Hezbollah and the nation of internet bloggers, by gimleteye

The take-away message from Robert Baer's "The Devil We Know, the rise of the Iranian Superpower" is that the United States military has extraordinarily limited options for controlling the destiny of oil supply in the Mideast. As a nation of consumers and internet bloggers we have no influence-- nor the capacity to do anything other than arm Muslim factions-- in a geopolitical ring of nations from Turkey to Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Long ago, Iran began testing the power of asymmetrical warfare against the United States and our proxy, Israel. What Iran discovered is that the world's most powerful military planning and application of technology could be brought to its knees by tapping into the seething resentment of Arab youth and through the highly secret organization of this energy; into suicide bombers on the one hand and service organizations on the other.

What Iran further discovered is that it could "bleed out" the United States, and that the botched invasion of Iraq was very nearly the best gift that Iranian power structure could ever have hoped for. Our "surge" isn't working: to the extent that violence is tamed in Iraq, and in Baghdad in particular, it is because of the hidden hand of Iran.

In our current presidential election cycle-- entering its final phase-- it is alarming that neither candidate has been willing to engage these underlying facts of wars bogging us down, killing and wounding tens of thousands of American children. Nor has the mainstream media been of help in this respect: helping Americans understand just how limited our options are, today.

But that doesn't mean we can't evaluate which candidate is best poised for leadership: it is a no brainer.

John McCain says of Vietnam: never again. He says that he knows what victory is, and he will "win" the war in the Mideast. But the national leadership of the United States told us, its people, that we were winning the war in Vietnam when we "surged" American troops then, when was manifestly clear we were not. Compared to Vietnam, where the stakes were imagined to be the fall of free nations to communism, the stakes in the Mideast are so much higher: the ability to choke-off our oil supply and our economy within just a few minutes in the Straits of Hormuz.

Sarah Palin is a small-town politician who moved her way up to the governorship of a state whose total population is less than Miami's. Her experience as governor shows her willingness to use her office to avenge a family slight. Her personalized attacks against Barack Obama have been assigned to her by the same political circle that managed the Bush White House for two terms. They are disgusting because what she is saying and how she is saying it appeals to the latent fury and anger that are never far beneath the surface of any nation at a time of economic crisis.

The Democrats bear their share of responsibility for policies that lead the nation to this point. But when all is taken into account, Barack Obama and Joe Biden and their skills are so much better matched to addressing the depth and severity of our situation than McCain and Palin. The haters have little left in their bag of tricks than hate. This nation of internet bloggers and readers will change the course of America for the better on November 4th.

We don't have a choice: this election we can't afford to vote for a president who seems like the kind of guy or gal you'd want to buy a beer.