The development of a nuclear weapon by Iran is the great, glowing, neon "red line" of American politics today, one that every single major player in the American power structure says cannot be crossed. An ironclad bipartisan consensus has formed on the issue: Iran will not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Period. End of discussion. "All options are on the table" to prevent this from happening, George Bush has repeatedly declared, with John McCain singing along. Meanwhile, Barack Obama has hammered home the point even more forcefully: "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon -- everything."
"Everything" in a president's power includes the largest military machine in human history and the largest nuclear arsenal on earth, so this is not exactly an idle boast. In fact, the American bipartisan political consensus on Iran amounts to precisely this: putting a gun to someone's head and saying, "If you don't do what I want, I'm going to blow your goddamn brains out."
This Bush-McCain-Obama line was underscored this week by one of Obama's top foreign policy advisers, Anthony Lake, who said "the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is the biggest threat facing the world," the Financial Times reports.
Think of that: the biggest threat facing the world. Bigger than global climate change. Bigger than poverty and disease. Bigger than growing conflicts over shrinking resources. Bigger than terrorism (which was the last greatest biggest threat facing the world). Bigger than organized crime. Bigger than the Terror War operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia, which continue to spawn so much death, ruin, extremism and economic turmoil. Bigger than all of these -- and all other threats facing the world -- is the prospect that Iran might, in Lake's words, "get on the edge of developing a nuclear weapon."
This is certainly a remarkable state of affairs, and one which provokes a very simple question: Why? Why is an Iranian bomb (or even the prospect of Iran "getting on the edge" of having one) the ultimate danger facing the world today -- a prospect so dire, so infinitely evil that even the most "progressive" operators in the power structure insist they would be willing to use nuclear weapons to stop it?
Nothing in the modern affairs of nations has been more exhaustively analyzed and debated than the utility and dangers of nuclear weapons, and yet the dangers posed by Iran with a bomb have been barely discussed. They are treated as a given. The core idea is that Iran cannot be trusted because the country is run by religious fanatics crazy enough to use a bomb if they had one. This is not the first time such arguments have been made. Some Americans, including Air Force generals, believed in the late 1940s that a pre-emptive war against the Soviet Union was justified by the peril of Moscow with a bomb. Twenty years later the Russians, in their turn, were so alarmed by the prospect of Beijing with a bomb that they quietly proposed to the Americans a joint effort to destroy the Chinese nuclear development effort with a pre-emptive attack.
The world's experience with nuclear weapons to date has shown that nuclear powers do not use them, and they seriously threaten to use them only to deter attack. Britain, France, Russia, China, Israel, South Africa, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have all acquired nuclear weapons in spite of international opposition. None has behaved recklessly with its new power. What changes is that nuclear powers have to be treated differently; in particular they cannot be casually threatened....
We must demur slightly from this excellent analysis to note that one nuclear power has in fact used its nuclear weapons: the United States. Back to Powers:
So set aside the question of whether Iran wants an enrichment program to make bomb-grade material or only for the production of electricity... What we ought to ask, then, is why Iran wants its own production capacity for making the stuff of bombs?
What US officials say, when they say anything at all, is that Tehran wants a bomb in order to dominate the Persian Gulf region and to threaten its neighbors, especially Israel. This is a misreading of how other nuclear powers have made use of their weapons. As tools of coercive diplomacy nuclear weapons are almost entirely useless, but they are extremely effective in blocking large-scale or regime-threatening attack. There is no evidence that Iran has a different motive, and plenty of reason for Iran to fear that attack is a real possibility.
Indeed, the Bush administration, far from trying to quiet Iran's fears, makes a point of confirming them every few months. These threats are not limited to words, but are supported with practical steps....
The seriousness of American threats is confirmed by the fact that no significant national leader in the United States has ever disowned or objected to them in clear, vigorous, principled language. It is as if the whole country listens to the administration's threats with breath held, wondering if Bush and Cheney really mean to do as they say, and in effect leaving the decision entirely to them. Americans may count on the President to think twice, but why would leaders in Tehran, responsible for the lives of 70 million citizens, want to depend on President Bush's restraint for their survival and safety? Bush has a history. On his own authority, without the sanction of any international body, he attacked Iraq five years ago and precipitated a bloody chain of events that shows no sign of ending. It would be natural, indeed inevitable, for any government in Tehran, seeing what has happened next door, to ask what could save Iran from a similar fate. An answer is not far to seek: nuclear weapons with a reliable delivery system could do that.
Powers then considers the possibilities of an imminent American strike on Iran:
Bush and Cheney prefer the language of flat command that implies "or else." A long list might be appended here of their frequent warnings that the United States does not trust Iran with the knowledge to enrich bomb-grade uranium and will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. Many of these warnings have been issued in the last month or two and we may expect a continuing barrage until their final days in office. The President's frustration is plainly evident: Saddam Hussein may be gone, but Iran remains defiant, and more powerful than ever. The President's male pride seems to have been aroused; he said he was going to solve the Iranian problem and he doesn't want to back down. The intensity of Bush's desire to crush this final opponent is evident in his words and his body language, but does he retain the power to carry out his threats?
