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...
Operation Permanent Presence: The Civil War "Surge" in Iraq
Friday, 28 March 2008
The current esclation of the Iraqi civil war -- first in Basra and now all across the occupied land -- seems to be a perfect dovetailing of the complementary but not identical strategic needs of the Bush Administration and its client government in Baghdad. The regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is hoping to destroy or cripple -- or outlaw -- its principal political rival in the south before elections later this year. The Bush regime -- which is intimately involved in every step of the Basra operations, despite its rote denials -- is trying to keep the war boiling on a high simmer. This is the only option it has left to achieve its primary war aim: a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq.
Bush (and the ever-compliant press) portray the operation as an attempt to show that the Iraqis can handle their own security problems. A successful demonstration of this in Basra would then hasten the withdrawal of (some) U.S. troops -- so the story goes. But in fact, the operation seems expressly designed to prove the opposite point: that the Iraqi government can't possibly control its own country, and thus a major U.S. presence is still needed.
This is why the White House has backed al-Maliki's assault on the strongholds of Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra. But to say that Bush has "backed" or assisted this major escalation of the Iraqi civil war is probably putting it too mildly. As the operation unravels into the inevitable blood-drenched fiasco -- exposing the Iraqi "government" as the weak, corrupt, ineffectual, infiltrated puppet show that it has always been -- it becomes more and more likely that al-Maliki was ordered to launch the attack by his masters in Washington -- or at the very least was "marshall'd in the way he was going" by the Americans, with Bush playing Lady Macbeth to the power-hungry but uncertain al-Maliki.
In any case, the escalation of the civil war was obviously a spectacular miscalculation on the Iraqi government's part; far from crushing Sadr's forces, it has roused them to fury, and spawned violent uprisings and mass civil disobedience around the country. It now threatens to shut down or greatly hamper operations of the nation's one relatively trouble-free outlet for exporting its oil. It has further destabilized the capital, which is now locked down under a curfew, while mortars and missiles rain down on the Green Zone. The Americans and Iraqi government forces have sealed off Sadr strongholds in Baghdad and Basra, cutting off access to food, medicine and other necessities to millions of people. As Patrick Cockburn reports:
Instead of being a show of strength, the government's stalled assault is demonstrating its shaky authority over much of Baghdad and southern Iraq. As the situation spins out of Mr Maliki's control, saboteurs blew up one of the two main oil export pipelines near Basra, cutting by a third crude exports from the oilfields around the city....
In Baghdad, tens of thousands of supporters of Mr Sadr, whose base of support is the Shia poor, marched through the streets shouting slogans demanding that Mr Maliki's government be overthrown. "We demand the downfall of the Maliki government," said one of the marchers, Hussein Abu Ali. "It does not represent the people. It represents Bush and Cheney."
The main bastion of the Sadrist movement is impoverished Sadr City, which has a population of two million and is almost a twin city to Baghdad. The densely packed slum has been sealed off by US troops. "We are trapped in our homes with no water or electricity since yesterday," said a resident called Mohammed. "We can't bathe our children or wash our clothes."
Cockburn notes another telling example of how the civil war escalation has revealed the weakness of the Iraqi government and the manifest failure of the "surge" to accomplish its ostensible goal of bringing security and stability to Baghdad:
In a further blow to the belief that the surge has restored law and order, one of the two Iraqi spokesmen for the Baghdad security plan, which is at the heart of the surge strategy, was kidnapped and three of his bodyguards killed before his house was set on fire. The victim was Tahseen Sheikhly, a Sunni who often appeared with American officials to proclaim the success of the surge.
All of this, George W. Bush said on Thursday, is "normalcy." Glenn Greenwald noted that a conference of war whores at the American Enterprise Institute had on Monday declared that "the civil war in Iraq is over." This was of course the usual fatuous self-delusion of these bloodthirsty cowards, but at least it was uttered before the civil war surge began. Bush, on the other hand, made his lunatic declaration even as an American civilian worker was being killed by shellfire in the "impregnable" Green Zone fortress and long after it was clear that Iraq is undergoing yet another major convulsion of violence and destruction. (Curiously, although the New York Times quoted Bush's speech, it omitted any reference to his "normalcy" remark. It fell to the estimable McClatchy Newspapers to point this out.)
But if the civil war surge has been a disaster for al-Maliki's strategic hopes, it has been -- yet again -- a triumph for Bush. The whole point of the overall "surge" he launched in January 2007 was to keep the war going, at all costs. The "surge" accelerated the "ethnic cleansing" of Iraq, as Bush bought off some Sunni insurgents and gave these violent sectarians control of their own enclaves, while simultaneously assisting the Shiite militias under the control of the government to "cleanse" their own enclaves and fiefdoms. The Sadr movement -- by far the largest single political force in the country -- declared a unilateral ceasefire, using the "surge" as a time to regroup, re-arm, consolidate, and prepare for the inevitable conflict with its Shiite enemies in the government, and the Sunni militias now armed and funded by the Americans.
