The high cost of looking away

“Keep your eye on the ball.”

Good advice whether one is play­ing bas­ket­ball, foot­ball, base­ball, soc­cer, or golf.

It’s also sound advice when ref­er­enc­ing a country’s polit­i­cal, fis­cal, and mil­i­tary affairs.

Unfortunately, no one seems to have kept their eye on the nation’s ball recent­ly when we—the public—were dis­tract­ed by the adven­tur­ism in Venezuela; the insane sug­ges­tions that the U.S. should acquire Greenland or make Canada the 52^nd state or, last­ly, acquire Cuba; all of this to divert atten­tion from the fias­co regard­ing the Epstein files, the abus­es of ICE in Minnesota, and the almost covert whit­tling away of the demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions of the coun­try, facil­i­tat­ed by scores of exec­u­tive orders.

More recent­ly, our eye has been tak­en off the ball by the unpro­voked attack on Iran in con­cert with the rogue nation of Israel.

We took our eye off the ball by not ques­tion­ing why Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was mak­ing so many vis­its to the White House when, at the same time, our com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing Ukraine in its resis­tance to Russian inva­sion was tak­ing a back seat to oth­er issues.

We took our eye off the ball by ignor­ing our NATO allies and keep­ing them in the dark about the immi­nent Iranian attack—and con­tin­ue to do so as Trump threat­ens to remove the U.S. from NATO.

We took our eye off the ball when we were caught with our pants around our knees, as those same NATO allies refused to get involved in pulling our chest­nuts out of the fire when ship­ping in the Strait of Hormuz was being threatened.

[A short aside here about NATO. This alliance is the most pow­er­ful and longest‑lived alliance in the his­to­ry of mankind. Even the Greek Delian League of the 5^th cen­tu­ry B.C. only last­ed for 74 years, while most oth­er notable alliances through­out his­to­ry sel­dom sur­vived for more than a decade. There should be lit­tle doubt that NATO is the pri­ma­ry force that has kept Europe peace­ful since the end of World War II. And there should be lit­tle doubt, even with­out proof, that Russia would nev­er have attacked Ukraine had it been a mem­ber of NATO at the time, because the pol­i­cy of the alliance is that “an attack on one is an attack on all.”]

We took our eye off the ball when no one con­ceived of what would hap­pen to the world’s oil prices when one of the lead­ing oil‑producing nations respond­ed by restrict­ing those oil supplies.

We took our eye off the ball by blind­ly believ­ing that a war with Iran would have no costs in American lives or that the costs of such a war would wors­en the U.S. debt to the tune of $60 mil­lion per day.

We took our eye off the ball when we refused to stop the Israeli attacks on its neigh­bors, threat­en­ing to fur­ther antag­o­nize those nations and the entire Mideast region against this coun­try in its war against Iran. We can’t say that we took our eye off the ball while Israel com­mit­ted geno­cide in Gaza. In that case, we sim­ply turned a blind eye to it.

Our eye is still off the ball as we refuse to con­cede that Russia and China are con­sid­er­ing their own adven­tur­ism as Russia expands its attacks against Ukraine and China cov­etous­ly eyes Taiwan, won­der­ing if the U.S. has suf­fi­cient resources to deal with those aspects while car­ry­ing on a con­tin­u­ing war in Iran.

We took our eye off the ball by not under­stand­ing that the costs of war excur­sions would only wors­en the finan­cial prob­lems here (while appar­ent­ly lin­ing the pock­ets of some who have inside infor­ma­tion about pres­i­den­tial deci­sions that affect the oil market).

Our eye is still off the ball as the admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­u­al­ly fails to define its ulti­mate goal in Iran—saying on one day that we should just leave and let all the oth­er nations fig­ure out how to secure their oil, while send­ing more ground troops to the region.

Another cliché that applies to our cur­rent escapades in Iran is the but­ter­fly effect. A small inci­dent on one side of the globe can have mon­u­men­tal reper­cus­sions else­where, and if we con­tin­ue to keep our eyes focused too nar­row­ly, we are going to find our­selves an iso­lat­ed nation, with­out the admi­ra­tion of any of our for­mer allies or even of those nations that have, for gen­er­a­tions, looked upon this coun­try as a great nation with pro­found and lofty ideals.