Two and One-Half Wars?

He let the cat out of the bag so simply and casually: According to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, military action against Iran remains one option still on the table. We’d love to know what the other options are and which one is the favorite. Since NATO’s “air strikes” against Yugoslavia in 1999 and Israel’s “military action” in Gaza, we can rest assured that when a general talks of a military strike, he doesn’t mean a skirmish. He means a veritable war, something they want to call something else for reasons of piety. Or perhaps they fear — and this is perhaps the good news here — that open warmongering would result in a storm of protest in the United States, Europe and the Third World.

That would be bad news for America’s carefully constructed front, which revolves around sanctions against Iran. Washington suspects — and, it is hoped, justifiably — that the appetite for war among America’s willing vassals would be somewhat dampened by the sobering balance sheets from Iraq and Afghanistan — i.e., that it would be considerably less than it was seven and nine years ago, respectively.

Has it escaped Admiral Mullen’s notice that the wars for supremacy in Baghdad and Kabul are still going on? Or has the chairman forgotten the megalomania of his predecessors during the 1970s when they believed they could fight two and one-half wars simultaneously?