June 13, 2019

There’s another war scare in the news today. Trump really needs a war. They’re showing video of a small ship in the Persian Gulf with smoke rolling off the deck. We see two ships. They call them oil tankers, but they look small. If you read the actual text in the newspaper story, you know that they were carrying naphtha and ethanol, not oil, but people only read the headlines. They just look at the pictures and listen to the spin doctors.
Iran is not going to start a war that they can’t win. If one happens now, no matter what it looks like, it’s Trump. The problem is, even if you know it’s a setup, Trump and the Republicans don’t need your permission. They only need an excuse that Republican voters will want to believe. They need a lie that will stand only long enough for them to escape into criminal history. Reagan, Nixon, Bush I, Bush II, they all got away with it. Only the small fish got busted.
There was another incident recently in the same area when two ships collided or something. The story looked weak. It didn’t have legs. Two days ago, the entire TV screen looked like 9/11 at the exact same time that Congress ran live testimony with John Dean about the Trump scandals. A helicopter hard landed on top of a skyscraper a few blocks from Trump Tower. What timing. That blocked out all of the live TV coverage of John Dean testifying about Republican presidents doing criminal cover-ups. This morning we have another incident with fire and smoke. The Republican Party is distracting us from prosecuting them, and they intend to use a phony war to tip the election. I’m 64. I read history, and I know the Republican playbook.
Let me say something about what’s really going on with these oil wars. Oil wars make profits for defense contractors, but it’s more than that. Most people assume that oil wars are to keep the price of oil DOWN. Oil wars are to keep the price of oil UP, and they’re about making other oil producing nations sell oil in US dollars, not euros or any other currency.
Oil companies like it when oil wars become quagmires, not when they end. Oil wars reduce the supply of oil on the world market. That makes oil prices go up. If Iran can’t sell oil because of trade sanctions or an ongoing war, the supply restriction makes Saudi crude more expensive and profitable. Saudi Arabia and Iran are enemies. The US sides with the Saudis. We fight oil wars for the same Saudi Arabia that bombed us on 9/11. Republicans protect the Saudis because the Saudis sell oil in US dollars. Republicans only care about profits, not our national security.
The day after oil man Bush bombed Iraq, prices at the pump by my house tripled. Think about that. Oil prices jumped today when the media released today’s picture of a fire on a ship in the gulf. Trump is day-trading too. He knows he can move the markets with a crazy tweet. Trump can tip his inner circle ahead of the tweet, and they can buy or sell shares that will be affected. He can tip them off again before reversing himself so that they can jump off the pump and dump etc. They can make money on the way up and on the way down too.
Trading oil in US dollars never makes the news. It drives the world. Iran is one of the few remaining oil producers who refuse to sell oil in US dollars. Forcing oil-producing nations to sell oil in dollars makes the US dollar stronger. The US uses its military power to force oil-producing countries to trade oil in dollars. US foreign policy is not about promoting Democracy, it’s about US gunboat diplomacy. Republican administrations are all wrapped up in big oil. They’ll sleep with the devil and or Saudi Arabia to keep oil prices and profits high. They’ll use economic sanctions to keep Venezuela from selling oil so they can trick starving people into a Fascist takeover of the democratically elected Socialist government.
There are many reasons that Trump and the Republicans are trying to maneuver us into a war. The election, oil prices, fighting Iran for Saudi Arabia, Trump day-trading his manufactured crisis, etc. The Republican Party would love to force a vote in Congress over going to war in Iran or somewhere else so they can paint Progressive Democrats as “weak.” These are dangerous times. Bush I was very unpopular right after he got elected. He tricked Iraq into invading Kuwait, and his popularity went up. Bush II stole his first election and lied us back into the same war. He actually said that his father ended it too quickly and that he should have extended it to his next election. That’s how Republicans roll, and Trump is going to do it again. He doesn’t need permission. All he needs is an excuse that his base wants to believe. The lie only has to last a few years. After that, when the lie is exposed, all of the Republicans and half of the Democrats will say we just need to move on.
George Carlin said that the US is an oil company with an army. Firewall Economics would stop that. National Defense should be Nationalized. See how silly that sounds? Private corporations shouldn’t be able to start wars. That’s not a radical idea. Republican President Eisenhower said that, but that was before the Republican Party went so far to the right that it’s no longer a stretch to accuse them of going Fascist.
This Republican Fear Strategy needs to stop before we see a mistake or an accident. There is no existential threat to the US. The US can vaporize the planet with the push of a button. We constructed our massive military deterrent to enable us to relax and enjoy a long peaceful existence. Republicans attack our peace of mind so that Republican politicians and corporate billionaires can implement their evil scheme to advance a Neo-fascist political and economic agenda. I call that treason. America could have done a lot for the world after WWII, but we blew it. Worshiping unregulated Capitalism was our biggest mistake. Future nations will avoid that dead end.