This relative abatement of conflict brought the death tolls of Iraqi civilians and American soldiers down to still-horrific levels, but allowed the Bush regime (and again, that compliant media) to "catapult the propaganda" of "progress" in the shattered, raped and looted land. This PR manipulation muted anti-war sentiment (such as it was) in the American Establishment, especially among the Democrats, who -- torn between the war-weary voters who put them into office and their real masters in the boardrooms of the military-corporate complex -- were obviously desperate to latch on to anything that would save them from having to actually do something to end the war. All of this bought Bush more time to entrench the American presence still deeper, with more troops, and the constant expansion and solidifying of gigantic military bases around the country.
This was the only aim of the surge: to lower death counts enough to tamp down domestic criticism while expanding and deepening America's military presence in Iraq. It had nothing to do with the security, freedom, prosperity or well-being of the Iraqi people, all of which has continued to deteroriate generally throughout the "surge."
But for a militarist empire, a "surge" is like heroin; the effectiveness eventually wears off, and you need another hit. Thus in the last few months, the Bush regime has been slowly and relentlessly turning up the heat on Sadr, arresting his lieutenants, killing his men, trying in every way to goad him into breaking his ceasefire, and plunging the nation into an escalation of its ongoing civil war.
For it is obvious now, even to the Bush Regime, that any legitimate Iraqi government would have to ask U.S. forces to leave the country. This is the wish of the overwhelming majority of Iraqis, as shown in poll after poll, year after year. The only way the Bushists can ensure a permanent military presence in Iraq -- which has been the open aim of the Faction for many years, long before Bush launched his act of aggression in 2003, and long before 9/11 "changed everything" -- is by keeping a puppet government in office through force of American arms. And the only way to do that is to provoke and attack all the forces opposed to that illegitimate government.
This is a win-win situation for Bush and the militarists, as we have often noted here before. If in the highly unlikely event that the Americans and their puppet government manage to rout all the armed opposition in the country, why then, the militarists will have what they've always wanted in Iraq: a client state that will "welcome" a large-scale U.S. military presence. If, on the other hand, the various "surge" injections result in continuing civil war, an increase in terrorism, and general mayhem, chaos and instability, threatening at every moment to spill over Iraq's borders and destabilize the entire region, why then, American forces will have to stay in Iraq indefinitely, to provide "regional security," to keep training Iraqi forces to "protect" their people, to "fight terrorism" spawned by the chaos and conflict, etc.
The latter, of course, is precisely the "anti-war" plan proposed by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Neither of them have proposed a total withdrawal of American forces; both have acknowledged that even the tepid plans they are now promoting could well have to be changed -- or abandoned -- as a result of "events on the ground" in Iraq. We are seeing those plan-changing events unfold before our eyes right now. The Bush regime has succeeded in fomenting a permanant civil war in Iraq by arming most of the players; radicalizing the populace with continual bombing raids on residential areas, holding thousands of Iraqi civilians captive without charges or due process, and supporting an illegitimate and unpopular Baghdad regime that uses torture, murder and repression as its tools (thus guaranteeing more terrorism); provoking Sadr into an open fight which neither he nor the government can win outright but which will cripple the Iraqi economy and cause mass suffering and even more violent division among the Iraqi people.
Thus, given the demonstrated gutlessness of Obama, Clinton and the Democrats on the war in Iraq, it is plain that this abomination will go on and on. The only possible move that could even potentially defuse the situation at this point is the total withdrawal of American forces. This could, perhaps, compel the various Iraqi factions to come to some accomodation. It is unlikely that such an accomodation would be reached without bloodshed; but blood is being shed copiously now. And as along as the American presence remains, as an artificial, alien -- and ever-aggravating -- factor, skewing the playing field, taking sides, killing people, and serving as a focus and fomenter of nationalist rage (and a handy pretext for avoiding accomodation), the situation will only grow worse. And certainly no other possible resolution -- internal negotiation, a UN or pan-Arab peacekeeping force, etc. -- will ever be possible as long as American forces remain in Iraq.
But let us be clear. The withdrawal of American forces from Iraq is not a "good" solution. It will lead to blood and suffering. But there are no good solutions to what Bush and his willing executioners in Congress, the media and Establishment have wrought in Iraq. There were never any "good" solutions. All hope, all potential for a "good" solution evaporated in the very instant that the first bomb fell on March 19, 2003. From that moment, the only thing -- the only thing -- that one could hope for and work for has been some kind of mitigation of the murderous consequences of this abominable crime.
This is the stark, unavoidable truth of the matter. We have destroyed Iraq, we have committed mass murder; and nothing "good" will come of it.
NOTE: I wrote a piece on this same theme -- four years ago, in April 2004. Tragically, horrifyingly, it still rings true. Some of the players mentioned below have departed from the main stage, while others should be added to list of criminals and accomplices. One of the proposed measures -- giving the Administration's initial $18 billion "reconstuction" fund to the Iraqis as war crime reparations is now impossible, since the money was long ago looted by Bush's American cronies and Iraqi collaborators. But the reality of the war was clear even then; and it has only worsened since that time. The excerpt can be found after the jump:
As the red wheel of Operation Iraqi FUBAR continues to roll, spewing hundreds of corpses in its wake, it becomes clearer by the hour that there is only one way for America to end this stomach-churning nightmare it has created: get out...