From one point of view the answer seems obvious. It is too late. With the exception only of the neoconservative faithful, every close observer of the American–Iranian standoff says that the administration's threats are empty, that the United States does not have the military resources, or the political support at home, or the agreement of allies abroad, to carry out a full-scale air attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, much less to invade and occupy the country. Two of the skeptics, Gates and Mullen, are running the Pentagon, and their cautioning remarks, only a step this side of insubordination, would seem to make attack impossible. But if attack is impossible, why does Bush talk himself into an ever-tighter corner by continuing to issue threats? Does he believe Iran will cave? Are these the only words he thinks people will still listen to? Is he hoping to tie the hands of the next president? Or is he preparing to summon the power of his office to carry out the last option on the table? One hardly knows whether to take the question seriously. It seems alarmist and overexcited even to pose it when the realities are so clear. But it is impossible to be sure—Bush has a history.
Bush indeed has a history. He has a history of launching military aggression. He has a history of launching military aggression on the basis of manufactured threats. He has a history of launching military aggression without the agreement of allies abroad. He has a history of launching military aggression against the advice of "military skeptics," whom he either "retires" or sidelines or ignores when he launches the aggression. He has a history of launching military aggression regardless of the strain it puts on the armed forces or the national treasury.
And he does not need "political support at home" to launch another act of military aggression, if by "political support" Powers means popular backing from the public. Bush is not facing re-election, and never will again. And he has already been given full support from the Democratic-controlled Congress in a series of measures which fully embrace Bush's bellicose stance toward Iran, as well as the specious casus belli he has advanced.
We are indeed simply waiting to see if Bush decides to carry through with his clear intent -- and waiting helplessly, for exactly the reason that Powers outlines: because "no significant national leader in the United States has ever disowned or objected to [the threat of war on Iran] in clear, vigorous, principled language." Indeed, as noted above, all of our "significant national leaders" are in lockstep on this issue, and in their willingness to do "everything in [their] power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in [their] power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon -- everything."
So yes, Bush has a history of military aggression. And the United States has a history of incinerating civilians with nuclear bombs. What seems to be forgotten in all the bloodlusting furor is that Iran has a history of neither.
Stephen Cohen is right on Russia in "Wrong on Russia." After first outlining Russia's global importance and then the vast dangers of the accelerating deterioration in US-Russian relations, Cohen notes in the International Herald Tribune:
How did it come to this?
In the U.S. policy elite and media, the nearly unanimous answer is that Russian President Vladimir Putin's antidemocratic domestic policies and "neo-imperialism" destroyed that historic opportunity. You don't have to be a Putin apologist to understand that this is not an adequate explanation.
During the last eight years, Putin's foreign policies have been largely a reaction to Washington's winner-take-all approach to Moscow since the early 1990s, which resulted from a revised U.S. view of how the cold war ended.
In that new triumphalist narrative, America "won" the 40-year conflict and post-Soviet Russia was a defeated nation analogous to post-World War II Germany and Japan - a nation without full sovereignty at home or autonomous national interests abroad.
The policy implication of that bipartisan triumphalism, which persists today, has been clear, certainly to Moscow. It meant that the United States had the right to oversee Russia's post-Communist political and economic development, as it tried to do directly in the 1990s, while demanding that Moscow yield to U.S. international interests. It meant Washington could break strategic promises to Moscow, as when the Clinton administration began NATO's eastward expansion, and disregard extraordinary Kremlin overtures, as when the Bush Administration unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty and granted NATO membership to countries even closer to Russia - despite Putin's crucial assistance to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan after 9/11. It even meant America was entitled to Russia's traditional sphere of security and energy supplies, from the Baltics, Ukraine and Georgia to Central Asia and the Caspian.
Such U.S. behavior was bound to produce a Russian backlash. It came under Putin, but it would have been the reaction of any strong Kremlin leader. Those U.S. policies - widely viewed in Moscow as an "encirclement" designed to keep Russia weak and to control its resources - have helped revive an assertive Russian nationalism, destroy the once strong pro-American lobby, and inspire widespread charges that concessions to Washington are "appeasement," even "capitulationism." The Kremlin may have overreacted, but the cause and effect threatening a new cold war are clear.
Yes, it's our old friend American Exceptionalism again: we are imbued with divinity (or blessed by history for the secular exceptionalists), so everyone must hew to Washington's paternalistic line -- or else Daddy spank. American elites can never comprehend the reality of the outside world because they are too busy admiring their special, exceptional selves in the mirror.
Cohen then outlines some immediate steps we could take to reverse the dangerous situation:
Three are essential and urgent: a U.S. diplomacy that treats Russia as a sovereign great power with commensurate national interests; an end to NATO expansion before it reaches Ukraine, which would risk something worse than cold war; and a full resumption of negotiations to sharply reduce and fully secure all nuclear stockpiles and to prevent the impending arms race, which requires ending or agreeing on U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Europe.
Sounds like a good plan. What do our wannabe leaders have to say? Uh oh:
American presidential campaigns are supposed to discuss such vital issues, but neither John McCain nor Barack Obama has done so. Instead, in varying degrees, both have promised to be "tougher" on the Kremlin than George W. Bush has allegedly been and to continue the encirclement of Russia and the hectoring "democracy promotion" there.
