They cry peace, peace, but there is no peace -- not when American missiles are around to derail any talks that might hamper the profitable operations of the Washington war machine.
On Wednesday, missiles from an American drone destroyed a house in the Pakistani village of Damadola, killing at least 15 people, with women and children reportedly among the dead. The ostensible target was a gathering of Taliban fighters, who control the surrounding area in this border region with Afghanistan.
But the real target of the attack, no doubt, was the peace process now underway between the local militants and the new Pakistani government. As AP notes:
The explosions came as Pakistani authorities and Taliban militants exchanged dozens of prisoners in the latest step in a peace process that is stirring growing alarm in the West. NATO claims [that] militant incursions into Afghanistan have increased.
This is a familiar pattern of the worldwide Terror War launched by the Bush Administration. We saw it a few weeks ago in Somalia, when national unity talks between the government and insurgents were disrupted at a delicate stage by the "targeted assassination" of a rebel leader (and the usual assorted civilians) by U.S. missiles.
In the American imperium, subject nations are not permitted to work out their internal conflicts on their own -- especially if this involves a cessation of hostilities that leaves any group or faction disfavored by Washington still standing. Obliteration of the disobedient is the ultimate goal, as Hillary Clinton put it so well the other day. But the Terror War policy of disrupting peace talks has some short-term objectives as well. These include the continuation of the war profiteering that now greases the entire American system; and, perhaps above all, the ape-like show of dominance that gives such deep psychological satisfaction to the pathetic, stunted, needy wretches who control our politics and our political discourse.
What's going on in Lebanon? Nothing you haven't seen before -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine and other places where "the United States is basically instigating and funding civil wars."
So says Professor As’ad AbuKhalil -- better known perhaps as the "Angry Arab," for his indispensable website of the same name. AbuKhalil was born and raised in Lebanon and has an intimate knowledge of troubled land's warring factions there -- and their external backers. Needless to say, the American media's framing of the current flare-up of violence in Lebanon is the usual sinister caricature of reality, with "bad guys" attacking "our friends" out of pure, malevolent, world-gobbling evil.
In fact, "our friends" in Lebanon are actually in league with our allegedly erstwhile friends Al Qaeda. The Hariri faction backed by the Bush Administration is drawing upon the most extremist Sunni armed factions in an attempt to counteract the power of Shiite Hezbollah. This is of course just a continuation of current American strategy in the region, as Sy Hersh outlined last year: giving arms and money to extremist Sunni groups allied with al Qaeda in order to ward off Shiite factions making trouble in our client regimes.
This in turn is part of a broader, more long-standing strategy, going back to 2004, as we noted in a recent report: a global program of arming and funding militias and other violent "non-state actors" to foment trouble where Washington wants trouble, and pressure recalcitrant regimes to bend to the imperial will.
And no, Washington is not "behind" every twist and turn in Middle East politics. But American interventions, direct and covert, are responsible for exacerbating and intensifying conflicts, enflaming sectarian and ethnic divides (or literally building giant concrete walls between them, as in Baghdad today), bolstering tyrannical and/or ineffectual, illegitimate leaders whose misrule provoke more strife, suffering and conflict.
In an interview this week on Democracy Now, AbuKhalil cuts through the corporate media cartoons to give a truer picture of the outbreak in Lebanon:
I think that people may remember, back in the 1980s, the United States government, for two years in the administration of Ronald Reagan, deployed troops from ’82 to ’84. And there was a civil war, and the United States was supporting the rightwing militias of Israel in Lebanon, and they used the discourse of supporting the central government of Lebanon.
Something similar is taking place right now in Lebanon, and this is very much similar to what’s happening in Sudan, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and Somalia. The United States is basically instigating, funding and arming civil wars in all those places. We hear a lot about this inability of the international community to tolerate armed militias. Of course, Hezbollah is an armed militia, but so are the pro-militias of the government. There’s a Los Angeles Times article today detailing the efforts by the United States and allies to create militias throughout the country. And the Washington Post indicated that this government of the United States spent $1.4 billion to prop up the administration of Siniora in Lebanon.
And basically, what happened in Lebanon in the last few days is a partial coup d’etat that was in response to a full coup d’etat that was engineered by the United States and Saudi Arabia and Israel from behind the scene back in 2005, capitalizing on the assassination of Rafik Hariri.
And things have gotten to this point because America basically is responsible, more than their clients in Lebanon. I mean, there were ideas of dialogue in Lebanon, and things were moving in that direction, and then, suddenly, lo and behold, the Assistant Secretary of State of the United States for the Near East, David Welch, shows up in Lebanon, and he basically wanted to stiffen the resolve of the clients and to basically prevent the possibility of dialogue. And then, Walid Jumblatt, one of the clients of the United States and Saudi Arabia and Lebanon today, escalated by deciding on taking the issue of disarming Hezbollah, which is supported at least by half of the Lebanese; and Lebanese parties, including clients of the United States, [had] agreed that the issues of disarming Hezbollah should be left for internal dialogue of the Lebanese themselves...
