'A War of Self-Destruction' by Chris Hedges

"An attack on Iran, which Israeli and Bush administration officials appear set to carry out if Iranian uranium enrichment is not halted, would ignite a regional war in the Middle East and lead to economic collapse and political upheaval in the United States.”

In short and simple terms, we would be plunged into a depression that would make the Great Depression of the 1930s in which I spent my childhood look like boom times,” said William R. Polk, former professor of history at the University of Chicago and a member of the Policy Planning Council under President Kennedy. “Industries would fail, banks would collapse, government revenues would dry up, universities would have to close, health care, even as limited as it now is for roughly 75 million Americans, would virtually cease. In short, something like [what] the South suffered at the end of the Civil War would plague the country.""

A War of Self-Destruction - CommonDreams.org

Interesting observation.

We are as dependent on cheap petroleum as the antibellum Southern economy was dependent on slave labor.

It does seem likely that a true regional conflict in the midEast would tragically effect the cost of petroleum.

If it's not Iran, it'll be something else, I suspect.

The fact is there's so much money to be made that sooner or later, if not our petrocracy, some other petocracy is going to ignite the firestorm.

As we all know Saddam's adventures with Iran, and his adventures with Kuwait were really his attempts to gain control over vast reserves of oil.

No nation has the monopoly on men greedy enough and powerful enough to take a nation to war when the stakes are this high.

I see no real good guys running this world, only varying degrees of bad guys.