by Leo Hohmann, Leo’s Newsletter:
Trump says ‘help is on the way’ but will he go in with boots on the ground, or try to accomplish the mission strictly with bombing raids? Either option is fraught with risks for America and Israel.
It’s starting to feel a lot like the summer of 2003. You can feel it in the air. The war drums are beating. The pressure building.
For those of you old enough to remember, the U.S. government in the runup to the Iraq war used politicians, the media and the evangelical community to spread fear and loathing of the Saddam Hussein regime. Our government was in a mad dash to war and wars are always accompanied with massive disinformation campaigns. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them at any moment, we were told. Babies were being slaughtered and all kinds of sensational stories were being spread by the media, both mainstream and alternative. Anyone who stood in their way with uncomfortable questions was deemed unpatriotic and drowned out by the raging noise of pro-war hysteria.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Switch Iraq out for Iran and I’m afraid we may be in for a repeat performance, only possibly worse this time around because the world power structure, both militarily and economically, has changed dramatically since 2003.
The U.S. is no longer the sole superpower capable of crushing any country that dares to challenge it. We have BRICS and we have a battle-tested Russian military, thanks to the U.S. funding and supplying their enemy in Ukraine. Russia is revved up and primed for a fight after four years of attacks from the West, both economically and militarily through the Ukrainian proxy. And we now have to contend with China, which is a thousand times more technologically and militarily advanced than they were 23 years ago. Like with Russia, we have no one to blame but ourselves for the rise of China.
We isolated Russia and forced them into a military posture and we partnered with China to make them rich. The Chinese have invested their American-fueled wealth wisely, as they are now technologically our equal and industrially our superior.
So before you click off this article in anger and dismiss me as a commie or someone who doesn’t understand the evils of the Islamic Republic of Iran, please hear me out.
I absolutely am horrified by what’s going on in Iran. The innocent deaths stacking up there are unconscionable. I’ve heard estimates of anywhere from three to five thousand dead Iranians to 20,000 or more. Who knows what the actual number is. But the regime there is brutal and will use everything at its disposal to smash the uprising. I get that. It’s horrible.
But I also am a journalist predisposed to geopolitical realism who doesn’t base my analysis on the emotion of the moment. I look at history and America’s track record in these types of operations. I see a trail of misery left behind by U.S. military/CIA interventions, whether directly or through proxies, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya and now Ukraine.
I don’t believe those encouraging our president to use U.S. military force to “finish the job” of crushing the Islamic Republic of Iran have fully thought through the potential for this operation to blow up in our faces. I’m talking about a bloodbath that will make the current situation look like a preschool picnic in the park.
There are a couple of ways this operation could go sideways and make the situation worse for both the people of Iran, the Mideast region and the world.
First, organizing an attack of this nature takes time and time is not on our side.
We have to get all of the military assets in place. We have to make sure our allies in the Arab world are solidly on board, or at least give assurance they won’t work against us. All of the different forces needed for a successful regime-change operation are really too numerous and complicated to go into here but suffice it to say, it doesn’t come together overnight.