Great. Not only more of the same disastrous course -- but even more of more of the same.
As a follow-up to the two previousposts, John Pilger reports on the treatment meted out to a young Palestinian journalist, Mohammed Omer, who, despite seeing family members killed and maimed by Israeli forces, "is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel."
Here's what Israel's security organ, Shin Bet, does with moderating voices who seek peace with Israel.
Yesterday's post on the rise of racism in Israel drew this comment:
I don't think it affects your larger point, but "Hitler's Willing Executioners" is, at best, controversial. (Personally I think it's mostly crap.) Check out "A Nation on Trial" by Finkelstein and Birn in English or "Ein Volk von Moerdern" in German while Goldhagen is still fresh in your mind.
I don't speak German, but I am aware of the work by Norman Finkelstein and Ruth Birn, and of the controversies surrounding Goldhagen's book. Some of the latter stem, I believe, from a misreading or over-interpretation of Goldhagen's work, which states repeatedly that is dealing with one narrow, specific aspect of the Nazi phenomenon and the Holocaust: namely, the actions of the people who actually inflicted the torments and perpetrated the killings (and those who administratively facilitated these actions). It deals with the fact that almost all of the perpetrators acted of their own free will -- very often with enthusiasm and initiative, above and beyond the call of duty -- even when, in many if not most cases, they could have refused such duties without penalty.
Goldhagen also deals with the anti-Semitism that soaked German society, the obsessive idea that there was a "Jewish problem" that needed to be solved in one way or another, and the overwhelming acceptance of the notion that Jews should be segregated and removed, in one fashion or another, from German society (which Finkelstein also acknowledges). Goldhagen states repeatedly that this pervasive anti-Semitism was not the sole and inevitable cause of the Holocaust; but he does assert that it was an indispensable element in the development of the "Final Solution" of mass deportation, mass suffering, and mass murder. Without this baseline, without the pervasive belief that Jews were somehow lesser beings, were destructive, poisonous "Others" whose very presence caused terrible harm to the German nation, then the Nazis would not have been able to move from the Nuremberg Laws (which, as Finkelstein notes, were met with overwhelming public approval) to the death-camps.
Goldhagen also makes clear that even with the pervasive anti-Semitism -- "eliminationist" in that it wished and approved the removal of Jews from the life of German society -- the mass killing and worst depredations would not have occurred if not for the war, and the savagery it unleashed. (Unleashed on all sides; the indiscriminate Allied bombing of German cities and the resulting mass civilian deaths were repeatedly cited by death-squad leaders and other officials as "justification" for their own killing of unarmed, non-combatant civilians, especially Jews, who, in the widely-accepted Nazi mythology, had somehow "caused" the war.)
The heart of Goldhagen's book are the hundreds of pages of descriptions of the activities of the perpetrators, told often in their own words, and the direct evidence of their positive attitude toward their activities -- activities which were more widely known in society than is generally assumed. As he notes, many of these testimonies have been ignored or under-utilized in examinations of the Holocaust, and thus the focus of his book is filling out this neglected niche in the vast field of Nazi-era studies. Goldhagen also makes clear, repeatedly, that these events had nothing to do with any racial, biological, national, spiritual or any other inherent quality in the German people; they arose out of a certain specific set of historical conditions.
Nor does he say, anywhere, either directly or by implication, that "the Germans are a species apart with their pathological anti-Semitism, [which] absolves them of all normal standards of moral culpability," as Birn alleges. She accuses of Goldhagen of having a "sugar-coated version of the Holocaust" (!), "which eliminates the need for people to constantly think about the ethical choices of right and wrong. " This conclusion simply cannot be supported by a reading of the book. Goldhagen repeatedly and explicitly rejects this thesis, and instead points out, over and over and over again, that the atrocities were carried out by individual moral agents, who were responsible for their actions, and who had to make constant ethical choices of right and wrong every single day -- especially given the fact, as Goldhagen demonstrates, that many if not most of the perpetrators could have stopped taking part in the atrocities at any time. Indeed, the moral culpability of individuals is in many ways the whole point of the book.
What Goldhagen is trying to do is to understand why so many Germans in that era made the choices they did to take part in such a monstrous activity. To try to understand a motive is not the same as explaining it away or absolving the perpetrator of his or her moral culpability. The latter is the argument made by apologists for the Terror War -- that you are "pro-terrorist" or "blaming the victim" or "absolving the terrorist" if you try to understand what motivates someone to take such an extreme action. It is also the argument made by apologists for Israel's manifold depredations against the Palestinians. And Finkelstein and Birn -- especially Finkelstein -- obviously do not fall into the camp of such apologists. Yet they are using a version of that discreditable argument in the case of Goldhagen's book.
