about the fate of that uranium over the next few weeks. Did Washington know that the uranium had already been moved, then bombed the facilities to destroy any further capacity for enrichment, at least for now, while making a show of supporting Israel? Then the Iranians could respond with the face saving and ineffective missile attack on a US base in Qatar, playing to their home crowd. It’s not clear. But as Professor John Mearsheimer has said, if Iran really wants nuclear weapons, it will get them sooner or later. Nobody can really stop it without a regime-change war and occupation. And the recent strikes may lend more urgency to Iran developing nukes. This game isn’t over. 

Some argue that the US can carry out limited operations against Iran’s nuclear program without a general conflict. We are moving perilously close to the precipice of a general war whether Trump wants it or not. If not now, then we face it in the future, if the U.S. does not disengage from the Middle East and scale back its military commitments. If we want peace, we must prepare for it. Prepare for it by bringing the troops home. Prepare for it by reassessing our security commitments. Prepare for it by loving America because she is ours. Prepare for it by truly putting America first.

Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of  The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood.

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