Mr. Thin Blue Line

The argument that America is only in the Middle East because of Israel is not just wrong. It is historically illiterate and anyone parroting it just wants to revise history. America’s strategic interest in the Middle East predates the modern state of Israel. Franklin Roosevelt met with Saudi Arabia in 1945, three years before Israel existed, to establish America’s relationship with Gulf oil. The Truman Doctrine, the Eisenhower Doctrine, the Carter Doctrine, all of them were built around one thing: keeping Soviet hands off Middle Eastern oil and keeping the global energy supply out of hostile control. This was always about oil and geography. The Middle East sits at the intersection of three continents and controls the energy supply of the entire industrialized world. America would have a vital strategic interest in that region if Israel had never existed at all. The 1953 Iran coup was about British oil interests and Soviet encroachment. Not Israel. The 1958 Lebanon intervention was about Arab nationalism and Soviet influence. Not Israel. The tanker wars of the 1980s were about keeping oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran-Iraq war. Not Israel. The 1991 Gulf War was about Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia. Not Israel. In fact Israel stayed out of it entirely at American request even after Saddam fired Scud missiles at Tel Aviv. America fought that war to protect Arab oil states, not Israel. The 2001 Afghanistan invasion was a direct response to September 11th, which was planned in Afghanistan by a Saudi national running an organization funded by Gulf money with ideology rooted in Egyptian and Saudi Wahhabism. Not Israel. The 2003 Iraq invasion, whatever you think of it, was about weapons of mass destruction claims, regional dominance, and finishing what 1991 started. Not Israel. And now Iran. America’s conflict with Iran began in 1979 when the Islamic Revolution took 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. Before Israel had anything to do with it. Iran has killed over 500 American soldiers through proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran plotted to assassinate a Saudi ambassador on American soil. Iran directed attacks on American embassies and bases across the region for decades. Iran was months from a nuclear weapon that its leadership had explicitly said it would use to threaten America’s allies and eventually America itself. Every single one of those is an American interest and an American reason to act that has nothing to do with Israel. The argument that Israel is why America is in the Middle East is based on nothing. America was in the Middle East before Israel existed, stayed in the Middle East for reasons entirely independent of Israel, and has fought its bloodiest Middle Eastern conflicts against enemies who were America’s enemies first and Israel’s enemies second. Israel is not why America is in the Middle East. Oil, geography, Soviet containment, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and 47 years of Iranian aggression directed specifically at the United States are why America is in the Middle East. Now I have heard a lot of people criticize this war, a lot of lazy people who refuse to actually engage with the history and what’s going on in that region. So let me ask them this; what was Donald Trump supposed to do? Was he supposed to let them enrich, or are you going to be a child and pretend like they were not enriching uranium to get to a nuclear weapon because some podcaster told you so? What is the specific path forward when it comes to a relationship with Israel? What specifically would people like to see happen? How is that going to secure our national interest in that region? And how are we going to deal with Iran and their seven terrorist proxies that attack American bases? I want actual answers to those questions, not a bunch of lunatics running around screaming Neocon.