Well, the U.S. federal government has always portrayed itself as this “Great Father” to us all, as if we’re just his naïve children in dire need of education about how the world really works. We never bought into this crap, but played along with it to save time and avoid more pedantic diatribes from the Great Father. The feds never really believed it, either, in the beginning. But over time, they came to believe their own lie and really thought of themselves as this Great Father. Each president assumes this “Great Father” status as the fatherly figurehead of the usual Washington Great Fathers running the show. But can’t anyone see this is the dad who only calls when he wants to borrow money? The one who gets drunk at family gatherings and threatens everyone? The one who you see around town and if he doesn’t see you, you duck into the nearest coffeeshop to wait him out until he leaves? Most other countries have learned to do this with our Great Father. They’ve had enough of his angry outbursts at the Thanksgiving dinners where he flings the gravy boat against the wall and demands to know why he wasn’t seated at the head of the table. They’ve had enough of his demands that they loan him their lawnmowers when he consistently returns them broken. Just like that one time he swore up and down he could be trusted, and so they loaned him Iraq and he wrecked the whole place in one of his drunken binges. Sadly, we’re stuck with our Great Father, such as he is. Let’s look at the latest family dinner our Great Father is sitting at, simmering in his drunken anger, and about to explode.
Watching our Great Father Obama muddle through this situation with ISIS/ISIL is rather like watching an old Laurel and Hardy movie. Except Laurel and Hardy would have probably presented a sounder foreign policy—if we really need a foreign policy, with all its concomitant headaches. First, our Great Father tells us we don’t have a coalition to fight ISIL, then we might, now we do but they want to be kept a secret. After all, considering what the Great Father did the last time over there, who wants to even be seen with him now? But he is good at buying barroom buddies, I’ll give him that. Be that as it may, now Iran says the U.S. approached them but they said no because the Great Father has “dirty hands”. Bingo! The Iranian leader nailed it. The Great Father cannot be trusted because he always has an ulterior motive. And often one that, ultimately, blows up in his face. That is, unless the actual hidden motive is to go in, wreck the place, wreak havoc, then leave. Which is what the Great Father usually does at any family dinner he goes to, invited or not. Thus getting rid of any suspected contenders for Great Father status of other countries somewhere down the road, either real or imagined. The Great Father hates being upstaged. And so it took the leader of Iran to tell the truth to the American people about our Great Father.
Why is the West so obsessed with this region of the world? This has been going on since the Romans. It can’t just be the oil, though that is certainly the largest motivational factor now. But if we really needed the oil, the thing we’d have done in 1990 was to have cut a deal with Saddam. You can keep Kuwait, but you have to cut prices for us. Then we’d have used him as a rook keeping the Saudi king in permanent check on the chessboard. There has to be more behind this, but exactly what that is, no one yet knows. Maybe we’re running out of sand reserves. But what we’re doing in the Middle East doesn’t seem logical if uninterrupted flow of oil is our only goal. We certainly would’ve cut a deal with Saddam or, right now, Assad. Unless, of course, what we fear is the rise of a Middle East superpower, and so we topple anyone who remotely seems likely to create one. Even if it’s all just a delusion in the Great Father’s head. A Middle Eastern superpower would control the oil and could bring the West to its knees, so the Great Father probably suspects. And so he fulminates about “human rights” around the dinner table, seething with anger, and ranting on incoherently about it to deceive us and mask his real goals. But Iran detected the swindle.
This is the real fear over Iran developing nuclear weapons and a delivery system. We know good and well they won’t use them the second they get them. (But the reason the Great Father suspects this is because that’s what he did—twice.) But the real power behind nuclear weapons is in keeping them, not using them. Having them renders you practically immune from invasion because you can vaporize the cities of the invading nation. Now, if Iran developed several nuclear warheads plus a delivery system, they would be well on their way to becoming a superpower that would have to be talked with and not talked at. They’ve evidently already invented a “dog whistle” capable of calling down our drones. So, by now, they’ve certainly reverse-engineered drones based off those helpful “donations” and why build ICBMs when a small enough nuclear warhead could be loaded on to the drone and delivered anywhere on demand. Unlike ICBMs that are usually pre-targeted. If Iran could build itself as a nuclear power, it could offer its “nuclear umbrella” to just about any nation willing to join it in a Middle East version of NATO and the West would just have to swallow the bitter pill. This is the real fear of a nuclear-armed Iran. Not that they’ll use the weapons, but that they’ll keep the weapons and assert themselves into a position of power over the West which needs oil. This is one of the real reasons behind toppling Assad: To isolate Iran and remove one of their allies in a reverse “domino theory”. That’s the real reason (or at least one of them) behind jumping into Syria allegedly over ISIL. Iran knows this. That is why they called out the Great Father on his BS. But if the U.S. had a shred of intelligence, they’d make friendly overtures to Iran now and avoid the rush. Iran isn’t easily intimidated.