Again, this is not to endorse every single conclusion that Goldhagen draws from the evidence and the testimonies he examines. Nor do I have the slightest desire to wade into what is in many ways an academic cat-fight, and one which has more to do with present-day politics than historical truth. (On the political side, I am much in sympathy with Finkelstein, who has been subjected to censorship, prejudice and banishment (from Israel) for his own scholarship; including his critiques of Goldhagen.) I don't know what Goldhagen's politics are. I don't doubt that the book has been put to partisan use, or that it contains conclusions and interpretations open to dispute or refutation. What work of history doesn't? But I am not an academic, or an intellectual, or an ideologue. What I am interested in are the historical facts that he presents, and what they say about human nature, and the patterns and dynamics of human behavior, especially in the context of large-scale actions initiated by a powerful state.
With the backing and the blessing of local government and the police, the anti-Semitic organization takes its program into the local schools, to hammer home its stern, unyielding message: Girls, do not give your bodies to the racial enemy! Do not let them seduce and defile your innocence with their devious ways!
The city's own welfare representative heads up the program of the "Anti-Assimilation Department." He shows the schoolgirls a film -- "Sleeping with the Enemy" -- which dramatizes how the filthy Semite worms his way into the affections of an innocent girl then cruelly abandons her. This "abnormal phenomenon" is plaguing several cities in the area, says the police chief; there have already been many cases of racially pure girls "joining with" Semite men. The propaganda efforts of the Anti-Assimilation Department are aimed at eliminating the sexual machinations of the "exploitative" Semites.
Even though these Semites are citizens of the country -- indeed, many of them serve in the armed forces -- the Anti-Assimilation Department's view is gaining wider and wider acceptance in the nation at large. Racial consciousness has reached new heights in the country, a recent study shows: more than half the population now favors the removal of these minority Semite citizens. And 74 percent of the nation's youth now believes that these Semites are "unclean."
Another new study shows that dozens of these Semite citizens have been killed by police, military and private security forces in the past seven years, with almost no legal repercussions for the killers.
*** A report taken from the crumbling pages of Der Stürmer or some other German paper of the 1930s? No; it all comes from Haaretz, the liberal Israeli paper, and is happening right now. The Semites now being accused as sexual predators, racial defilers, devious operators and "unclean" subhumans who should be removed from the land are the Arab citizens of Israel.
As Haaretz reports this week, the Anti-Assimilation Department of the religious group Yad L'ahim -- "which works to prevent Jewish girls from dating Muslim men" -- has taken its "Sleeping With the Enemy" program into the schools of Kiryat Gat, where the city fathers also fret about local Jewish girls "joining with Bedouin men."
The Anti-Assimilation Department says its relentless efforts to prevent sexual contact between Jews and Arabs "is not racism, because it is not mutually exploitative, "says Chaim Shalom, the presenter of the program."This is a matter of racism on their end," because it is "the exploitative Arab, the exploitative Bedouin," who pursues the Jewish girls.
The Kiryat Gal program comes in the midst of a steep rise in racism among Israelis, as Haaretz noted a few months ago, citing a report by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel:
"Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy," [ACRI president Sami] Michael said. The publication coincides with Human Rights Week, which begins Sunday. "We are a society under supervision under a democratic regime whose institutions are being undermined and which confers a different status to residents in the center of the country and in the periphery."
The number of Jews expressing feelings of hatred toward Arabs has doubled, the report stated...Among Jewish respondents, 55 percent support the idea that the state should encourage Arab emigration from Israel and 78 percent oppose the inclusion of Arab political parties in the government. According to a Haifa University study, 74 percent of Jewish youths in Israel think that Arabs are "unclean."
In March, a report by Mossawa, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens of Israel, also detailed the increasing support for "the delegitimization, discrimination and even deportation of Arabs," Haaretz notes:
The report, written by Mossawa director Jafar Farah and others, mainly examines racism against Arabs in Israel, using criteria taken from the anti-Semitism reports in Europe.
The report covers Arabs killed by the security forces and by Jewish citizens, anti-Arab incitement by leading Jewish public figures, workforce discrimination by private Jewish organizations, the barring of Arabs from public places, and the destruction of Arab property. The report particularly highlights what it calls the government's helplessness in the face of the problem.
The report lists Arab citizens killed by police, soldiers, security guards and Jewish civilians over the past seven years. It notes that only one Jewish citizen, of Ethiopian origin, was killed under similar circumstances during this period. Indictments were issued in only seven cases, the report states. In two cases, the assailants were found not guilty, and the State Prosecutor appealed the verdict in one of these cases.....
We've said it before and we'll say it again: there are no exact historical parallels, but there are resonances that can be instructive. As Arthur Silber notes (in explaining the nature of his questions and warnings about the thrust of the Obama campaign):
NO, I do NOT think Obama is Hitler reincarnated. I must note, however, that his full embrace of the U.S.'s truly insane foreign policy of aggressive, non-defensive war is not precisely unHitlerian, just as his full embrace of corporatism bears a rather disturbing resemblance to aspects of Hitler's political program. But the same could be said of every major American politician.
...What I have been getting at are very broad cultural and political dynamics, general patterns that repeat throughout history, assuming one studies and understands history. [emphasis mine] So, no, Obama is not a Hitler duplicate, but, to a readily noticeable and troubling extent, he is someone riding a similar kind of cultural wave and response, and he may well use an already existing authoritarian-surveillance state that repeatedly engages in aggressive war to wreak great destruction both at home and abroad.
