Quick hypothetical; Lets say you've been living in the same house in the same neighborhood for your whole life, generations in fact. There have been some minor squabbles but for the most part you've managed to get along with the neighbors. Then one day, some outside landlord buys the house next door. After several tenants come and go, a real loudmouth thug moves in, making threats, beating his wife and kids. Finally, the bastard truly breaks bad, tares down your fence and declares your backyard to be part of his property. After an epic battle in the courts, he finally returns to his property and eventually gets evicted. 'Great!', you think, naturally, and you even help the landlord clean up the place. Everything seems peachy fucking keen for suburbia. And then the landlord moves in.
Suddenly, this brash wealthy landlord is building shit up, putting up new outbuildings and sheds near the property line, erecting tall steel fences with razor wire. Suddenly, it dawns on you that the last tenant wasn't the problem, you were, and the last tenant was only removed because he wasn't trouble enough for you. And the threats start up again. Local street kids who you've helped out in the past are declared gangs and you get blamed for running them. The landlord accuses you of possessing certain weapons that your neighbors have and freely flaunt but you've never showed any interest in. Finally, after dealing with years of threats, you sign a deal with the landlord promising to stop procuring these fictional weapons if the landlord backs off. Things calm down for a tip. Then the landlord pulls out of the deal and shit gets nuts again.
The landlord starts telling you that you better not attack any of his installations on your property line, as if you've been the aggressor. He starts warning all of your neighbors how dangerous you are until even they start to believe it. Heavily armed men start stalking the neighborhood menacingly. A large armored vehicle parks outside your house at all hours. Whenever it shows up, you get a phone call from the landlord, telling you in a steely draw that you better not attack his truck. You call the cops. They agree with you that the landlord is way out of line but even they are afraid to get on his bad side. They tell you 'tough luck motherfucker' and hang up abruptly. The shit gets worse. Several vehicles in the neighborhood are allegedly vandalized and naturally you're the one to blame. Scared and isolated, you start stalking up on weapons which only makes the threats increase. Soon the armored vehicle is parking on your lawn, grinding it's tires into the sod and flicking lit cigarettes into your flower beds. And it dawns on you, as the phone rings with the landlord undoubtedly on the other end, 'these crazy fuckers want me to attack them..." What do you do? I'm not telling you, I'm asking you. What do you do?
In case you haven't guessed, this is a Straw Dogs-style analogy for America's insane harassment campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran. After a decade of fighting off the brutal attacks of America's Sumerian pit-bull, Saddam Hussein, Iran manages to put the little psycho in his place. The US finally turns on the maniac and overthrows him with Iran's help, only for it to become increasingly clear to helpful Iran that they were always the real target. You see, those damn Persians offended the landlord when they evicted his friend the Shah and got too close with their neighbors in the Kremlin. We strong armed them into signing a peace deal that kept them from developing weapons they likely never even attempted to acquire (though the Shah and Israel did), only to have us violate it and threaten them for not sticking to it even though they have. Over the last few weeks, Trump and his lunatic neocon death squad have stepped up the madness, repeatedly and menacingly warning Iran not to attack our imperial phalanx of illegal military installations surrounding them on all sides, blaming them for mysterious acts of vandalism that may or may not have even taken place and flooding the Gulf with cigarette flicking battleships and B-52 bombers.
So what did Iran do? So far nothing, which is the smartest move to make. Trump is literally begging Iran to strike and give him the Gulf of Tonkin he needs to justify the invasion he's been angling for since Sheldon Adleson paid him to do so. The only thing Iran can do is practice patience and allow the over eager warmongers of the administration-who-couldn't-shoot-straight to expose themselves for the fumbling aggressors that they are while China slowly bleeds their prolapsed empire dry. The so-called free world is still too petrified to stand up to that Helter Skelter ax murderer, Uncle Sam. But as his geostrategic failures begin to pile up higher than the corpses, from Korea to Iraq to Venezuela and beyond, it will become increasingly clear to these nations who have long been held hostage by this country, that it's days of primacy are numbered. We can only hope that Iran can wait out the landlord's clock and that Bolton isn't quite crazy enough to pull a false flag.
Keep the peace and keep hope alive, dearest motherfuckers. For where an empire is bleeding, there is still hope for peace and sometimes hope is all we've got.
Soundtrack; songs that influenced this post
* Let's Lynch the Landlord by Dead Kennedys
* Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones
* The Crying Game by Boy George
* I'm Waiting for the Man by the Velvet Underground
* Under Pressure by Queen & David Bowie
* Grow Into a Ghost by Swearin
* Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash
* Shitty Ballet by Bleached
* Rock the Casbah by the Clash
* Time is On My Side by the Rolling Stones
You created a good analogy.
ReplyDeleteI once saw a diagram on a libertarian site which had two pages: One titled "Countries that the US has bombed or invaded since WWII" and one titled "Countries that Iran has bombed or invade since WWII". There was a list with dozens of entries on the first page, and the second page was empty. Kind of puts things in perspective. The greatest "State Sponsor of Terrorism" is the US, hands down. This is well accepted outside of our borders, but the people here, by and large, just don't see it. This myopia will continue, probably, until the Empire is finally destroyed.