Presidential Candidates Ignore US Multiyear Wars During Debates - State Senator

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th December, 2019) US presidential candidates during debates in the 2020 race have ignored the fact that the United States has been involved in wars for the past eighteen years, Virginia State Senator Richard Black told Sputnik.

"The one thing that they [the Democrats] refuse to debate about, except for Tulsi Gabbard [who] is a rare exception, they won't talk about the fact that we've been at war for at least 18 years and if you talk about the military involvement in Iraq it goes back to 2003," Black said. "So, we should be talking about war and peace. And neither party seems [to have] any interest in addressing this with the American people."

Black said it is to the advantage of the entire world and global economy to find peace in some of these places.

Commenting on the current US policy towards Iran, the state senator said that it was a very serious mistake to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, given it provided a framework for peace "and today we have only a framework for war."

"The current US policy is to overthrow the Iranian government by imposing very harsh conditions on the very poorest of the Iranian population and to do it through very brutal sanctions," he said. "The sanctions have put pressure on Iran and it forced Iran to impose an increased tax on gasoline so that they could use the money to help the poor. Well, when Iranian commuters rose up and protested, of course the American government said well this shows that the Iranians want to have a new government."

"But you know, I was significantly involved in the military response to the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles," Black continued. "Those riots were violent, they were brutal, it probably had as many people killed as were killed in Iran and probably more. But they didn't indicate that America needed a new government. Unfortunately there are civil disturbances. Some of them were important. But many tell us very little. They're just an unfortunate part of life."

Black also believes that another aspect of the US policy on Iran is to "destabilize Iran and to attempt to bring about regime change by using terrorists."

"The US has just helped the MEK terrorist group to build a town in Albania that houses about 3,000 of their members," he said. "If you go back to 2011 when regime change was at its very peak under the very bloody time of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, we were in the process of overthrowing Libya, we were trying to overthrow Syria and so the United States had long designated the MEK as a terrorist group but as we began this process of trying to destabilize the middle east secretary Clinton knew that the MEK, which operated in Iran, would be useful to try to destabilize that country."

Hillary Clinton, the state senator added, had the MEK taken off the terrorist list right after the United States attacked Libya and Syria.

"So the MEK was taken off in 2012 just a year after we had worked to destabilize Libya and Syria but the purpose of taking the MEK off the terror list was to make them more useful in destabilizing Iran so that we could begin preparing to overthrow that government," he added.

Black continued to say that former National Security Adviser John Bolton "worked very hard to create a pretext to attack Iran," and at that time he claimed there were various incidents occurring in the Persian Gulf.

"Ultimately, those provocations failed but I promise you they will be attempted again," the state senator said.

Black said the CIA convinced the public that an Iranian anti-ship mine "actually jumped up out of the water" and blew a hole in the side of an oil tanker.

"Well, magnetic sea mines are designed to explode below the water line so that they can sink ships and they don't have the capability of jumping through the air. Yet, no reporter ever questioned this very obvious hoax that was staged either by the CIA or maybe by another intelligence agency," Black said.

Black claimed that ironically there are many young people in Iran who would like to modernize, and want to be more westernized in their culture.

"If we would simply allow them to bring about change organically we would find that some of the tensions that we had in former years, if you go back to the 70s and the 80s, those would simply fade away because you'd have a new generation coming about," he said. "But in any event, changing Iranian culture is none of our business. It is not something that is up to the United States to determine."

Black believes that Washington is concerned about Iran because it has been "a thorn in our side," as its army has gone at the invitation of Syria and at the invitation of Iraq, and has fought against the Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorist groups (both banned in Russia).

"The United States needs al-Qaeda to overthrow various Arab nations so in a covert sense we operate, we support al Qaeda, we funnel weapons to them directly or indirectly and so we use al -Qaeda as a tool for regime change," he explained. "We need ISIS [Islamic State] as an excuse to continue to occupy parts of Iraq and Syria and so it irritates us when Iran sends its troops and they actually fight against ISIS and al Qaeda because that interferes with the plans which we have that use those two terrorist groups to our advantage."

Black stressed, however, that there is a lot of pressure internally against going to war with Iran.

"The president certainly does not want another war before the elections come up and his base of support has a very large anti-war contingent and so it is unclear how much power President Trump has to get us into wars or to get us out of wars but I'm hoping that internal pressure can come to bear on the president and the congress and that we will be a little more cautious," he said. "If they [Iran] decide to fight in a determined way, the geography of Iran is tremendously difficult. It's more difficult than the Afghan terrain and so it, just the terrain of Iran is not conductive to the types of weapons and the type of fighting that we do."

Black said he does not want American soldiers and marines killed in battle and does not want to see young Iranian soldiers and sailors killed in battle either.

"If the Iranians become seriously stubborn about not giving up their sovereignty to the United States I think they can make things most difficult for the United States," Black concluded.