Submitted by John, Aug 16, 2007 05:22

With our investment markets perhaps already evidencing early recessionary weakness, the question we must ask is whether the time is right to have U.S. businesses conscripted to serve the ends of a conspicuously failed foreign policy. We have already seen that policy degrade and demoralize the finest military in the known universe. We have seen too many heroic men and women fall on the wrong battlefield. They are there because this country chose not to trust the sword of capitalism in 2003, though it had long been one of the most fearsome weapons in the U.S. arsenal. This was doubtless recognized at the time, but in that innocent age those interests favoring the Iraq invasion believed the preemptive strike to be more effective and expedient than the continuing application of combined capitalist and military pressures to contain the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's wrecked war machine and his conjured WMD.

I suspect those same interests are aligned today behind this latest proposal to put the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on the terrorist watch list, which is not to say those interests don't command my respect. They do. Somehow they managed to charm a significant swath of our national sentiment in 2003, such that the current administration, much of the minority opposition party and most of our allegedly liberal mainstream media were beating the war drums in unison. They managed all of this when it was clear to anyone who had set aside more than a couple of hours to study the situation and the relevant CIA briefings that the case for invasion was tenuous at best.

It was a fantastic achievement, but the results, as we know, have been devastating. Having committed our military to a battle it likely cannot win, these interests now need to muster a fresh fighting force. They want our businesses to step into the breach, notwithstanding the expense and complications as companies are forced to cancel contracts, forgo potentially lucrative business opportunities, scrub supplier, distribution and client lists for any linkage to the latest terrorist organization and defend themselves against the inevitable litigation that occurs when they are found to be indirectly and unknowingly involved with an organization tangentially linked to the Revolutionary Guard. The problem with these kinds of boycotts is the market learns to work around them eventually, and when it does, America's businesses have trouble reestablishing their footing against the newcomers who have supplanted them. And that footing is essential not only to the continuing prosperity of our country but also to its defense, because, alas, we cannot always afford to be in shooting wars. Our country's extraordinary economic clout must be carefully preserved as the invaluable national resource it is.

It's time for a more direct, less crafty approach to statecraft. The U.S. grievance with Iran has little to do with terrorist influences in the Revolutionary Guard, but rather with the development of an Iranian nuclear offensive capability. The interests backing the designation of the Guard as a terrorist organization are once again employing a misdirection strategy and it's not radically different from that which led us into Iraq without cause in 2003. Few doubt they would lead us into war again.

Before winking at this gambit, I hope the country would have the kind of national debate required to understand the true dangers of a nuclear Iran. Could this situation be managed? I would also hope in the course of that debate we would identify the interests behind these strategic proposals and reveal how they have managed to wield control so effectively over U.S. foreign policy. This highly capable interest group has been careless with our nation's military might, and now seems indifferent to the misuse our nation's economic might. Certainly it cannot be trusted to be careful with our country's future. Who are they, what is their agenda, how are they financed, and how do they operate? Americans need to know.

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