This [the current violence] is something that experts have warned the United Nations about. If you push things to that point, the other side is going to lash out, and they did lash out, even if one, like me, does not like the scenes of these militias and armed thugs running into the streets of Beirut and so on. But basically, we have to say that this is the doing of US foreign policy, and this is the true face of the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East.....
We have to say that this level of intense tensions and conflict and animosity is the product of a deliberate American-Saudi policy of instigating a Sunni-Shiite conflict, the likes of which Lebanon has never seen. I mean, even somebody like myself who comes from a split background—my mother is Sunni, and my father is Shiite—I mean, we’ve never seen anything like this. Saudi media, with the full cooperation of the United States, have been for three years mobilizing the Lebanese opposition, because that’s the only thing they have....They have been [doing] serious propagandizing to [split] Sunnis from Shiites in order [to] create a militia that can stand up to Hezbollah.
Back at his website, AbuKhalil notes:
What is quite ironic is that Lebanese Forces' media (like LBC-TV) are gleefully airing calls for Jihad... by (Hariri- and Saudi-funded) Salafite groups in North Lebanon. Do they not know what those groups' views are of Christians? They even refer to Lebanese Christians as "crusaders". These are clones of Al-Qa`idah, but the Lebanese Forces seem to be embracing them.
And so in Lebanon -- as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia -- the policies of the Bush Administration have only produced more extremism, more terrorists, more violence.
Can we not discern a pattern here, a clear intention? The "War on Terror" produces terror; it's part of the "creative destruction" that the militarists used to boast about, when they dreamed that their crimes of aggression, torture and murder would lead future generations to "sing songs about us," in the immortal words of Michael Ledeen.
This quote is often attributed to Richard Perle, but it comes from Ledeen's call for "total war" in a speech at American Enterprise Institute on October 29, 2001. Ledeen followed this up with a piece on National Review Online in August 2002, when he mocked Brent Scowcroft's concern that an invasion of Iraq could turn the Middle East into a cauldron. Ledeen's response:
One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.
Ledeen is no mere kibitzer on the rightwing gravy train. He is one of the architects and chief abettors of the cauldronization -- the slaughter and suffering -- we see across the Middle East today. As the Washington Post noted back in the glory days of 2003, when these bloodthirsty wretches were still strutting around beating their chests about their importance:
One [of Karl Rove's advisers] is Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, whose specialties include terrorism and the Middle East. His latest book, according to the official summary, asserts that "America must topple the regimes of the terror masters to eliminate the threat of terrorism."
The two met after Bush's election. "He said, 'Anytime you have a good idea, tell me,' " Ledeen said. Every month or six weeks, Ledeen will offer Rove "something you should be thinking about." More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.
Nowadays, of course, Ledeen skulks around pretending he opposed the invasion of Iraq: the kind of astonishing lie one might have heard in a Nuremberg courtoom back in the day, and one easily refuted. (As is his current lie that he has always opposed an attack on Iran.) But he, Rove and all the other facilitators of the militarists bear a direct and substantial share of responsibility for the murder and chaos that continues to erupt across the tormented region.
UPDATE: And now Bush is proposing an even more direct U.S. military intervention in Lebanon. Speaking in Cairo -- on yet another one of his pointless trots* around the cauldron (maybe he wants another fancy sword -- or just some more good smoochin' -- from the Saudi king) -- Bush offered to help the Lebanese army "respond more effectively" to Hezbollah. He also took the opportunity to -- what else? -- blame Iran for everything happening in Lebanon, claiming that without the backing of the devilish Persians, Hezbollah -- which, as AbuKhalil noted, is supported by almost half of the Lebanese population -- would be "powerless."
So Bush will soon have yet another proxy war playground to while away his time before retiring to stick his snout in the same corporate trough that has so enriched his fellow war crminal, Tony Blair -- who has already made almost $20 million in corporate pork in less than a year after leaving office.
Who says crime -- especially war crime -- doesn't pay?
*Note. Some might think that Bush is touring the region to build support for an attack on Iran. But that kind of head-knocking and arm-twisting is left to Dick Cheney (who took an ominious swing through the cauldron not long ago). Junior is too witless for any hard-core dealing -- although no doubt he will bluster and bellow to his hosts about Iranian perfidy and "doin' God's will" and whatever else vomits up from his murder-rotted brain.
To divert from atrocity and anguish and political folly for a moment: over at the MySpace page, there are four new songs up, with more to come. These are demos, self-produced, rough-sketch possibilities for the second album, which, if all goes well, might be recorded this summer with Nick Kulukundis, the extraordinary producer, arranger and musician. There are also two songs from the first album with Nick, Wheel of Heaven (available through iTunes), still up on the page. Give 'em a listen if you take a notion.
