Iran is now trying to hold America hostage, threatening the United States: if we "misbehave", they will disrupt the flow of oil out of the Middle East. Who couldn't see this one coming a mile away? After all, without oil, Iran would be an irrelevant backwater. This is another reason why we need to fire the current politicians in Washington and replace them with right-thinking people: if we were drilling for oil in ANWR, this threat from Iran, while not totally empty, would be much less significant.
As the election is nearing, we're hearing more and more about the same old election-year topics: illegal immigration and gay marriage. Here's news for you: illegal immigration will not be solved by the current political machine. It'll only be held over for twenty or so more years, until we'll be having the same debate all over again. The gay marriage amendment will be argued and debated, and then fade away just like it did last election.
The problem: the issues surrounding this debacle with Iran (and any other Middle Eastern nation) require drastic changes in US energy policy that will not be enacted due to petty partisan bickering and the environmentalist lobby. ANWR is change one. Reinstating drilling along our coastlines is change two. Increasing our refining capacity is change three. But this is just a short term solution. In the long term, we need (buzzword alert!) alternative forms of energy. Get away from dependance on Middle Eastern oil, and nations like Iran become the irrelevant backwaters that they should be...and they will no longer be able to hold US foreign policy hostage by threatening to withhold the mainstay of our economy.
On another note, the press has recently been hammering the White House over the alleged massacre in Haditha...and we'd also like to welcome back to the forefront the Vietnam comparisons. The so-called 'massacre' is now being compared to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which hundreds of civilians were killed.
Despite the obvious break-down of the My Lai parallel in that we're talking about 24 people as opposed to an entire village, the ecstasy the press seems to be going through over this incident is disgusting. If these troops committed the crime, they will and should be punished to the full extent of the law. But the press, especially here in America, seems to be pre-judging this case before the verdict is in...even before all of the evidence is collected (you can say 'allegedly' all you want...we can still tell). After all, there was another recent investigation into an 'alleged' massacre, in which the US soldiers involved were cleared of any wrongdoing. Already as a response to the Haditha story, the Administration is making all US troops go through ethics training...training which any and all officers in the military already go through. If these troops did commit this massacre, it wasn't due to a lack of training. Stop treating the American people like children (but, then, that's what political correctness is all about, isn't it?).
I go into all of this for a very specific reason: while the press is having such a field day over whatever happened in Haditha, they are relatively ignoring stories like this one: Iraqi militants dragged 21 students off of a convoy busses and murdered them. Ironically enough, the number of students massacred was almost as many as were 'allegedly' massacred in Haditha...and this is just one of many instances where the 'insurgents' have wantonly killed Iraqis in what the press called 'sectarian violence.' Is that how it works? If you're a US soldier and kill someone, it's a horrible, awful thing, but if you're an insurgent and kill someone it's 'sectarian violence'? Is that how this little game goes?
Let's get real here. If one murder is horrible, so is the other. You can't justifiably crucify US soldiers with no proof and, at the same time, explain away the enemy's actions as just being the usual thing. That's not how real life works.
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