I came upon the Kiryat Gal story just hours after finishing a most instructive work of history examining cultural and political dynamics: "Hitler's Willing Executioners," by Daniel Goldhagen. And no, I do not think Israel is Nazi Germany reincarnated, despite its many brutal policies; a reading of Goldhagen's book, with its copious detailing of what the hands-on perpetrators of the Holocaust -- most of them "ordinary" Germans, non-Nazis, good family men, thousands and thousands of them -- actually did, would make anyone wary of hair-trigger equations of other regimes to the Nazis.
But equation is not the issue; as Silber notes, it is resonance, pattern, the dynamics of human behavior in certain particular configurations of political, social, cultural and psychological currents. Israeli society is clearly sliding toward something similar to the "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that permeated -- saturated -- German society in both the pre-Nazi and Nazi eras. Israel has already walled off the "unclean" Arabs in horrendous ghettos where they must live degraded lives, subjected them to collective punishment and repeated military attacks, forced them from their homes, and so on. The resonances of Israeli policy with other race-based oppressions in modern history have long been painfully clear.
The increasing brutalization and coarsening of Israeli political culture has also long been evident, as well as the inexorable, apparently irresistible rise of extremist sectarian factions whose obsessions and strictures mirror those of some Islamic extremists and, yes, have strong resonances with the German anti-Semitic extremists who rose to state power in the 1930s.
There is no good destination at the end of such a road. There is no good outcome to the dynamic of eliminationism and dehumanization. It leads, quite literally, to madness and death and ruin. Israel is not the only nation on that road; the dynamic is not specific to any country, creed, race, religion or polity. It belongs to all of us, it's a danger we all face. And it requires vigilance, skepticism, action and awareness to break up these patterns as they rise among us, to derail the dynamic -- before it's too far gone and must play out, in one way or another, in the given extent and circumstances of the historical moment, to the bitter end.
A Note on "Willing Executioners" You're way off on Goldhagen. who's an ahistorical Zionist hack who talks about "unremitting" German antisemitism. If so, just how was German Jewry emancipated in the l9th century?
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran What are they waiting for? What is going to be different in the near future that will make it possible or 'necessary' to attack?
Antifa, you are right. We've got to follow the capitalist imperialist dream wherever it may lead.
Russian Roulette: A Bipartisan Consensus for Disaster What in the hell are you talking about? Your first post is still up there. I'm looking at it right now. I went in "under the hood" of the site on the technical side just to confirm it's still there. You do understand how comments work, don't you? Go ...
Russian Roulette: A Bipartisan Consensus for Disaster BTW Chris,
I'm impressed. You simply took down my first post. I didn't use any foul language and yet you appear to be unables to tolerate any serious disagreement.I think it was complacent and I think it is lamentable that you both neglected to giv...
Russian Roulette: A Bipartisan Consensus for Disaster Chirs,
"You do understand that the Cohen article refers to America's dealings with Russia AFTER the collapse of the Soviet Union -- the political entity which oppressed the now free and sovereign East European nations to which you refer, don't you?[...
Elimination Round: Hurtling Down History's Dark Roads I wonder to what degree the "coarsening of Israeli political culture" might be an export of our own racist ghetto wars in the likes of Bed-Stuy and Dorchester.
Come to think of it, didn't the "Stern Gang" owe some of its political refinement ...
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran And, oh, you're right about Iran not having engaged in military aggression against another nation-state, but haven't they been behind terrorist attacks abroad? Not to mention domestic repression at home. I am not disputing your opposition to an attac...
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran Chris,
Given the irrational religiosity of Bush, I can see a fundamentalist Christian like Bush carrying out an attack regardless of rational concerns. After all, this is a supposed "war for civilization", right? And Bush is the allegedly divinely i...
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran Andrew Bacevich writes in the July 1 2008 Boston Globe:
[quote]By showing that Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war, ever increasing debt and dependency, and further abuses of executive authority, Obama can transform the elec...
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran Ever since North Korea blew up that nuke they went from being part of the 'Axis of Evil' (God, our president is retarded) to being our bestest buds.
I can't imagine why Iran would want to follow suit...
Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock: Countdown to Midnight in Persia
Thursday, 30 August 2007
Day after day, almost hour by hour, fresh confirmation comes of the impending American attack on Iran. Yet the same surreal malaise that hung over public affairs before the war of aggression against Iraq has descended again. Everyone knows the war is coming and nothing will stop it, but the strange, ludicrous shadow play of sham "debate" goes on, as if there were some kind of political or diplomatic maneuver out there that could deflect the Bush-Cheney junta from its long-chosen course. But nothing will stop them, just as nothing — not even 10 million people in the streets around the world, the largest protest in human history — stopped them from the rape of Iraq. It's what they want to do — and they will do it.
The latest confirmation arrives from Juan Cole's new spin-off blog, "Global Affairs," where Barnett Rubin writes:
Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:
They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this — they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."
Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran. This anecdote is also inconclusive, but it is consistent with the depth of planning that went into the reconstruction effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I have no inside connections anywhere, but I do have a couple of friends who do. And one of them reported last week that one of his friends — with good sources among the Establishment, including the White House — also confirms that the attack on Iran is a done deal, "just a matter of time." Awaiting, no doubt, that post-Labor Day "rollout of product."
Cole also points us to the story by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane, who reported on the study by two respected British academics on the likely course of the coming war. According to Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, former Director of the British American Security Information Council, the war preparations now being made by the Bush Administration bespeak something far beyond a quick punitive strike on Iranian Guards positions or lightning raid on Iran's nuclear power facilities. Instead, what the Bush-Cheney junta envision is the complete destruction of the Iranian state in an aerial blitzkrieg aimed at up to 10,000 targets inside Iran.
The goal, says Plesch and Butcher, is to:
"destroy Iran's WMD [capabilities], nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order...Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact. US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours. US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.
Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005.
The assault will most likely be made with conventional weapons, the authors say, as the political and environmental effects of a nuclear strike on Iran would not be worth the limited military value of such an attack. After all, the Bushists want to control Iran and milk it dry after they destroy the regime and slaughter a vast number of innocent people. Halliburton and Exxon wouldn't be able to move right in and start gobbling up loot in a radiated land.
This is what is coming. This is what the Bushists will be selling to us soon. (Glenn Greenwald has a useful roundup of the growing madness here.) One sees comments here and there to the effect that "the American people will never accept this," that "Bush can't get away with this kind of thing after Iraq," or that "this isn't 2002, with everyone still raw and dazed after 9/11," etc., etc. But such declarations are pipe-dreams, foolish hopes. As we have pointed out here many times, Bush and Cheney are not interested in obtaining the "consent of the governed" for their militarist agenda — nor do they need it.
Congress has already given its overwhelming approval to the specious reasons for war that Bush and his minions have advanced. The corporate media is doing its part again too; for example, the media's flagship, the New York Times, has been "stovepiping" warmongering spin straight from the White House and Pentagon onto its front pages — exactly as it did in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, and even using the same reporter, Michael Gordon, who with his co-writer Judith Miller was reponsible for the dissemination of so many useful lies. The same system that fed the engines of aggressive war in 2002-03 — reporter gets spin from Bushists, paper prints spin, Bushists then cite the report as "confirmation" of the lies they themselves concocted — is in operation now.
But let us bear witness to the truth while we can still speak the truth: this is murder. And all those who do not speak out against it — and against all those in high places who do nothing to stop it — are fully complicit in this abomination. No excuses, no mitigation, not this time. Speak out — or be damned with the criminals who thrive on your silence.
***
The sadest thing is the British in all of this: they egged the Americans on to do it with their 'pieces in flux, re-order the world' speech from Blair. The British in fact have been the most dishonest player in this whole affair: privately bloodthirsty and seeding the ideological underpinnings for this, while publicly being the usual moaning minies.
Yesterday I was waiting at the cashier's counter to pick up my car after servicing, and a white male, 60ish, wearing a civilian shirt w/ US Army embroidered on it came in. I asked if he was active duty or retired. Retired, he said.
"My dad's retired - he was in World War II and Korea."
"I was in Korea after the fighting, and Vietnam twice."
"You know all about what it's like, then."
"Been there, done that."
"Too bad we didn't learn to STOP doing that."
He said nothing in reply, but just looked grim.
Then the clerk (who'd heard this) came up to me, and I paid for my car and left.
This post is terrifying. It should be widely published and read, but probably won't be (of course). Is there nothing we can do to stop this horrifying and deeply immoral act?
The majority of Americans will grudgingly accept the war -- if they do not openly support it -- as long as it does not directly and immediately affect them.
That's why I keep pushing my employers, who are active in anti-war activities) to stay on the message that the war is costing us (working America, middle class) at home economically. It's not hard to prove but to be effective, the campaign would require consistent work from a team of high-profile well-financed organizations willing to stay on a simple message.
The assessment that they will avoid nukes is a relief. I thought that after 62 years it might be time to show the filthy wogs that the Great Leader will not flinch in using all means to defend Liberty. So far as reaction from the public goes, I think this would be a watershed event, the division between those trying to maintain a civil society and those driven by a standard of barbarism will be stark, and it may be time for the State to start rounding up the usual suspects in order to protect decent Americans from agents of the "enemy".
Dear Sir: I have been following this topic for quite some time. I do not know for sure what will happen, my inclination is to believe that an attack will happen, however I do not know it all of this including this article is not just more pr.
Coincidentally, Fred Thompson (member of AEI) will announce in about 1 hour.
To show the history of our involvement I offer this web link, if you have the persistence to read all 12 pages, you will see that the government or the "powers that be" intended to go into Iraq for a very long time.
It does seem that the snowball has gotten too big and is moving down hill far too forcefully for anything to stop it, now.
I think that we can count on a lot of nations, like a lot of citizens, simply ignoring, actively supporting or otherwise casually absolving themselves from responsibility for the coming nightmare....and the spin-off nightmares that it will certainly lead to.
