NEXT MONTH will m
ark 16 years since the Pearl Harbor event of our lifetime — the attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the aborted flight that crashed in central Pennsylvania,
What has happened in the aftermath? Since that terrible day, the United States, under three presidents, has found itself locked in war in the Middle East with the saber rattlers now looking at Iran and North Korea.
After the Japanese and Germans surrendered in 1945 and the beginnings of the Cold War, we have been a nation at war. Ask yourself these questions. What have we gotten for it? What’s been spent? What’s been lost?
I used to believe it was the politics of war in the Middle East. We know from reading history British soldiers arrived in southern Iraq to protect the oil from Persia. At that time the United States had no interest in the Middle East or for that matter any imperial designs in that part of the world. We were still dealing with Latin America and banana republics.
We have talked about it many times on my award-winning radio show and here in the column about what the British and French did to the Middle East after the First World War. American soldiers died in Iran during the Second World War. It’s hard to tell young people today but we were helping the Soviet Union and protecting Iranian oil. After that it seems to me we just stayed. Truman accepted the British Mandate for Palestine and it is game on.
Since that terrible day in September, the U.S. has been in involved in five wars in the Middle East. Let’s see if there’s a scorecard.
Afghanistan. I remember people telling me the U.S. was gong to bomb the Afghans into the Stone Age. How is that possible? They’re already there.
The United States has spent a trillion American dollars and thousands of young American lives and what have we got?
It gets worse.
Iraq. Hard to believe but a bigger disaster. George Bush is the worst American president, certainly in my lifetime and, could be argued would catch the blue ribbon with Woodrow Wilson. Is there any question Iraq is worse off than it was in 2003? The death toll will never be known. The cost incalculable and growing.
Libya. We got rid of Muammar Gaddafi in order to create a companion country for Somalia. And, of course how about Yemen? Those Houthi rebels are backed by Iran and Al-Qaeda. How can you not benefit from that?
I know all of you libs want to blame George Bush. You got my vote. He started two wars with no plan, in fact with lies.
Obama, if you’re a conservative, started or continued smaller scale wars. The result is the same.
Tell me, from watching military action and expenditures, have things gotten better or worse in the Middle East in the past 16 years?
Does anyone believe that even more war will create a lasting peace?
In this time period between FDR putting American soldiers in Iran and up to today, with Donald Trump selling billions of dollars of weapons to the Saudi Arabians (see past columns on my love for the Saudis), the Taiwanese, Obama’s Iranian arms deal, is there any case for us to be involved?
The United States should leave the Middle East as we speak.
If you read the history of Ireland you know that terrorism is a consequence of imperial rule and wars. Locals are unable to defeat the imperials so they impart high cost thru terror. Whether it’s Jewish settlers against British, Serbs against the Austro Hungarians, Vietnamese against the French or the crazies on 9/11 — As Peter, Paul and Mary once sang, “When will they ever learn?” When will we ever learn?
Out now.
— Peter Boyles