My first experience comes from the civil war in Lebanon in 1976. And ironically, my second comes from Montreal, Quebec, 1998, when an ice storm deprived most of this Canadian province's inhabitants from electricity. A simple matter that initiated a chain reaction nearing a state of anarchy in the city to the point where the Canadian government had to dispatch its army in the streets of Montreal in order to control possible and real unrest.
Imagine, you are in the middle of the winter and your heating does not work. Even though you have oil heating, it should be started with electricity. So you go to the nearest convenience store and you buy a generator which, 24 hours after the beginning of the catastrophe, has become rare and very expansive. Then you go to the gas station where the credit or bank cards cannot work without electricity. So you have to pay cash. However, the banks aren't open because their employees cannot reach their workplace having to cope with children out of school, unaffordable gas prices, and stalled public transportation, and so on...You become really frustrated and angry.
If there is a war on Iran, and if the war lasts, this will surely be the case in our cities. And our armies won't be even around to defend us, they will be stretched thin defending Afghan and Iraqi 'democracies', and Israel's interests, against Iran's, as the only nuclear superpower in the ME...
Read here Seymour Hersh reporting on US secret operations in Iran
Admiral Fallon acknowledged, when I spoke to him in June, that he had heard that there were people in the White House who were upset by his public statements. “Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians,” he told me. “Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.”
When it came to the Iraq war, Fallon said, “Did I bitch about some of the things that were being proposed? You bet. Some of them were very stupid.”
Since March 29th 2006
2 comments:
Hi Sophia, welcome back from your trip. You seem ever drawn to the Mediterranean and I don’t blame you, my first ever holiday alone was Island-hopping in the Cyclades on a shoe-sting budget of $5 a day at the age of 20 and I never lost my fascination for it all.
I saw this proposed account this morning and while such a conflict is deeply worrying I find it somewhat "Tom Clancey" in its telling. I am confident that the American military would not engage in a proactive strike against Iran with war already on two fronts. If Israel took the gambol that their allies would assist following a surgical strike on perceived installations then I suspect they would swiftly learn how hollow the pro-Israel rhetoric of fawning politicians really is. Money talks and oil is money.
Wolfie,
You are right. When I think vacations, I am immediately drawn to the mediterranean. However, I visited faraway countries like Japan where we stayed for four weeks in 2004 and liked it very much but I feel at home anywhere in the mediterranean.
I hope your predictions for Iran are right. I am afraid we cannot afford another war right now.
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