Roomful of Dust HOT TAKE

There’s a roomful of dust…

And there’s some idiot flicking his Bic.

We’re at war, if the Iranian government wants it. There’s few casus belli clearer than assassinating a high-ranking general. Although if anyone in the Middle East wanted a line war, we’d have had about eight of them in the past two years.

Iran is not a superpower. A few years back, I looked it up: the Iranian defense budget was roughly equal to that of the United States Coast Guard. The theocracy is shaky. The economy is shot.

But therein lies the problem. The more desperate the Iranian ruling class feels, the more willing they will be to forget what the smart move is, and try to do something wild. To drop a dirty bomb on the Ghawar oil field. To spread nerve gas over one of our aircraft carrier—or an Israeli city. To carry out 9/11 scale attacks on American soil. To do something we won’t know they had the capability to do, until it’s too late.

Twice in my lifetime, the United States has unleashed major military offenses in the Persian Gulf region. Twice, the worst has not happened—although what did happen was pretty damn bad. Still, though, chaos did not run wild.

Yet it could have. Have we gotten too secure? Are we going to keep poking the rabid dog until we get well and truly bit?

Only a fucking idiot would try. Unfortunately, we have just such a fucking idiot for a president.

All I know is this. Around the world, in Iran, in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, in Israel, in India & Pakistan, in China & Russia, and certainly right here in the United States:

We need more hippies.