«Император без одежды»: критика американской гегемонии и войны с Ираном

Hello and welcome to this edition of Ritter's Rant. Today I'm going to be talking about the emperor having no clothes. We're all familiar with the children's tale of the emperor who was just parading around in front of his subjects claiming to be the best dressed man in the world when in fact he was buck ass naked. Didn't have anything on. Now his subjects didn't have anything to say to him because they were afraid. They were like you look wonderful, you look beautiful, it's all great. It was this little kid though who wasn't going to play that game and he shouted out you have no clothes you're naked. It was the truth and that's where we are today. The emperor of course is Donald Trump and by extension the United States and you know we are posturing around the world as if we're the greatest thing that ever walked a planet and the audience are sort of sitting there saying no you're buck ass naked you don't have any clothes you got nothing and it's embarrassing but it's the truth. You know the United States has enjoyed a privileged position in the world especially since the end of the second world. First of all we're blessed from a you know a geographical position. We have a land mass that has tremendous amount of resources. We're protected by two oceans. It's very difficult for our enemies to come to us and of course we've built you know we've developed this naval power which makes it easy for us to get to our enemies and we've exploited this. We've used it to help win the second world war together with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany and pretty much on our own against Imperial Japan. And then at the end of the second world war we use this unmatched economic and political and military power to promote ourselves as the leader of the free world facing off against the evil communists in the Soviet Union and China and elsewhere. And in 1991 the Cold War ended. Soviet Union went away and America emerged as a sole remaining superpower. Now at that point in time logic would have dictated that we reassess where we are in the world who we are and what the world is. You know a significant period of time since the second world war ended. But we weren't willing to do that. What we said is we want to not only retain our status as the leader of the free world but we want to become the global hegemon. We are the number one power and we will always be the number one power. In fact some American philosophers, political philosophers talked about the end of history because America was the perfect nation. We were American democracy was the epitome of everything mankind should ever aspire to. So there was no reason to have development. We had reached the apex. We were it was as good as going to get. That of course was a lie. What we found out is that the United States in seeking to hold on to this status as a global hegemon, we ended up being in opposition to the rest of the world which was adjusting to new realities, new economic developments, new social developments, new technologies. Nations that were once subordinated to the United States, afraid to speak out were suddenly empowered by new wealth, new technologies, new alliances, new realities. And they started to stand up and say, "Time out. We're not with you on this one. We have our own way of doing business." A new multipolarity reality was starting to descend on the world and it ran in opposition to American hegemony. And this is sort of a conflict that's been existing for some time as America starts to retract. The American empire starts to shrink, collapse in on itself and hopefully lose the status of empire and become one of many strong, powerful nations among the family of nations in the world, the international community.

You know, it's not impossible to see this. In fact, we have a framework for this, the United Nations, the United Nations Charter. It's a body of international law agreements that the United States already plays a significant role in. If we were truly, you know, the power that we think we were, the power of good, we would seek to use our status as a member of the Security Council, one of five permanent members, not to veto legislation we disagreed with, but rather to lead nations through the difficult task of diplomacy to resolve problems without a veto. There's no need to veto if you can sit down and speak responsibly about with people about coming up with a compromise solution, a consensus solution that moves us forward, ever forward, and that's the direction we want to go. But that's not what America wants. We want to hold on to power. And so we veto, so we obstruct, so we interfere with, we degrade, we denigrate, we attack, we declare war. Or in some cases, we go to war without declaring war.

And that's where we find ourselves today, in a confrontation with Iran that just doesn't need to happen, didn't need to happen, shouldn't have happened. There's no reason for this war to have taken place other than the United States' blind support for a greater Israel, an irresponsible Israel, a nation that has mirrored America's gross irresponsibility when it comes to interfacing with the world, seeking to impose themselves on their regional neighbors without any consideration about the legitimate aspirations of those neighbors. And so now the United States is at war with Iran. If you're going to go to war, you better win the war. And this is, you know, one of the basic laws of mankind. If you're going to get involved in an existential fight, existential meaning if you lose, you die, you better win, which means you should be prepared to win, which means that before you make the decision to initiate contact with the enemy, you've thought through every possible ramification. And if in doing so, you determine, hey, we may not win, don't start an existential fight. The United States has been posturing around the world as if we are this superpower. We have the greatest military in the world. We tell you all the time, you should believe us.

