Winds of War in Middle East

Bill O'Reilly's June 26th Talking Points Memo

Bill O'Reilly presents somewhat of a paradoxical situation for us today. The lead story is that Israel is threatening to attack the Iranians if President Bush doesn't do something to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons capability. Later in his memo, Mr. O'Reilly indicates that this would cause "a full-fledged war" to break out in the Middle East and "few countries will help the Israelis." Given this information, it seems that the threat is fairly hollow. Why would Israel attack a country knowing full well that it would lead to their destruction? Really, though, this is beside the point. Israel knows that President Bush is the only person who would be crazy enough to attack Iran. After all, Bush had no problem invading Iraq. Israel also knows that it is unlikely they could get either Barack Obama or John McCain to agree to a war in Iran (even though Mr. O'Reilly simply points to Obama, I believe both candidates would be cautious about entering into another war while things are still not resolved in Iraq).

I think Mr. O'Reilly is absolutely correct that President Bush could not attack Iran without being vilified, though I think it is a stretch to suggest impeachment. I believe at this point, Bush is just waiting out the end of his term. He'll probably be taking some nice long vacations in Texas and maybe work to clean up his image for posterity.

I do find it interesting that Mr. O'Reilly mentions a full-fledged war in the Middle East, and puts all the focus on oil prices rising to over $200 a barrel and collapsing the economy. As important as oil is to our society, I hardly think that the price of oil rising that much would collapse the world economy. There would be hard times, certainly, but if so much was riding on the price of oil, the Middle East would have far more power today than they do. In other words, should the price of oil increasing create worldwide chaos, the big powers of the world would enter and take action. Yes, this could lead to another world war, which is exactly why the likelihood of it happening is minimal.

I get the distinct impression that Mr. O'Reilly assumes he is the only one who can figure out cause and effect in global politics. The countries in the Middle East are keenly aware that the happenings in the region dramatically effect other nations and that those other nations are willing to take action to prevent instability in the region. This doesn't mean that we should not pay attention or worry about what goes on in the Middle East, but rather that we should continue as we have been to promote peace in the region. As always, we should keep a close watch on those countries which might be researching the creation of nuclear weapons. We should use all the diplomatic means at our disposal to prevent that from happening. Should the situation warrant, and global opinion agree, we should use force if necessary. What we should not do, however, is go to war with Iran simply because if we don't, Israel will and that will cause lots of trouble. I don't believe each country in the Middle East is plotting to bring about the ruination of not only their, but all the other countries in the Middle East.

My major disagreement with Mr. O'Reilly comes when he suggests that "[f]ar-left loons continue to downplay the danger from [Iran]." I don't even have any facts with which to disagree with that statement. Why? Because I don't need any! Bill O'Reilly shows no legitimate evidence whatsoever to back up his claim. He moves right on to discuss the CEO of GE and how they still do business with Iran. If you're going to make a statement as inflammatory as that one, at least provide something to back it up. Otherwise, you're simply another hate spewing partisan pundit, which at this point I won't disagree with.

Now to Mr. O'Reilly's solution. He believes that a total economic boycott of Iran is the solution. He suggests this will "cause the country to collapse and the mullahs would be overthrown." I will go ahead with Mr. O'Reilly's logic here and assume exactly that will happen. Is there any indication that another regime more friendly to the United States or Israel would rise? Likely one bad regime would be replaced with another one, no doubt angrier at the United States for causing the country to collapse. Revolutions are bloody affairs and rarely end in a manner as peaceful as that of the United States. Also, the point of economic boycotts or sanctions are to convince the current government of a country that their policies are bad and need to change in order to restore order to their country. To initiate economic pressure on a country with the sole purpose being sending the country into anarchy to overthrow the current regime is ludicrous at best and catastrophic at worst.

So, here we are. We shouldn't invade Iran without very, very good reason, Israel likely won't take military action against Iran because they simply cannot take on the entire Middle East and would likely spark another world war, and an economic boycott of Iran with the goal of inciting a revolution is not a very good idea. What should we do? Well, maybe we sit down with Israel and suggest they cool down a bit, maybe we initiate some economic sanctions against Iran with the hope of pressuring them into a policy change, or maybe we decide that there isn't anything out there currently that warrants action. I don't have all the details, nor do I pretend to. Nor does Mr. O'Reilly.

And that's "The CounterPoints Memo."