Want to End All These Wars on the Middle East? Retire the Internal Combustion Engine! War with Iran Could be Avoided if we Switch to Electric Vehicles

How much blood and treasure will continue to be spilled as a result of continued tensions in the Middle East?

No one will ever really know because no official tally can ever be properly verified.

There are the thousands of US troops that have died in the Middle East.

There are thousands of US civilians that have died as a result of attacks committed by terrorists who were trained and armed in the Middle East. Attacks that have been committed on US soil, as well as around the world.

There are the innocent civilians throughout the Middle East that have been murdered because, well, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Drones don’t come with a conscience, and no matter who’s president at the time, blood is on the hands of every democrat and republican that has shacked up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since the 1960s.

And there’s plenty of blame to go around.

For every democrat berating Trump for attacking Iran, when Obama was running the show we were taking out plenty of civilians while bombing the shit out of Yemen and Pakistan.

And for every MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporter, the sitting president’s actions have been incredibly irresponsible and will cost many more innocent lives - both Iranian and American.

But I’m not writing this article today to talk shit about bureaucratic buffoons who seem to care more about getting re-elected than they do about simply acting with honor and integrity. After all, our problems in the Middle East aren’t necessarily a result of just the whims of our elected officials. It’s much deeper than that.

How to End these Idiotic Wars in the Middle East

Of all the regions in the world, why is it that the Middle East seems to be the place that we’re always sending troops?

Is it to protect those trying to escape the clutches of tyranny?

Certainly we heard that song and dance back during the first Gulf War, which as you know, turned out to be a war launched on the basis of lies and misinformation.

It’s no secret …

The Middle East is an international hub for oil production and distribution. And while the US now produces more oil than any other country in the Middle East, the reality is that it takes more than US oil to keep the world moving. It’s an international market, and oil is still traded in US dollars, which makes it a very important asset. Even if it’s not all produced domestically.

Truth is, if the world didn’t need oil, no one in the west would give a shit about Iran, or really any other country in the Middle East.

We wouldn’t be dropping bombs on innocent people in the desert, our men and women in uniform wouldn’t be getting blown up while protecting oil interests, and the US would be trillions of dollars richer. Which would really come in handy right now, with a more than $22 trillion national debt and the House more than happy to pass a budget deal adding another $1.7 trillion to that national debt.

That’s not to say that if we pulled every troop out of the Middle East, the US would be on a fiscally responsible track. But in terms of dollars and bloodshed, how is it not a priority to retire the internal combustion engine and end our reliance on oil for transportation purposes?

Seems to me that the best way to end these idiotic wars is to stop relying on the one resource that requires military action to secure.

Not that it’s going to happen, but if we were really serious about ending these wars in the Middle East, why are we not fast-tracking the transition to electric vehicles and other forms of non-fossil fuel-reliant forms of transportation?

You know damn well that if every car, truck, plane, train, and boat was electric or didn’t require petroleum to move you from point A to point B, we’d be out of that region tomorrow.

So while it’s easy to point fingers at Trump or any of the previous presidents for starting wars, perhaps we should look at the root problem: The continued use of the internal combustion engine, which is long overdue to be taken off the roads and put into museums.

This isn’t rocket science, but for us to end these wars, we need to start being honest about why we’re really over there, and make the conscious decision to support the transition of our transportation economy from one that is reliant on the outdated internal combustion engine to one the utilizes new technologies that don’t require trillions of dollars worth of military actions and the senseless deaths of thousands of people.

Because make no mistake: Without this transition, this blood and treasure will continue to be spilled, and it’ll be just as much our fault as it is the war mongers we vote into office.