US in decline.

Arnaud de Borchgrave’s assertion (Managing Decline: Pax Americana is winding down, 11-1-10) that “the decline of the American empire may be hastened by another war in the Gulf … triggered by Israel and/or US bombs on Iran’s nuclear installations” is eye opening to say the least.
That could explain why Iranian leaders are threatening a second holocaust on Israel. They want an attack. A US or Israel attack might prove tactically devastating to Iran and it citizenry…but it’s strategic effects could fulfill Osama Bin Ladin’s original goals of breaking us economically and dividing us politically (not that we needed assistance doing either).
Perhaps capitalism really didn’t defeat communism. Communism was just the first superpower to be defeated by clever Islamic extremists. We helped them bring down the Soviet Union and now by provoking Israel they can destroying us.
Any attack on Iran would spark an asymmetrical gulf war resulting almost immediately in massive reduction (if not a complete halt) of affordable petroleum vital to our already faltering economic engine. And that will be just an opening move in their game of destruction. Don’t forget the Persians invented chess and we invented checkers.
What if Iran uses biological or chemical weapons? They didn’t forget that the US provided Saddam with both the chemical WMD precursors and the targeting information essential to effectively gas thousands of Iranians in the 1980s.
Even a limited “asymmetrical Gulf war” could “speed up the end of ‘America’.” It’s not hard to imagine a worse case scenario with cyber attacks combined with the dispersal of anthrax or weaponized smallpox. It could be released by North Korea…and we wouldn’t know until millions of Americans were dead. Check and check mate. War just isn’t what it used to be. Perhaps we should find another way of resolving our differences. Make world law, not world war.