But what of this ISIL threat anyway? Seems to me there are several possibilities. The one that strikes me as most obvious is Russia waiting until we get our aircraft and ships into position, and then Russia declares they signed a military aid pact with Syria to defend Syrian land and airspace against any and all incursions, to include those of the U.S. So, in humiliation, the Great Father has to take his ball and go home rather than risk a war with Russia. Putin will take Obama to the proverbial woodshed in retaliation for the Great Father meddling in the Ukraine. What’s Obama going to do? Start a war with Russia over Syria? He’ll need the NATO nations to fight that war. But those nations will leave NATO quicker than patrons from a failing restaurant chain rather than risk angering a Russia just a hop, skip, and IRBM away from them. Obama will also need to draft Americans for such a war. And when our Great Father drafts, he won’t see any of the “Yes We Can” posters of his campaign. What he’ll see is “No We Won’t” posters and draft riots that’ll make Ferguson look like a community college cooking class. People who lost their houses, savings, and 401ks are not going to send their kids. And no one is going to sign on to go fight a war like that in the first place, with casualties in the hundreds of thousands. There will be civil unrest on a huge scale as people finally say, “Ok, that’s it! I’ve had enough!” Of course, the police will roll out their APCs and MRAPs but that’ll just anger everyone even more. At some point, the rioters will overrun some police line and commandeer one of those APCs and take it to smash into a federal building. From there, the riot becomes political and an insurrection in the bleary eyes of the Great Father. Homeland Security will fill their collective pants and order up a military response as politicians and other assorted junior Great Fathers everywhere go running for their fuehrerbunkers. Then Assad and Putin both will say, “What happened to the tough guy scolding Assad for using his military to put down protestors?” That’s what Obama risks getting into Syria, a known friend and ally of Russia. Americans are not going to go quietly into a war with Russia. Especially not when they know Russia can park some ballistic missile submarines off both coasts. The Russians can probably call on Venezuela for air and naval bases, too. One wonders if the banks have a plan to collect mortgage payments on vaporized houses.
And if our Great Father Obama backs down on Syria should the Russians intervene? Well, Russia will be the new sheriff in town for that region of the world. They’re not opposed to cutting deals with Assad, or the Iranians for that matter. They can control a lot of oil. What’s the West going to do about it? Fill their gas tanks with UN resolutions? The Russians could go in, clean up Iraq, and garner that oil in the process as well. The Saudis will be scared and seek to shelter under the new Russian umbrella. Everyone else will follow suit out of self-preservation and Israelis will be looking into buying property elsewhere. Now gas goes to $10.00 a gallon, when the stations have gas. People already scraping by can’t scrape anything else and they start getting hungry. Cue the riot police again, because people are going to be angry when they start missing a few meals. Maybe a few states, Texas for example, say “It’s been nice, but we need to go our separate ways and start seeing other people…” and kicks the Great Father out of their house. Maybe Texas secedes and forges its own ties with other countries. Perhaps even Russia, the new oil superpower. Why not? Russia can offer protection which the Great Father obviously can’t. Europe will tell the U.S., “Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into!” as they scramble to kiss Putin’s posterior.
Or it could go as usual. The Great Father goes in, wreaks havoc, destroys a bunch of stuff, gets everyone fighting amongst themselves, then leaves. Mission accomplished. Just like that problem dad who shows up at family dinners, gets drunk, and makes a shambles of the whole event. Meh, what can I say? We learned how the Great Father really was a long time ago. The Great Father never did have any class and he never could be trusted. He’s a drunken, boorish, strife-stirrer and that’s why the rest of the family avoids him like the plague. No one invites him to family dinners but he always finds out about them and invites himself. Everyone tries to hide the booze, but he brings his own just in case. And whoever’s house it is that was unfortunate enough to have hosted the family gathering is sure to lose their best china as it crashes against the wall thanks to his angry, drunken outbursts. No one has time to hide their best dinnerware because they didn’t think he’d find out about the dinner party. Or that he’d be so clueless and classless as to show his face there after what he did the last time. But, alas, they hear the bad muffler on his beat-up car outside and say, “Oh no! The Great Father is here! Quick! Hide the booze!” That’s our Great Father for you. By the way, your Great Father wants you to call him. He left a message and said he needs to borrow a few trillion dollars to buy a ball bat so he can teach a lesson to his neighbors who he says have been pilching apples off the tree in his front yard. He also wants you to help him do it.