Civilians are still streaming out of Baghdad's Sadr City, despite the announcement of a truce late last week designed to avert – or at least give the appearance of diverting – a major bloodbath from an all-out assault on the densely-populated area by U.S. forces and their local junior partners. Announced on Saturday, the deal was immediately eviscerated by U.S. forces, who bombed three neighborhoods in Sadr City that very afternoon, as dpa reports.
Oddly enough, when Iraqi government forces tried to enter disputed Sadr City quadrants the next day, they were attacked, the New York Times reports. The Times' intrepid correspondents, including the ever-reliable spin-funnel Michael Gordon, professed to be shocked – shocked! – at such rude behavior, which they presented as clear and unprovoked violations of the nascent truce. Naturally, they omitted any unseemly and unnecessary mention of the American bombing of the day before.
The fighting is Sadr City is concentrated along a demarcation line, Al Quds Street (Jerusalem Street), between areas loyal to nationalist cleric Motqada al-Sadr and areas now under the control of the violent sectarian factions backed by both the United States and Iran; i.e., the Iraqi "government." In addition to bombing residential areas and leading Iraqi government troops in attacks, American forces are also erecting a massive concrete wall, 12 feet high, along three miles of Al Quds street, in attempt to seal off the recalcitrant neighborhoods. Of course, it was considered poor form – or rather, an international outrage – when the Soviets did this kind of thing in Berlin; but in our brave new world, it is now an accepted, even celebrated policy. (Just like torture, concentration camps, aggressive war, warrantless surveilance, etc.) During the past 17 months, throughout the vaunted "surge," U.S. forces have been building ghettos all over Baghdad and elsewhere in the country, often turning over these enclaves to the tender mercies of "former" insurgents and terrorists who, now in the pay of Washington, rule them as private fiefdoms. This, you understand, is what is now known as "liberation."
Civilians still living in the slowly closing concrete trap say they are almost as fearful of a genuine truce as continued warfare. That's because a real truce would allow the violent sectarians empowered by Bush to operate with murderous impunity in their neighborhoods, replacing al-Sadr's draconian militia with something even worse, as McClatchy Papers reports:
Inside Abdul Hassan's home, furnished with colorful rugs and flimsy mattresses, Sakran and his wife hoped for calm after weeks of bombardment and gun battles, but they feared the worst is yet to come. "We just want peace," Sakran's wife, Suham Bresam, said, her eyes heavy from sleepless nights. "This agreement happened and I was up all night from the gunshots and strikes."
Her home was in the middle of the fight on the edge of the district where U.S. forces are holed up in abandoned buildings and the Iraqi Army has set up checkpoints, and she hadn't left it in weeks. A nearly completed wall built by the U.S. military isolates the area, and her modest dwelling is scarred by bullets and shrapnel…
Nowhere in Sadr City is safe from an air strike, Bresam said, but Abdul Hassan's home was safer than her own. At home, the Iraqi Army shoots erratically after a roadside bomb blast hit civilians, and when the Mahdi Army shoots rockets at U.S. aircraft, missiles rain on people's homes.
"It's just the civilians who get hurt," she said....
Before the battle began in late March, the area was peaceful…but they lived in an atmosphere of intimidation. When women were beaten by the Mahdi Army in her neighborhood or Sunnis killed, they objected quietly and never challenged the militia....
But they also fear the Iraqi Army. Videos captured on cell phones are being sent as messages from person to person. Abdul Hassan pulled out his phone to show a public hanging of three men. They stood on police trucks with nooses around their necks as a crowd of people looked on and then the trucks were driven away and the men were hung. Another showed men shot by the Iraqi Security Forces and then burned. In the background Iraqi soldiers spoke.
"Don't say in the name of God the most compassionate the most merciful. They are animals," one soldier said....
Abdul Hassan said the videos were shot in the southern cities of Karbala and Nassiriyah, and he worried that the same would happen in Sadr City if the Iraqi Army had free reign.
"We haven't seen a solution that will give us peace," he said. "We don't want it to be like Karbala or Nassiriyah. We don't want people executed in the streets."
But there will be no peace in Sadr City. The "surge" will continue along the Al Quds line. Bombs will keep falling from American planes, missiles from drone-craft operated by button-pushers bunkered in Nevada will continue to rain death on houses and apartment blocks, and the extremists embraced by George Bush will keep hanging and shooting people in the streets.
II. Meanwhile, civilians in Mosul are likewise fleeing or hunkering down in the face of a major assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces. Patrick Cockburn of the Independent reports that one of Iraq's largest cities has been turned into a "ghost town," as likewise fleeing or hunkering down in the face of an attack by U.S. and Iraqi forces. The latter have launched the attack because, they say, the city has been under the control of "al Qaeda in Iraq" for many months.