Their chest-beating pronouncements [from Bush and Blair] about "staying the course" and "seeing it through" are just so much rag-chewing nonsense. The way to rectify a crime is not to keep doing it – or in John Kerry's ludicrous formulations, to keep doing it in some different, "better" way – but simply to stop doing it. The illegal invasion was a crime, the occupation is a crime, and if you would not be a criminal, you must stop committing crimes...
With each new reprisal, each act of repression, each killing of an innocent person – even unintentionally – Bush is recruiting vast cadres of new fighters, and an even larger pool of passive support, for the armies of Islamic extremism. America – and the world – will be reaping this whirlwind for generations.
The only solution that might, just might, offer some slim hope would be the immediate withdrawal of Coalition forces and their replacement with a much larger United Nations force – made up of troops from counties acceptable to the Iraqis – to provide security and stability while the Iraqis themselves reconstruct their society, hold genuine elections, etc. America and its war allies would have nothing to do with this stabilization force, beyond helping to fund and supply it.
The departing Americans should then give the $18 billion slush fund now earmarked for Bush's "reconstruction" bagmen to the Iraqi people, as reparations for the Coalition's war crime. Iraq's foreign loans, procured by Saddam Hussein from sugar daddies like George Bush I, should be written off – and all of Little Bush's imperial edicts opening Iraq's economy for despoilation by his cronies should be rescinded. The United States and Britain should also be prepared to take in the vast horde of refugees who will flee the hardline Islamic regime that will doubtless be created in the ruins Bush has made of the once-secular state.
As for the "leaders" who committed this crime, there is only one thing left for them to do now, only one way for them to serve the people they have betrayed so vilely and stupidly. All of them – Bush, Blair, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, Geoff Hoon, Jack Straw, Richard Perle, the whole sick crew – should pick up a rifle and go to the front lines in Fallujah and Baghdad. Let them take the places of the young men and young women who signed up as soldiers to defend their country or make a better life for themselves – not to become pawns and killers for the Hitlerite ambitions of the bloodsoaked fools who threw them into this quagmire.
Considering Iraq by itself is like watching Ophelia's madness scene in Hamlet, and deducing the play's plot from that, if you can.
The most one can discern is that something is terribly wrong, is unholy rotten.
Iraq is but a theater in a strategic war to dominate the oil sources in the Middle East, thereby throttling America's emerging "enemy economies" -- China, India, Brazil -- and restricting Russia to minding its own affairs instead of growing its presence on the world stage.
The strategic goal is owning and operating the Caspian Basin region, and all points south of there. Puppet states or failed states from Baku to Beirut is the end goal. All lesser goals are adjustable and fungible under that one.
It's Baku or Bust, boys.
Iraq is but a beachhead. So is Iran. So is Syria, and so is Saudi Arabia if it ever goes flaky. That's American oil under that sand, so it's Give Over Or Die from here on out.
The challenge for the American Empire is to make itself "vital" to the "security and democracy" of fabled Syriana, the crescent shaped region stretching from the Caspian to the eastern Med. That's largely a PR challenge, not a military one. After we nuke a couple of bunkers in Persia, those Caspian states will be lining up to become wholly owned subsidiaries of America, Inc.
It's a sales job. There are point three billion Americans walking around right now -- less than three hundred thousand of them will reap virtually ALL the wealth being stolen over there.
Whether the Republic survives never bothered these folks. Whether the American Empire survives doesn't trouble them either. They and their money will be welcome anywhere in the world. They currently own and operate the biggest, baddest military and economic power in human history, and they use it to rape, pillage, and steal.
It's their machine. It's not your father's Republic.
Well over 90% of Americans are just along for the ride from this point.
As long as they are not willing to lop off heads, a la carte, that is.
Iraq is but a theater in a strategic war to dominate the oil sources in the Middle East, thereby throttling America's emerging "enemy economies" -- China, India, Brazil -- and restricting Russia to minding its own affairs instead of growing its presence on the world stage.
Totally agree. It all turns upon oil being the literal engine of the industrial world, and the vested interests of those who make their money (which they see as existential security) in the various aspects of the industrial world's financial workings.
Ah, 'normalcy'. Haven't heard that word since Hoover, or was it Coolidge? Went with a good ten-cent cigar, I seem to remember.
Now you all may be wondering what our gallant forces are doing, hunkering down in their Basra airfield foxholes, but I assure you they're getting ready to sally forth, flags flying, in aid of our gallant allies, whoever they may be. On that you may rely.
Say, from whence You owe this strange intelligence? or why Upon this blasted heath you stop our way With such prophetic greeting?
You and I think alike, Chris. I saw this morning that al-Maliki extended his deadline for insurgents to surrender their weapons and I thought -- Oooops! He's lost the game already and is angling for a cease-fire. Now I come here and read your column. You're on top of the thing, Mr. Floyd. Good thinking and good writing.
Chris, never stop telling them the truth. Most of us have run out of words as the force 5 hurricane of inchoate madness engulfs the planet. They don't even bother to spin plausible lies anymore, as the juggernaut rolls along.
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