Edwin Eisendrath is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Alderman who hosts It's The Democracy Stupid on Lincoln Square and a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. Subscribe to his Substack.
“I have a big decision to make,” our President said at the United Nations last week. “Will a deal be made with Iran … or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic?”
No, sir. The decision to wipe a culture off the map, to annihilate a people, is not yours to make. It is no decision at all. You cannot make it. It cannot be done.
The martial power that Americans created over generations, our exceptional military, our nuclear arsenal, were created to keep peace, to prevent war, to protect American interests, and to reinforce American values of individual dignity and freedom around the world. They are not there for your craven use.
To be clear, sir, Americans, and people everywhere, understand your threat to unleash the unthinkable evil of mass destruction, not as a strong response to Iranian provocation, but as an ugly effort to mask your own catastrophic failures.
Those failures have consequences:
You mistook a target list for a strategy and depleted our stock of weapons without gaining anything of value.
You failed to protect our military installations in the region, resulting in loss of American lives, the destruction of our bases, and the weakening of our supply lines.
Your promises to our allies in the region were worthless; their infrastructure lies badly damaged, their economies crippled, their access to markets impeded.
Iran does not possess a nuclear weapon, but you gave them an economic one. Everyone knew that an attack on Iran would lead to closure of the Strait of Hormuz. You went ahead anyway. Worse, you so badly bungled the theater of war that you allowed Iran’s allies, the Houthis to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the bottom of the Red Sea and helplessly watched as Iranian drones fired from Iraq closed the east-west pipeline across the Arabian Peninsula.
A worldwide energy crisis now looms.
You think, sir, that America no longer needs access to Saudi oil because you have stolen Venezuela’s oil. But Saudi oil is flowing and Venezuela’s is still underground. Much could go wrong, and given your team’s track record, much will. Meanwhile, America’s strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia, forged on board a navy destroyer in 1945 when FDR met in secret with Ibn Saud, is in tatters.
A global energy shortage now threatens millions. Europeans facing winter’s cold no longer have access to Saudi oil to heat their homes. In our country, it is harvest time, yet farmers struggle to afford the diesel fuel that powers the tractors and combines they use to bring in crops, and the trucks that bring those crops to market.
You refused to ask America if it was wise to launch this war. You refused to ask Congress for approval. Now you claim that you have a big decision to make. You cannot make that decision. I doubt that the military, even as degraded as you’ve made it, would carry out those orders.
Meanwhile the rest of us do have a decision to make. Watch and learn. In forty days, Americans will show you how to do regime change.
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"The decision to wipe a culture off the map, to annihilate a people, is not yours to make." Is there someone in the U.S. government who's going to stop him? An elected member of Congress? A general? An admiral? The Supreme Court? After 11 years of this guy's bullshit, I haven't seen anyone do it yet, unless you count the American voter in 2020. But of course, that didn't turn out so well four years later, and here we are, worse off than ever.
Thanks Edwin. Good to keep exposing the looniest of the regime. Hope people are watching, listening and learning. This coming election is the bridge to 2028. Not seeing perfection at present, but we need a plan to build that bridge. Voting is the best plan. Let's Vote and not get hooked up on one issue stumbling blocks or wondering/arguing who the 2028 Presidential candidate will be. Got to get there first.