Pat Buchanan: Return of the War Party?

 

The total cost for Bush’s wars has now surpassed four trillion dollars (equal to over 26% of the current national debt), thousands of American soldiers killed and many times that injured, and tens of thousands of civilian lives.  And yet even as these wars continue to drag on and on, the current Republican NeoCon presidential candidates are calling for the US to start a war with Iran as well.  A country three times as big as Iraq, with more difficult terrain, and in a perfect position to cause chaos in our other two war zones if attacked.  Pat Buchanan writes about the resurgence of the war party faction of the Republican Party in his latest article:

Is a vote for the Republican Party in 2012 a vote for war?

Is a vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich a vote for yet another unfunded war of choice, this time with a nation, Iran, three times as large and populous as Iraq?

Mitt says that if elected he will move carriers into the Persian Gulf and “prepare for war.” Newt is even more hawkish. America should continue “taking out” Iran’s nuclear scientists — i.e., assassinating them — but military action will probably be needed.

Newt is talking up uber-hawk John Bolton for secretary of state.

Rick Santorum has already called for U.S.-Israeli strikes: “Either we’re going to stop them … or take the long term consequences of having a nuclear Iran trying to wipe out the state of Israel.”

But if Iran represents, as Bibi Netanyahu is forever reminding us, an “existential threat,” why does not Israel itself, with hundreds of nuclear weapons, deal with it?

Bibi’s inaction speaks louder than Bibi’s words.

He wants the Americans to do it.

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And why should thousands more Americans have to die or come home to be fitted for metal limbs so Israel can remain sole proprietor of a nuclear weapon from Morocco to Afghanistan?

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And there is no conclusive evidence in that media-hyped report last week from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran is for certain building nuclear weapons. Indeed, that report was exposed as the work of incompetents within hours.

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Are we being lied and stampeded into yet another war by the same propagandists who gave us the yellow-cake-from-Niger forgeries?¹

 

 

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