Democrats are pushing the US towards a war with Iran – Pat Buchanan

America is facing a crisis of democracy because of the rising deficit gridlock in Washington and a possible war with Iran, political commentator and author Pat Buchanan told RT.

The multi-trillion-dollar national debt is becoming a sacred cow of the US, which will lead to a fiscal crisis and collapse of the American empire, much like with the Soviet Union 20 years ago.

Over the last decade “China was the primary candidate to lend us the money and sell us the goods,” but today they are starting to sell the 2.3 trillion worth of American bills they have collected over the years because they want to diversify and get rid of the American national debt.

“If you have a sudden situation when the whole world says: Look, the Americans one day are going to default on this debt, they are going to inflate their currency, it is time to get out – we will see the situation when the US becomes a worldwide Lehman Brothers, when everybody all of a sudden runs away from its debt,”  says Buchanan.

Pat Buchanan said that the problem of the national Tea Party movement is that it does not have a “face”, a national candidate. They only protest, but do not have a governing elite to defeat political opponents and put their candidate into power.

The immense growth of the federal government is the main problem the Tea Party movement will have to fight, he said.

The commentator doubts that Ron Paul would manage to become a Republican nominee, a position most likely to be occupied by Sarah Palin, but “intellectually, Ron Paul has tremendous support.”

Buchanan pointed out that the US emerged from the Second World War not only undamaged but also the richest and most industrialized country in the world, with 50% of world’s manufacturing facilities. This level of industrialization enabled the country to conduct wars in Korea and Vietnam and keep hundreds of thousands of troops in Europe and worldwide. But today “America is basically approaching bankruptcy.”

The absurdity of the present situation is that “We are borrowing from the world to keep troops all over the world defending the world,” Buchanan acknowledged.

Commenting on the fact that the Cold War is long over and both Russia and China are not America’s enemies anymore, Pat Buchanan questioned “Why don’t we turn NATO over to the Europeans?”

Buchanan said that for 20 years he has been asking why there are American troops in South Korea once the war there ended 60 years ago – and nobody could answer this question.

As for the possible war with Iran, Buchanan said that there is no evidence that Iranians are capable of creating the atomic bomb within the nearest future, so negotiations are more preferable, since America already has great problems financing two wars in the same region.

Democrats are pushing the US towards a military conflict with Iran because they are in a very difficult situation, but that war “is going to be a disaster for this country and disaster for Iran, but there is no doubt [the Democrats] are pushing towards the conflict.”