That's right; as Juan Cole notes, one of Iraq's largest cities has been in the hands of what is supposed to be America's deadliest enemies in Iraq – even while Americans has been bombarded with propaganda about the "success" of the surge. This is the same city, by the way, that is routinely trumpted as a "success story" in the glittering career of General David Petraeus, architect of the "successful" surge. Petraeus was in control of Mosul during the first months of the war, when he was regularly touted – by Michael Gordon of the NYT, among others – for his remarkable "counterinsurgency techniques" and peerless "nation-building skills." So "successful" were Petraeus' efforts that the current assault to dislodge "al Qaeda in Iraq" is a carbon-copy of a similar operation launched earlier this year, as Cole reports:
Reading news about Iraq is like watching Bill Murray's 'Groundhog Day' in which you have to live through the same day over and over again. So the US and Iraqi governments have announced a new campaign against Sunni radicals in Ninevah province, especially Mosul. Take a look at this article, published late last January: "Thousands of Iraqi army soldiers reached the northern city of Mosul on Sunday in preparation for what the government said would be a major offensive there against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, along with other Sunni militants."
Ninevah governor Duraid Kashmula admitted to Al-Hayat that Mosul "has come to dominated by the leaders of al-Qaeda as a result of the delay in the military operation in the city."
What??! Mosul is Iraq's second largest city at 1.7 million, and it is under the control of "al-Qaeda"? How long has this been the case? All this time? While the US press was reveling in the "calm" in the country?
Mosul was also taken over by insurgents in 2004 – while U.S. forces were destroying Fallujah. It has long been flashpoint for terrorist attacks, reprisals and strife throughout the war. And now, for the second time in less than a year, it is being subjected to a major attack to wrest it away from insurgents. This is the kind of "success" that has fuelled Petraeus' meteoric rise to his current perch in command of the entire "Central Command" of the Terror War.
But what is happening in Mosul today? Patrick Cockburn has the story:
Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al- Qa'ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country's northern capital into a ghost town.
Soldiers shoot at any civilian vehicle on the streets in defiance of a strict curfew. Two men, a woman and child in one car which failed to stop were shot dead yesterday by US troops, who issued a statement saying the men were armed and one made "threatening movements"....
I had been to Mosul down this road half a dozen times since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and on each occasion the military escort necessary to reach the city safely has grown bigger....
That's Petraeus' legacy of "success" in action!
There is no doubt that security in Mosul has been deteriorating over the last six months. Mr Goran, who in effect runs the city, said that 90 people were killed in Mosul last September compared to 213 dead this March, including 58 soldiers and policemen. The number of roadside bombs had risen from 175 to 269 over the same period.
The official theory for this is that al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which has only a limited connection with Osama bin Laden and is largely home grown, has been driven out of its bastions in Anbar and Diyala provinces and Sunni districts of Baghdad. It has retreated to Mosul, the largest Sunni Arab city and the third largest in Iraq.
This is probably over-simple. Attacks on US troops in Anbar province have restarted and in Sunni districts of west Baghdad al-Qa'ida appears to be lying low rather than being eliminated. In many cases in Baghdad al-Sahwa, the supposedly anti-al-Qa'ida awakening councils paid by the Americans, in practice have cosy arrangements with al-Qa'ida.
I was in Mosul on the day it was surrendered by Saddam Hussein's forces in 2003. Scenes of joy were succeeded within the space of a few hours by looting and gun battles between Arabs and Kurds. Five years later Mosul, one of the great cities of the world, looks ruinous and under siege. Every alley way is blocked by barricades and the only new building is in the form of concrete blast walls. The fact that the government has to empty the streets of Mosul of its people to establish peace for a few days shows how far the city is from genuine peace.
How far from peace…. There will be no peace in that tormented land now, because the ones who started the war, and keep it going, see no profit in peace – unless, as we've said before, it is the peace of the grave, with all resistance to their will, their interests, their agenda crushed utterly. There is no middle way for the war-and-dominion machine that bestrides our system. There is only the "obliteration" of resistance – or else, as in Vietnam, ignominous retreat after years of pointless death and ruin. But what do they care? In the words of Suham Bresam: "It's just the civilians who get hurt."
Arthur Silber needs your help. It's as simple as that. One of the most insightful, original, informed and meaningful voices in our political discourse today, Silber must scrape by from month to month on the jagged edge of circumstance, battling ill health with notable courage, surviving on nothing but what his blog can bring in. This is a shameful reflection of how our society regards wisdom and truth: as something to be cut off, unsupported, crushed if possible, and if not -- as in the case of Silber's indomitable spirit -- then marginalized, battered, made to suffer.
In recent weeks, Silber has roared back from a particularly vicious bout that laid him low to write a remarkable string of essays, full of the learning, passion, perception -- and wicked wit -- that is a trademark of his work. Some particularly choice example can be found here: Let the Victims Speak; Why America May Go to Hell; and Cultivate Your Sense of Wonder.
In the latter piece, Silber combines older and new material to speak eloquently about the vision that drives his work:
If I had to select just a single word to express my deepest feeling about the world, and about humankind, it would be that one: wonder. I consider it a measure of how unevolved we are that so many people appear to be capable of that feeling only when they contemplate an imaginary, supernatural plane. It is hardly surprising that our world holds so much unnecessary suffering, when so many people are willing and eager to condemn it to second-rate status in favor of one they've made up out of whole cloth...