It is not hard to foresee, a few years down the line, an American populace so "groundless", so cowed, fragmented and isolated (You know, like now, but a few years deeper into the void), that even scattered resistance to a draft will not materialize as a major threat to the unitary will. I suspect that even economic shocks will not breathe life back into Democracy (which, when the real history is examined, never lived up to its ideals anway). Quiet desperation is already the name of the game for vast numbers that have lost jobs, houses and and whole communities (New Orleans). What makes anyone think that some galvanizing event like a draft will suddenly turn the masses into heroes?
In the end, Americans (and Brits) will be told that they are happy, that they love our system (whatever, in reality, it may devolve to), and are willing to sacrifice all that is dear in order to protect all that is dear.
Only the informed and caring people that come to sites like this for some validation, truth and sanity will ever see the beast clearly....which is why sites like this (although the last several years have revealed that they aren't much of a serious threat) will not be allowed to flourish much longer. Information Dominance. Wouldn't be prudent. Just business.
I want to end with something positive cuz these are bleak times....May the informed and caring people keep talking to anyone that listens to the degree that anyone listens and for as long as possible. At least you will be proud of yourselves and your humanity. And that means something. And, who knows, you may create enough drops in the ocean to eventually turn the tide. Best of luck to us all.
Significant parts of our society are opposed to further war--perhaps that will make no difference. If it doesn't then that spells a major shift in political power from the corporate globalists of Wall Street and the City of London to the fascists. The former group was for the Iraq War but against an a war with Iran. It should be interesting to see.
Amen to the whole post -- the bleak part and the ending positively part. Most Americans are afraid to question the reality of their debt-financed pseudo-success, their own piece of the "American Dream." They don't get to that point of saying,
Hey, I have a professional lifestyle, I live in a McMansion, I drive a Porsche Cayenne, my wife has had 35k worth of plastic surgery in order to keep me from divorcing her marrying a younger woman, I've got a younger woman on the side anyway, I belong to the country club, my kids go to private pre-school. Why would I give that up?
But they don't realize they'e not going to be wilfully giving it up. It's going to be taken from them. Like everything else of any type of value -- monetary, material, social/cultural status -- the pirates will take it, drunk on their power.
I saw this coming. I see it as necessary -- given what and who we are dealing with -- things must get worse before they get better. I've been laying in tools and groceries for almost two years, now. I hope you've been doing the same.
I agree that the situation is dire, and all the signs are there for a reprise of September, 2002, with a concentrated White House propaganda offensive to demonize Iran once Congress reconvenes. As Andy Card so famously put it, you don't launch the advertising campaign for the new product line in summer, you wait until fall.
There will be hell to pay, allright, but personally I think it's premature for the Blackwater boys to start warming up the buses to shuttle all the demonstrators off to the Halliburton holding pens. Lay in those tools and groceries, but store them alongside your old duct tape and Ciprol tablets left over from the Tom Ridge era.
What's different is that not even this Congress is crazy enough to get stampeded a second time by the same old bullshit. If Little George pulls the trigger on Iran, impeachment will move right to the center of the table.
Where is the evidence that impeachment would be pursued seriously by anyone in the US Congress?
Why would they need or want to wait for the invasion of Iran?
Are you aware that as a practical matter, we already invaded Iran, quite a long time ago? And that what Mr Bush is trying to get is public support for the more overt war, the flat-out murder part, the twin to the current mass-murder in Iraq?
My jaw was very tight this morning. I was rather more matter-of-fact with my customer's this morning. No easy smiles this morning.
And I was definitely on alert for any Likudnik assholes this morning. I deal with them all the time...
I know exactly how anti-Semitic that sounds. You will just have to trust that I am not a racist. But you perhaps have no idea of the virulent triumphalism of this class of person. I deal with them all the time. They are the worst scum: far worse than the redneck American element. They know exactly what they are doing, and they think it is all quite amusing.
They view a garage attendant, which is all that I am, as the most tempting of targets. As soon as I speak, they recognize that I am educated enough to understand their insults. And then the insults begin. Believe it.
And I spoke rather too earnestly with the average couple at the desk, this morning. Gasoline prices? Utterly artificial. That is a consensus opinion and, no, it is not a substitute for discussing the weather. There is a deep anger amongst the average-income populace. They know they have been manipulated. The current war is unpopular in the extreme. The president is viewed as a spoiled brat, wanna-be dictator.
The working class folks I spend my day around are not up on politics. And almost all of them are immigrants. Mostly, they are here on tourist Visas and working on an independent contractor basis. They will never deliver the taxes they are scheduled to pay. But, even those working legally have never stopped to consider where their taxes will go and what they empower by enthusiastically grappling for the 'dream'.
But you know what they do tell me? They say that this country is hollow. That there is no human space here.
You see them come down on one side of it or the other: some like the cheap techno gadgets; and the idea of bullying and exploiting other immigrants, in their turn, in order to make their way.
But many, many others just shake their heads and buy a ticket back to Lima, or Caracas, or Sao Paulo and wash their hands of it all...
I deal with well-dressed, blow-dried, Colorado and Ohio white folk - born-again freakazoids, here to do business of some sort with the elements in the county that run the KKK mega churches. Sometimes, seeing that I am white and male and presentable, they mistake me for their own, and make coded statements to me that sound like subtle cheers urging solidarity for race war... "I kid you not," as my old Mom used to say.
