Goodbye, Middle East

Good bye and good riddance

By Victor Davis Hanson

America doesn’t need the grief.

The United States is backing off from the Middle East — and the Middle East from the United States.

America is in the midst of the greatest domestic gas and oil revolution since the early 20th century. If even guarded predictions about new North American reserves are accurate, over the next decade the entire continent may become energy-independent, with little need of petroleum imports from the Middle East.

This coincides with mounting Chinese dependency on Middle Eastern oil and gas. So as the Persian Gulf becomes less important to us, it grows even more critical to the oil-hungry, cash-laden — and opportunistic — Chinese.

After two wars in the Middle East, Americans are as tired of our forces being sent over there as Middle Easterners are of having us there.

The usual Arab complaint against the United States during the Cold War was that it supported anti-communist authoritarians in the oil-rich Gulf and ignored democratic reform. After the 1991 Gulf War, the next charge was that America fought Saddam Hussein only to free an oil-rich, pro-American monarchy in Kuwait, without any interest in helping reformists in either Kuwait or Iraq.

After the Gulf War of 2003, there was widespread new anger about the use of American arms to force-feed democracy down the throat of Iraq. Finally, during the 2011 Arab Spring, the Arab world charged that the United States was too tardy in offering political support for insurgents in Egypt and Tunisia, and again late in “leading from behind” in helping European nations remove Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy. Now the Arab world is hectoring America to help overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Let’s get this all straight. America has been damned for its Machiavellian shenanigans in supporting authoritarian governments; for its naive idealism in using force to implant democracies; for its ambivalence in not using force to protect democratic protestors; and for its recent isolationism in ignoring ongoing Arab violence. Why, then, bother?

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Go Ahead Iran – Make Our Day

US Sends Ships, Fighter Jets to Brace for Iran Threat

The United States has quietly moved significant new military forces into the Persian Gulf to discourage an Iranian response to new sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic.

The American moves are designed to deter Iran from any attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz and to increase the United States’ ability to strike into Iran if necessary, The New York Times reports in a front-page story on Tuesday.

The increased American forces include minesweepers and stealth jets. And a Pentagon official warned that if Iran’s navy harasses American vessels, “We’ll put them on the bottom of the gulf.”

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Iran Rattles its Sabers Over U.S. Persian Gulf Presence

It appears Iran’s top Islamofascist puppet (Achmadinejad) is up to his blowhard bluff tactics again. This time he’s rattling his plastic sabers scimitars over U.S. Naval presence in the Persian Gulf. It would perhaps be more apropos to say Iran is “rattled” by U.S. Naval presence (which is exactly why we’re there).

Perhaps we should fire a missile up his six o’clock, as Reagan did with Khadafi, and Iran’s chief nut sack would certainly shit his burqa and sling tears like the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz flick. It’s worth a shot (pun intended).

Until he stops threatening Israel and actively disturbing and undermining Middle East peace processes (or until we get a spineless Dem in the white house), I’m assuming we’ll stay put and even add more vessels to the show. It’s completely up to Iran.

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