I think it highly probable that our circumstances will continue to get significantly worse, although this deterioration may come quickly or comparatively slowly. You may live the rest of your life without seeing the worst of what will happen, or even anything close to the worst -- or you may not. There is no way to know, and the variables are close to infinite. But I say again: it does not have to be this way. Extraordinary events have transpired in history before, and they might again. We need a miracle, but not one delivered to us from a supernatural realm: we require a miracle that we create.
It can happen. Hold on to your sense of wonder; if you do not have a sufficiently strong one, then develop it. For me, it is the most precious resource in the world....
Live in the sense of wonder, and in the world of joy. Take it, feel it and pass it on. That's sometimes all you can do -- for someone, somewhere, one day. It's everything.
I now add that, when you engage in this process, you yourself live ecstatically -- today.
Can we afford to let such a voice fall silent? If you have anything at all to spare, get on over to Silber's site and give what support you can.
Outside Agitators: Another Missile Attack Aimed at Peace Talks Thomas married into the multi-billionaire Bucksbaum clan, owners of about 60 million square feet of shopping malls. Thomas lives better than the average reporter, in Bethesda, in "a palatial 11,400-square-foot house, currently valued at $9.3 million...
Serving the System: Disillusion, Deception and the Obama Campaign Honestly, why even bother with pwogwessives like fd? He's obviously carved a comfy niche for himself in the corporate DNC and can manage to maintain the delusion that Obama is some kind of pwoggie savior. Nice work if you can get it...
There's no ...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond mistah Charlie: check the podcasts; I did an interview with Howard Zinn a few weeks back to discuss 'A peopel's History of American Empire'
Jimmythem: youa make-a me laugh: like you, i like bikes and weed, and liberals make me feel weird and uncomfo...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond The U.S. has had a remarkably consistent policy in the Middle East for nearly 40 years, selling arms to as many factions as possible, and pitting them against each other whenever it can. The "war on terror" just makes this foreign policy more obvious...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond Um. Chris?
You should check your permit.
In most counties, shootin' trolls in a barrel is not exactly above boards...
HA!
oh, that was made to order.
Love,
Scott
Fire Alarm: Feeding the Flames at Traitor's Gate I am in the militia in my state, and the militia is not what the mainstream media make us out to be. However this thing plays out, you and your loved ones will stand a better chance of coming out the other end by getting plugged in to the militia ne...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond I'm glad I stopped by here today, because I need diagnosis: I'm a motorcyclist who smokes wacky weed and likes shiny black boots. Creepy liberal hippies are people who smoke wacky weed, but evil Nazi faggots like shiny black boots. Both hippies AND N...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond In the interview you quote from Democacy Now, Professor As’ad AbuKhalil states "There’s a Los Angeles Times article today detailing the efforts by the United States and allies to create militias throughout the country. And the Washington Post in...
Feeding Moloch: Last Barriers to War on Iran Come Down
Thursday, 01 May 2008
Anyone who thinks the Bush Administration does not intend to attack Iran either has rocks in the head or their head in the sand. The warmongers have raised their cacophonous howling of threat and accusation against Iran to entirely new levels. Every day now, some major Administration figure makes fiery charges that Iran is directly, deliberately killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq: a clear casus belli, if it were true, which it almost certainly is not.
(That is, it a clear cause for war in the perverted logic of Establishment discourse, which ignores the fact that U.S. forces have illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, and the fact the Bush Administration itself supports the same violent sectarian Shiite factions that Iran does in Iraq, factions responsible for killing thousands of innocent people. What's more, Bush and his beloved General Petraeus are now directly paying extremist Sunni factions, including members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who are likewise engaged in murder, repression and "ethnic cleansing," like their Bush-supported Shiite counterparts. George W. Bush and his minions and handlers have deliberately, knowingly, purposely created a slaughterhouse in Iraq, and they keep it going 24/7 with the fresh meat of murdered innocents. This is the true context of the Administration's charges against Iran: mass murderers accusing others of malevolent intent.)
The latest and most explicit salvo of warmongering comes from CIA honcho Michael Hayden, who finally crossed the red line that Bush officials have been tip-toeing up to for months: the charge that Iran's top government leadership is directly involved in "facilitating the killing of Americans in Iraq." As late as last week, the nation's top military officer, Admiral Michael Mullen, said there was "no smoking gun proof" that Iran's leadership was involved in the alleged Iranian support for attacks on American forces. And Petraeus, in his many Tehran-baiting broadsides over the past few months, has likewise always stopped short of this war-triggering accusation.
But now Hayden -- obviously with White House support -- has stepped boldly over that line. In an appearance at Kansas State University, he made it crystal clear:
"It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq," Hayden said. "Just make sure there's clarity on that."
