— We have no right to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Iran is no threat to the United States, with or without such a weapon. 

Our nation is reworking the same conflict on the same premises we used against Iraq, which we falsely accused of having atomic weapons. We just as falsely claimed it was a threat to us, and maintained the lie, especially to our own troops, that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Our country has no right to control Middle Eastern nations 7,000 miles away. We are building to another war there.

There is no honest debate in our country. The leaders and the press don’t question our right to attack Iran, just as there was no open debate about going into Iraq.

We have more than 5,000 nuclear bombs and are the only nation to ever use them in war.

Israel, Iran’s main antagonist in the Middle East, has hundreds of nukes. Israel won’t join the International Atomic Energy Agency or allow inspections.

Israel is far more belligerent than Iran, having attacked both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip in the past few years, killing thousands in both areas.

Iran allows IAEA inspections.

It doesn’t have a nuclear weapon yet, and it’s unclear it will acquire any.

A nuclear-safe world requires all countries with nuclear bombs to gradually disarm in step, which is what the United States is supposed to be doing.

We leave Iraq, the country we invaded in 2003, with more than 4,400 Americans dead, 30,000-plus seriously disabled, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead. That country has 5 million of its citizens displaced by the war, its religious groups attacking each other, and its industrial system in ruins. Despite the dictatorship, before the United States intervened, it had a strong middle class, and good medical and educational systems. 

The claims of both Presidents Bush and Obama that Iraq was terroristic are deceptions used to justify the invasion.

As for Iran, there the United States has been an imperialistic aggressor. In 1953, our CIA overthrew the elected parliamentary government of Mohammad Mossadegh to support the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., owned by the British, and in support of American oil interests.

We replaced that government with the despotic and cruel Shah Reza Pahlavi, a tyranny we actively supported. The overthrow of the shah in 1979 was opposed by the United States, which is why the revolutionary government held American embassy personnel hostage.

That Islamic-dominated government has been equally bad.

However, many Iranians, especially the young, identify with American culture.

We are implicated in at least four assassinations of Iranian nuclear physicists, are probably behind the “Stuxnet” cyber attack on Iranian computers, and involved in other covert aggressions.

Israel and the United States are threatening to bomb Iran if they deem it is getting even close to nuclear potential.

We are still fighting a war in Afghanistan, we have just finished an illegal one against Libya on deceptive grounds, and we are attacking targets in Pakistan and elsewhere in the area. The idea that any of these countries pose a threat to our existence is absurd.

Al-Qaida, the terrorist group, is small and disorganized. The Taliban, a resistance force in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is not an international terrorist threat, despite U.S. official denials to the contrary. We may be creating more enemies than we are eliminating.

Our domestic economy is in tatters. Our military budget is twice what it was in 1998, spending as much as all other nations combined. At most, the administration proposes small cuts – $50 billion a year – from the Pentagon’s current $646 billion plan. It also means to expand American forces dangerously in other regions, such as Australia and the Philippines, to counter China.

At the same time as this extravagant war spending continues, we are being told by our leaders that ordinary Americans must sacrifice, that they can’t have the health and retirement benefits they expected, that public education must be drastically cut, and that other public services, such as transportation and mail delivery, must be shrunk.

These wars are a distraction.

Excessive military spending undercuts our real needs and is a major cause of our national debt.

Presidents like to brag about military prowess in order to claim they are accomplishing something. Standing tall to bomb Libya or Iran looks good, they think, but actually conceals their failures in America.

We have fallen behind other countries in medicine, education and other important areas.

Our primary defense and security are in these areas.

 

Jim Scofield of Richland Township is a professor emeritus of English at Pitt-Johnstown.

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