We have the greatest military in the world. We have the strongest economy in the world. You should believe us because we're saying that we have the strongest economy and we have the best system of government in the world. American democracy is the best. Nobody's better than us because we tell you so. We tell you how well dressed we are, how nice our clothes are. But Iran has stood up and said, nah, you're buck ass naked. You've got nothing. You've got no clothes. It looks like Iran is correct. You know, if you're going to go to war with Iran, you should at least think through the ramifications of this decision. The Iranians have been saying for some time now what they would do if we chose to go to war, the price we would pay. Instead of believing the Iranians, we dismiss them, we diminish them, we belittle that they can't do this. They're very weak. They don't have the missiles they claim to have. Their government is very fragile. All we have to do is snap our fingers, blow three times, the house comes down and we can run in and take over. We don't need to worry about shutting the Strait of Hormuz because it'll never get to that. We don't need to worry about attacks on regional energy infrastructure because it will never get to that. We don't need to worry about Israel being pounded to death because it'll never get to that. We will eliminate the regime on day one and everything will fall into place because we're well-dressed. We're the emperor and we say it will be so. Any military leader knows that that's just not how you plan a military operation. You don't go to war on a hope and a prayer. You go to war based upon sound analysis that's derived from fact-based assessments of the resources available, both yours and the potential enemies. You have to think through every possible outcome. You have to be prepared for any deviation from the plan because no plan survives initial contact with the enemy. The first law of warfare. What you think is going to happen isn't going to happen and you need to be prepared for all eventual outcomes, especially if they are relatively predictable, such as the closure of the Strait or Hormuz and what the consequences of that would be on the global economy and on your ability to continue the conflict because of now global pressures being brought to bear to terminate the conflict so that the Strait could open up. This is where Donald Trump is today. The Joint Chiefs of Staff warned him before he went to war that we could not keep the Strait of Hormuz open. The Director of National Intelligence warned the President through an assessment published through the National Intelligence Council that Iran's regime would not collapse. They were warned by everybody, the President and his advisors, that Iran had a very robust self-defense capability, including ballistic missiles that would be able to strike targets outside of Iran, punishing the Urzlal allies of the United States. We were told that we didn't have sufficient ability to defend ourselves from these missiles and that this war went on for any length of time, we would burn through our capability to defend ourselves while the Iranians retained significant capabilities to bring harm to us. The military knew this, the intelligence community knew this, but they told this to the President who didn't listen. What they were telling the President is, you don't have the clothes you think you have. You're not as well dressed as you think you are. We may not want to organize this parade because if you go out before this public, someone's going to point out the fact that you're buck-ass naked. That's where we are today. President Trump standing before the world, buck-ass naked. Got no clothes on, ladies and gentlemen. The United States is naked. We've been exposed as a fraud. We are not the superpower that we claim to be. Our economy is not as strong as we claim to be. Our military is not as capable as we claim to be. And if you take a look at what's happening here in the United States, our political system is not as robust as we claimed it to be. This is bad news for the United States. Hopefully we can bring it into this war and get back to the business and get down to the basics. Maybe we don't need to dress like an emperor anymore.

Maybe we need just to put on the clothes of the average working class person. There's nothing dishonorable than being part of the larger community. Who knows? We get our act together, save some money. We can buy some better clothes. Maybe we can go out to dinner and hang out with a better crowd. But for the meantime, anything we do to clothe ourselves responsibly is better than standing buck-ass naked in front of the world. The emperor has no clothes. And this is a shameful moment in American history. Anyways, that's my rant. The next time a thought crosses my mind, I'll be sure to let you know. Thank you.