PERSISTENT, SUSTAINED, AND GROWING

There was an acronym I used in my teaching many years ago:

PERSIA.
The letters stood for political, economic, religious, social, intellectual, and artistic realities of any society we were studying.
Each general area was further subdivided for purposes of study.

It was a helpful way to learn about how people were doing in whatever period we were studying.

This morning, after a few coffees and toast and fruit and the like, I started to apply this old template to what is apparent about the current realities of our nation and the world in this year of 2012.

Dear Wife is away on her annual trip to family in Florida.
The house was quiet and Sophie did not mind if I spent some extra time with the computer and the piles of books and papers.
When Herself’s away, the mice will play, as it were.

I listed and subdivided and ate lunch and brewed tea and consumed tobacco and wrote and thought and wrote some more….

And the result was a list of concerns which would challenge the optimism of a very optimistic old gentleman, let alone this author who is often less than optimistic.

The descriptive terms that come most to mind as I write this brief account are erosion; degradation; irrelevance; ignorance; and other such terms and phrases.

A balanced approach, of course, would require a consideration of compensating factors, hopes for revitalization and renewal and so on.

And they too exist.
But my goodness, the assaults on the persia categories are significant, sustained, and growing.

Would that the remedies were also significant, sustained, and growing.

REASON TO HOPE

Let’s see if we can put it coherently.


iran, the nuclear wannabe, has but one ally in the Middle East, syria.

US directed regime change in syria would weaken iran, thus strengthening an already significant US presence in the region.
russia and china oppose anything that will enhance the US position, hence their support for syria and iran.

Israel does not trust b.o. and has its own perspective on nuclear matters in iran.

iran has repeatedly called for the annihilation of Israel.

Israeli and US military cooperation is significant. Publicly and probably, the leaders of the two nations do not trust or like each other.
Israel cannot wait to degrade iranian nuclear abilities as long as b.o. thinks he can wait, the result of the differing force capabilities of Israel and the US.

Should Israel strike iran, the US will be under immense pressure to support the effort…pressure hard, even impossible, for even a b.o. to resist, for the military/diplomatic necessities of supporting Israel will trump even b.o.’s peculiar view of US interests.

b.o. has made it difficult to avoid such a scenario by his handling of the incursion into Libya. His soft power nonsense compromised by a bungling of hard power in Libya has guaranteed the uselessness of any subtlety in undermining the Syrian regime, making the necessity of a military strike against iran probably inevitable.

We have every reason to hope that it will be made clear to b.o. and his regime that domestic US politics and misguided understanding of the real world of international affairs must give way to rational, necessary actions to successfully deal with very real threats to the welfare of the United States.