War approaching?

Wesley Clark on MSNBC just repeated the peacenik, anti-FDR canard that US sanctions on the Japanese economy left that country no choice but to go to war with us.

Ballacks, the sanctions were intended to inhibit further expansion of Japanese conquests in the Far East, and had the Japanese been willing peace could have been preserved.

They just weren't, committed as they were to expansion of the Japanese Empire to include lots of territory then parts of various European Empires, and more of China, and other stray bits.

He'll be repeating that other canard, rightly and indignantly rejected by William L. Shirer, that the Versailles Treaty was so draconian that it forced the poor abused Germans, and poor abused Hitler, into war against the quondam allies.

Of course, no one complains about the far more draconian post WW2 European settlement that so prominently featured both the truncation and partition of Germany and kept the peace right up through the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, and Communism in Eastern Europe.

Phooey.

All the same, Bolton has wanted an outright war of regime change against Iran for decades, and has got the moron in the White House to reject O's nuclear deal without cause and impose so draconian a regime of sanctions that the Mullahs genuinely fear an internal collapse unless they can get the US to back off.

Hence the rising military tensions.

Iran Shoots Down a U.S. Drone, Escalating Tensions

Iran shot down a United States surveillance drone early Thursday, both nations said, but they differed on the crucial issue of whether the aircraft had violated Iranian airspace, in the latest escalation in tensions that have raised fears of war between the two countries.

Iranian officials said that the drone was over Iran, which the American military denied — an important distinction in determining who was at fault — and each side accused the other of being the aggressor.

Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?

Or IKE's lies about the U2 flown by Francis Gary Powers?

Of course the US could be telling the truth, and it could come down to a disagreement about the extent of Iran's territorial waters.

But we all now who is aroused in the White House.

Iran’s Gambit: Force the World to Rein In Trump

The Trump administration has portrayed Iran’s recent moves, including its threat to resume stockpiling low-enriched uranium in violation of the nuclear agreement, as proof that Iran is an implacable rogue state, bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, that can be contained only through the threat of military force.

Iran has indeed often acted as a regional provocateur, but in this case some nonpartisan experts on Iran and on United States policy in the Middle East see something different.

They say Iran appears to be pursuing a provocative but calibrated strategy to counter what its leaders see as a potentially existential American threat — as severe economic sanctions strangle the economy and cut off vital oil revenues — as well as to preserve the nuclear agreement.

That would be an "existential threat" to the regime, not the nation.

And because Iran cannot defy American might on its own, it may be hoping to coerce European and Asian nations to rein in the United States.

The result, the experts say, is an Iranian strategy, rational but risky, that increases the likelihood of the nuclear agreement’s collapse and even of outright war in the hopes of compelling the world to avert both.