Discussing Liberally Salt Lake City

Click here for the Original Proposal and 17 replies which received 1,268 views before being transplanted here.

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The Original Proposal on 3/21/2011 was to examine Real Politik in relation to the U.S./British/French attack on Libya because that attack was condemned on the grounds that no American “national interest” was involved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, by senior members of the American media, and by key members of both parties in Congress including Richard Lugar (ranking minority member and former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).

Although not contesting the fact that the attack on Libya involved no American “national interest,” President Obama and State Secretary Hillary Clinton organized the U.S./British/French attack on Libya in order to avoid a “blood bath” if the rebellion were not successful.

Now, after refusing to support in 2009 the “Green Revolution” in Iran which then failed, the Obama Administration in the person of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta proclaimed on “Face the Nation” on 1/8/2012 that Iran’s developing a nuclear weapon is a “red line” and (after his co-interviewee, U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey, confirmed military planning for a strike against Iran HAS INCLUDED POSITIONING OF MILITARY ASSETS) Leon Panetta stated -- “I think they [Iran] need to know that if they take that step [develop a nuclear weapon], that they’re going to get stopped.”

[The transcript for the “Face the Nation” interview of Panetta and Dempsey is posted below in the “Reference Materials” section.]

Although neither Defense Secretary Panetta nor Joint Chiefs Chairman Dempsey provided any detail on positioning military assets, the media is currently full of stories about how the American aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln is racing across the Indian Ocean to join in the Persian Gulf the carrier Carl Vinson which recently replaced the carrier John Stennis. One carrier in the P.G. is fairly routine while two in the P.G. has only happened during Gulf Wars I and II.

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As we have studied in the past, The Gulf State Six (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman) plan to go nuclear immediately after Iran acquires nuclear weapons because, like Charles de Gaulle, they have no faith in the so-called American “nuclear umbrella.”

And as we have studied in the past, 27.7% of worldwide oil production comes from the Middle East and another 20.2% originates “down wind” from the Middle East. Which is why the Middle East has always been viewed as a vital American “national interest.”

It is ironic that the consensus of our foreign-policy cognoscenti is that the U.S./British/French attack on Libya has made it much more difficult to enlist support for doing anything about Iran and its “cat’s paw” Syria.

And it is ironic that our foreign-policy cognoscenti are now waking up to the fact that the U.S./British/French attack on Libya (whose President Qaddafi gave up his nuclear-weapons program immediately after the U.S. launched Gulf War II against Iraq in 2003) appears to have convinced Iran that the only protection against an American attack is to develop nuclear weapons.

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Our focus will be “Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy” (Harper Collins - 2009) by Leslie H. Gelb -- available from your local library and from http://www.Amazon.com for $11.20 + shipping.

Leslie Gelb crowned his 40-year Pulitzer-Prize winning career with the NY Times as OpEd-Page Editor and Foreign-Relations OpEd Columnist to become President of the Council on Foreign Relations which, inter alia, publishes Foreign Affairs, the premier foreign-policy journal. He had also served as a senior official at the State and Defense Departments and at the Brookings Institution.