Despite the fact that ragtag insurgents in Iran and Afghanistan have bedeviled US forces for almost a decade, Americans continue to boast that the US is the most powerful military power in the history of mankind.
But if the vietnamization of these two wars is not enough to humble them, perhaps Iran’s role in aiding and abetting these insurgents might.
Because one of the most glaring demonstrations of the fecklessness (or pusillanimity) of American military power is the way Iran has been able to supply intelligence and armaments to America’s enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan with impunity. And, as if to incite what should’ve been reflexive demands for revenge among Americans, media outlets reported more evidence of Iran’s insidious aggression yesterday.
Naturally, this begs the question: why hasn’t the US retaliated?
After all, it’s not as if there’s any doubt about the fact that Iran’s fingerprints are on weapons (most notably those dreaded IEDs) that have killed hundreds, if not thousands of American soldiers:
Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to find Iranian weapons, including extremely potent roadside bombs-armor-piercing devices the military calls “explosively formed penetrators (EFP)”.
(Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell in a press briefing on May 20, 2009)
Yet, notwithstanding this persistent casus belli, the US, even under the purportedly trigger-happy presidency of George W. Bush, has responded with nothing more than hollow words.
Meanwhile, it stands as an instructive irony that the US went to war against the Taliban government in Afghanistan based solely on the fact that they were harboring the al-Qaeda terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks….
Frankly, given Grenada, Panama, Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems the US will only retaliate against countries that it calculates can inflict minimal casualties on US (and/or allied) soldiers. That clearly would not be the case if it were to retaliate against Iran (or North Korea).
Indeed, notwithstanding expressions of grave concern about the growing number of casualties from these ongoing wars, I have no doubt that the military considers the 5,130 killed an “acceptable loss.” (Bear in mind, al-Qaeda killed 3,000 Americans in one day….)
[In arming the Taliban] the Iranians are only doing to the Americans today what the Americans did to the Russians during the 1980s (when they were fighting an equally ill-fated war in Afghanistan). Anyone familiar with the derring-dos of Congressman Charlie Wilson, all of which are documented in Charlie Wilson’s War, knows this.
Karma: it’s a bitch!
Related commentary:
How can non-nuclear Iran be threat…
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