In the weeks to come, the Administration will be rolling out more product along these lines, as the AP report notes:
Military commanders in Baghdad are expected to roll out evidence of that support soon, including date stamps on newly found weapons caches showing that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate.
Saint Petraeus himself is also preparing a report on alleged Iranian involvement in Iraq. (Aside from Tehran's intimate ties with Bush's own allies in Iraq, of course.) No doubt the word from this sterling officer -- universally respected despite his nearly unbroken record of egregious failure -- will be treated as holy writ by the "bipartisan foreign policy establishment," including the two "progressive" Democratic presidential candidates, one of which has already called for the "obliteration" of Iran, while the other stresses constantly that "all options remain on the table" against Tehran.
Let us, like Michael Hayden, be crystal clear. We are talking about an Administration that, for PR purposes, took the nation to war against Iraq over a potential threat to American lives, from Saddam's alleged WMD and his alleged support for terrorist proxies. (Again, we speak of the publicly stated reasons for war, not the real reasons.) This was the benchmark they set: even a potential threat to American lives justified military action. Now the Bush Administration is claiming that Iran is actually killing Americans; it is not a potential threat, but, as Hayden says, the actual policy of the highest levels of the Iranian government to facilitate the killing of Americans.
According to the benchmarks established by the Administration itself, this is an overwhelming justification for war. Indeed, in the harsh moral universe of geopolitics, the accusation essentially compels war: what nation would accept the killing of its own people without striking back?
So this is where we are now. The very last rhetorical line has been crossed. The last top military official who might -- might -- have resisted military action against Iran has been removed, replaced (with the avid backing of Obama) by Bush's willing executioner Petraeus.
We have seen all this before in the run-up to the destruction of Iraq. You have the incessant allegations and demonization of the target, who is suddenly the main source of evil in the world: just this week, Condi Rice declared that Hamas (an indigenous Palestinian organization whose rise was surreptitiously aided by Israel) is nothing more than a proxy army of Iran, while Pentagon bigwig General Carter Ham charged, ludicrously, that the Shiite government of Iran is supplying weapons and support to the extremist Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan. Again, as with Saddam, we are being told that the Iranian government is behind all of the problems in the Middle East; thus "regime change" in Tehran will remove those problems, and bring peace, freedom and prosperity to the region.
There is also the same removal of any top brass who might stand in the way of military aggression, such as the undercutting and "early retirement" of Army Chief General Eric Shinseki, who had questioned the Iraq war plan's troop levels, and the outright firing of Army Secretary Thomas White, who had publicly sided with Shinseki. Now Admiral William Fallon -- who had dutifully commanded the various Terror War operations launched by Bush in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, but balked at, in his words, "crushing the ants" in Iran until finishing off the other ants first, was pushed into "early retirement" to make way for the ever-obliging Petraeus.
The media too are playing their wonted role, as before. Most of the Bush Regime's charges are simply stovepiped directly into news stories with little or no critical examination, beyond an occasional brief along the lines of, "Iran denies involvement in the attacks." The reality of the Shiite factions in Iraq and their relation to Iran -- including the fact that ever-demonized Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army is far more at odds with Iran than the Bush-supported factions -- is almost never mentioned in any story breathlessly retailing the Administration's latest blood libels against Iran. Professor Juan Cole provides the true context (see his original post for more links):
The poor slum kids and Marsh Arabs in Basra who follow Moqtada al-Sadr don't even like Iranians. The primary Iran-linked force in Basra is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq [a pillar of the U.S.-backed government] with its Badr Corps militia, which most Basrans code as Iranian puppets. One of my Iraqi correspondents told me that when the Badr Corps was fighting Marsh Arabs, local Basrans characterized it as 'Iranians fighting Iraqis.' The Badr Corps, according to the Iraqi press, fought alongside al-Maliki's 14th Division against the Mahdi Army. The Badr Corps was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and it is alleged that many Badr Corps fighters are still on the Iranian payroll.
Iranians come through Basra on their way up to Karbala and Najaf on pilgrimage to sacred Shiite shrines, and a handful may have gotten caught up in the fighting... But that Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran deliberately sent Iranian troops or agents into Basra to undermine ISCI, Badr, and al-Maliki's Da'wa (Islamic Missionary) Party on behalf of the Sadr Movement just strikes me as daft. It flies in the face of everything else we know about the relationship of these groups with Iran.
And of course, the Iranian government has now come out squarely, in public, in favor of the al-Maliki regime in its attacks on Sadr's militia in Basra. This the reality: In Iraq, the Bush Administration and the Iranian government are on the same side, supporting the same Shiite factions. Just make sure there's clarity on that.
The Administration's literally hell-bent push for war with Iran has absolutely nothing to do with any of its stated reasons about Iranian interference or attacks on Americans in Iraq. (Juan Cole points us to this article by Tom O'Donnell for a look at some of the real reasons.)