What is it you are trying to tell us, Scott? you ask.
Just this:
This is not a polity. This is not a nation. This is nothing but an Abomination. This is a huge labour camp of fractured interests presided over by a ravenous oligarchical class using every trick in the book to divide and conquer it's hapless, greedy, corrupt victim-subjects. And there is NO recourse, NO judge, NO people and NO power other than that of this hellish bourgeois- elite run-amok that orders our every day, and week, and lunar month.
Now they have it in mind to destroy, without provocation, another people. And, by god, they have the power to do it.
In a matter of hours, perhaps.
Some of their minions are subconsciously salivating at the prospect - yes, revenge for the resistance of all those damned rag heads who decided to stand up and fight like patriots against the invader in Iraq.
I have a terrible feeling that we, here, paying homage to the truth, are also fascinated - we know what is happening and we are horny: to see the spectacle of Imperial punishment played out - YES! in our own time! Can you believe it, brother?! Goodness, they are wicked, huh?
My friends, we are on the brink of a disaster such as the Anglo-American world has never seen.
Hitler? Ho, Ho, Ho. Hitler will be viewed as a flea-bite of a threat - against our 800 years of the rule of law and of parliamentary government - after the consequences of this supreme error play out.
Make no mistake. Iran is a nation, real. And an overt ACT of war against Iran will engender - yes, a WAR. God help us...
He will not be upon our side; I can tell you that.
Only I'd say that they're not angry at "rag-heads." They're angry at something else. In the case of Dubya Bush it would be his tyrannical mother and, due to Dubya's repeated failures, the disappointment of his father, combined with the knowledge of the repeated failures. Even when one is in a position of power, such as where Dubya now finds himself, he is not free of memory. This is why Dubya is a drunk, a cokehead, a loser. He is haunted. So when he finally issues an order to do something military, he is attacking his ghosts.
Not al Qaeda, not bin Laden, not a bunch of random Middle Easterners, not a bunch of "liberals".
Nope.
He's attacking those ghosts.
And you have to wonder what Dick Cheney was required to do on that dirt-eating ranch where he grew up in Wyoming. Maybe do some "favors" for his father's friends, who were called "Uncle ____", or something like that.
Sinister acts such as theirs do not arise from whole clean cloth.
Thought provoking post and comments. I have said this before(at other places) but I will say it again. There will be a massacre in Iraq, of all the troops, US and coalition (600 Aussies I think)after Iran is attacked. They really don't care do they(being Bush/Cheney). Do you think GWB will be coming to Aus next week for APEC, or will he be too busy?
Nobody mentioned “PEAK OIL” As of this year, world oil demand surpasses world oil production and this equation will get worse in the next decade. This means that oil prices will keep rising and our oil-driven “exponential growth” economy will collapse. Everything in our economy is oil/energy based... think of food & agriculture, transportation, cars & freeways, electricity, the military machine [the greatest consumer of oil], heating/cooling, computers & information processing, chemicals & pharmaceuticals, etc... With higher oil prices and lower oil production, we'll have to get by with less in all these categories and the economy will be affected negatively... The world population follows the same curve as oil production i.e. went from 2B to 6B in the last century and as oil production declines, the population will follow... “PEAK OIL” has already happened and is irreversible... The decline in oil production means the decline in our way of life even if Bush takes control of all the oil in the world... Bush and the neo-cons want to control as much of the oil in the world as they can because they're afraid of the increasing competition from China & India and they want to hoard as much wealth as possible before the collapse of the world [western] economy... If you look at a world map, you will see that the US military is positioned everywhere in the world where there is oil and/or drugs [coca & opium]. Bush has [illegally] invaded Iraq, is planning to [illegally] invade Iran shortly and has encircled Russia & China with bases to eventually attack Russia. In all cases the motive is oil. But somebody somewhere is bound to retaliate [sooner than later I hope] and then we would have WW3 or the rapture. I'm NOT in any justifying what Bush & the neo-cons are doing, as a matter of fact I think it is utterly criminal. I'm just giving you a different POV...
"Bob Macvie: The sadest thing is the British in all of this: they egged the Americans on to do it with their 'pieces in flux, re-order the world' speech from Blair"
Sorry Bob that's not true. That speech was in 2001, post Sep 11, and adressed Afghanistan and the issue of bin Laden and also the Palestinian issue. The idea of the invasion of Iraq by Bush and friends was done all by themselves.
And another thing to realize is that the WH has shown that it does not consider a major insurgency, even to the point of civil war, to be a problem.
Like Hitler in Germany, they don't care that the people don't want this war. And if 30 - 40% acceptance is all they need, they already have it. Bush has a solid 30 % minimum on his side, no matter what he does. He could sodomize Blair on national tv and still count on his 30%.
If Iran can hold out, then I think things REALLY get complicated, because I think alliances with Central and East Asian powers come into play - Russia, Uzbeckistan, China. I doubt that happens though, as it appears that the US and Israel plan to pour unprecedented firepower into Iran.
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