| May 5, 2006 Alaskan in Exile by Neil Zawicki The Iranians have threatened to harm Israel if the United States releases the Condor Legion and blows the crap out of their nuclear reactors, several of their military bases, and one or two vocational schools or veterinary clinics. Welcome to war country. Iran, as Middle Eastern countries go, has a good track record when it comes to standing up to the West. In 1979 – The last time we got into a pissing match with them – they snagged a collection of Americans and held them hostage. In response, we, under president Jimmy Carter, loaded a bunch of hard-charging commandos into a fleet of helicopters and went cocks-and-treetops toward Tehran, only to be caught in a violent sand storm and forced to crash land in the desert, and then be rescued by the Air Force. Not a good day for the elite forces. We didn’t get our Americans back until 1980, when Ronald Reagan sold weapons to the Iranians in exchange for their releasing the hostages at the same time he took the oath for his first term as president. Now we’re at it again. And this time, there are nuclear weapons involved, as well as an Iranian leader that makes our most vicious and reactionary conservative church-going politician seem like a dithering crossing guard. Iran won’t back down, and you can be certain that already the stealth bombers are going through final pre-flight check. The best thing that can happen to Iran right now would be for them to get bombed by the United States, and they know that. It would make them victims of a clear bully, trying to impose its will with blind hammers. And then they’ll whack Israel. And then the game will be on. Apparently, Iran and North Korea have been sharing ideas, as well as technological developments, and China would like nothing more than to try out some of its new military hardware. Meanwhile, even our national guard is stretched near the breaking point fighting Bush’s War, and each day the world gets a little meaner. The nut of the matter is that, try as we might, we as a power cannot possibly keep the rest of the world from doing what they want or from building what they want. The instant we detonated the first Atomic Bomb at Los Alamos in 1945, it was only a matter of time before the wrong people did the same. But it’s not just the bomb and our insecure attempts to keep anyone who doesn’t like us from getting one, it’s the world climate as a whole, and our role in cultivating it over the past 50 years. I long for the Cold War. That ordered, balanced [sic] arrangement where the two biggest boys on the block were squared off, and all the upstarts kept quiet. It was tense, but it was relatively secure, and economically viable. Now, there is only one big boy left on the block, and all the upstarts are circling with new confidence, and the big boy is getting nervous. Neil Zawicki, exiled Alaskan, is Editor at Large for Insurgent49, a former reporter for the Alaska Star, and winner of the Alaska Press Club's 'Best Columnist' award. He is now living out the rest of his days in an undisclosed location in Oregon. He can be contacted at - hondo23@gmail.com |
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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