But none of this matters. As with Iraq, the reality doesn't matter. The truth doesn't matter. The horrifying, murderous consequences don't matter. What matters is the militarist, elitist agenda of global domination -- in a word, empire -- that has driven America's "bipartisan foreign policy establishment" for decades. Iraq was not an aberration; it was an embodiment of this agenda. And the attack on Iran will be the same. A whole new slaughterhouse is about to open for business: more meat for the grinder, more sacrifices to the Moloch of greed and ambition. ***
Chris, you mistake propaganda for reality. The administration has been angling to demonize Iran not because it genuinly wants a full-scale hot war with Iran but because it has to have a viable enemey, i.e., an external power that can be blamed for U.S. failures in Iraq and elsewhere. The American people and the American "intelligencia" (which seems to never rise much beyond Sean Hannity both on the left and right) are incapable of a nuanced understanding of the the world and demand single all-bad enemies. The United States, in my reading of the propaganda organs (MSM) shows little indication of an actual invasion or attack. The intelligence agencies know that there is no substance to the allegation bandied about in the organs and the military knows that it cannot attack Iran without a major risk of major losses in the Gulf and, more importantly, in Shiite dominated regions of Iraq.
We are likely to see small scale provocations that play into the hands of hard-liners on both sides (probably carefully agreed upon before hand). What readers of your blog need to understand is that we live in an Orwellian world where governments, enemies or not are increasingly in collusion. Without going into it further I think you will find that a good deal of the so-called Cold War was largely two oligarchies posturning for mutual advantage when they needed to for domestic reasons. They learned their lessons from the Cuban Missle Crisis.
We also need to remember that Iran is more cohesive that Iraq and proved that underestimating it's military power as Saddam did is a big mistake. Iran was not supposed to be able to put up as good a fight as it did back then. This history is not lost on American planners.
Finally, as I've said many times before, neocon proposals (they indeed do want to attack Iran and also want, for ideological reasons, chaotic and revolutionary conditions throughout the world) can be vetoed by the world financial elites who have become tighter and more organized due to the fact major world governments have shown no ability to sensibily deal with problems of any kind.
I urge you, Chris, to moderate your fears by going into deep politics. What you see on the surface has little to do with what is actually going on.
After threatening to do so for a couple of years, Iran is now trading oil in euros and yen (http://cryptogon.com/?p=2492), and no longer accepts the dollar.
If memory serves, Saddam also threatened to do that, back about 2000. Hmmm..... how'd that work out for him?
Chris, you mistake propaganda for reality. The administration has been angling to demonize Iran not because it genuinly wants a full-scale hot war with Iran but because it has to have a viable enemey, i.e., an external power that can be blamed for U.S. failures in Iraq and elsewhere.
Banger,
That might play well at Digby or Daily Kos, but it's ironically based on propaganda and not reality. Mr Floyd has a solid grip on reality. But you, on the other hand, are playing the propagandist and spin-meister.
The USA is not "failing" at anything, Banger. Bush-Cheney are succeeding mightily. What have they "failed" to do? I suggest you reconsider something essential to your argument, something you obviously have missed.
You assume they desire peace through military victory, that they really wanted to spread "democracy" and make the world safe, that they really are trying to reduce "terrorism." That's the assumption that rests beneath the statement I quoted above.
The agenda of Bush-Cheney is radically different from what you assume. The things you assume to be their goals are YOUR goals, Banger. They are the goals of the DNC/DLC Donkeys, the goals stated by such fools as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in this race, and previously stated by John Kerry in 2004. These goals are another face on the same true mission: empire to make American and UK corporations the masters of the world, who dictate all global events, who rape and pillage all foreign cultures to gain access to their resources and their labor (which is enslaved) for maximal profit.
The military is not used for traditional victory. The military is a vehicle for profiteering, and a necessary tool for "destabilizing" foreign cultures to ensure that the USA and UK can take over those cultures and dictate how they will give up their resources and their labor pool.
If you really think that the USA will not go to war against Iran, you haven't been paying attention. We already are at war with Iran. Economically war has been declared. Militarily, we have crossed the border several times, under the argument that Iran is "helping the Iraqi insurgents." The war has begun, Banger. The question remaining is now far will Bush-Cheney, or McCain-whomever, or Clinton-whomever, or Obama-whomever take that war.
I find it obnoxious and galling that you would say Mr Floyd is following propaganda instead of reality. You are the one who has fallen for that ruse. I don't know whether your post is itself intended as propaganda, or whether you are merely duped by the propaganda and innocently are parroting what you have been led to believe. In practical effect it doesn't matter. You are leading people down a false path.
Mr Floyd has the facts well in hand. You are the one duped by propaganda.
I have to say that I agree both with Banger and Chris. None of us really know what is being planned by Cheney and Co. with regards to Iran and the current US election cycle, we are all reading the tea leaves as they say. But both Chris and Banger propose possible motives- I'd lean towards Chris. It is silly to accuse one another of being the true propagandist dupe. Let me just say that I hope Banger is right but fear that in fact Chris has the more astute analysis.
There really can be no question among informed citizens that the real purpose of the US military and its foreign policy is world domination. We also are forced by logic into the position that the Bush regime IS succeeding in Iraq - achieving their goals and the goals of the military-industrial complex. If they were not, they would have shifted their tactics. They are not stupid - or at least their masters are not.
Iran is next. My guess would be that it is not only related to their goals of world resource domination, containment of Russia and China, and increased profits for the oil and military corporations, but that it could easily provide the excuse to simply dissolve the facade of democratic government here and end the charade of a national election. We are in deeper trouble than any of us imagine. Chris is hardly mistaking propaganda for reality. He may in fact be understating the case.
Very well said, Duder! Think about how long this has been playing, that an attack is imminent. Yes the pro-war campaign now seems to be culminating but it might all just prove to be chest-beating by the Bushies, frustration that an attack is just too risky for empire. After the NIE I thought the idea of an attack was remote but undeniably the last month or so the odds of Chris' position have gone up. Damn it, I can no more believe that the Bushies will do something than that they won't. Thanks anyway, Chris.
The use of militias on all sides, basically arming the local criminals, is a tactic used to great effect in south america, and is definitely intentional. The aim is to spread chaos, pure and simple, because a chaotic country cannot oppose the bankers agenda...and they will use the criminal gangs to start attacks within Iran....and elsewhere.....
Bear in mind that Iraq is already dusted with DU, and polluted forever..there's a reason for this....see the picture - chaos everywhere, states of emergency, fearfull populations of ordainary people, thats the end game here folks.
Iran will trade in euros and other currencies. This will help to destroy the petrodollar, and help move bushs plan to bankrupt USA, so that they can use force to control USA...
The only solution is to bring down the system by a general strike, which is still possible, but must be done by securing food - so growing food in urban areas is really vital...
I have a difficult time believing that Bush has enough time left to ramp up to go into Iran. Also their is the additional difficulty of no troops available. If a bombing run were to level Tehran it would do nothing but create boycotts for all US goods and services throughout the civilized world.
As much as the neocons and Israel would like to see this happen. I don't think it will - at least in this administration... we will have to wait for McCain or Clinton for that.
and then remember that what I said above is a whole lot closer to the truth than what "Banger" said.
Although it's entertaining to see the Obamaphiles come in here to try to pin the blame on McCain and Clinton's candidacies, the truth is that the 2008 election isn't going to result in any changes in the present foreign policy. That would include the circumstance of Barack Obama being elected. He's no different from Bush/Cheney, despite his "hope" and "change" rhetoric.
But it's amusing to see the Obamaphiles come here to try to rehabilitate the Pro-Donkey, Anti-Elephant rhetoric of "Banger."
I think the only thing that keeps Bush and Cheney from bombing Iran is that it shares a border with Russia. Bombing a neighboring state just won't do down well in Moscow. Half a superpower can still throw its weight around...
Actually, Banger reminds me of so many people I know these days. These are folks who apply the politics of the 50's, through 1980, to the 7th Ring of Hell we fondly call reality now. They think they are still back in the day, when people of nominal sanity ran the Executive Branch. They haven't caught on to the fact that we are now governed by madmen, who love slaughter for profit and spit on all civilized law. Banger doesn't recognize the true face of the most twisted, psychotic evil the species has ever spawned. The junta would really like to nuke Iran, in a "tactical" sort of way, and I doubt "the world financial elites who have become tighter and more organized..." will be able to effect much of anything in the way of veto, in the aftermath of that catastrophe. They don't recognize how truly the world has changed, not only since 9/11, but since Nixon. I suppose cognitive lag is one way of describing it. So many Americans think they still live in that ficitious Donna Reed USA, and that all the old rules still apply. But they don't.
Amen, Grandma Jefferson. Accurate of you to say post-Nixon... we know, don't we, about the "unitary executive" theory that Dickie and Donnie started working toward once they saw their mighty hero Dicky the Tricky get impeached and forced toward resignation, eh? We know about this. And we know that the Donkeys are eager to get their own unitary executive elected, and that the power players who fund campaigns and pull administration strings with their money do not care whether the unitary executive is Donkey or Elephant, as long as he/she is a unitary executive, because the power players have the whole game locked up with their strategy of backing all the "front-runners" at once so that no matter who wins this fraud of an "election," the same people pull the strings. The same people.
It would be comforting to think that Donna Reed, Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet were the truth of America then and always, wouldn't it? All the men in their crisp white shirts, neckties and suits... all the women in their prom-queen dresses... all the children remarkably well-behaved, and the dog's tail always wags, and the dog always fetches the morning paper and brings it back slobber-free. So perfect. So very suburban. So full of honor, and so full of the hope that Donkey vs Elephant is a noble struggle between two honest perspectives ... a gentleman's match, a polo match.
It's really more like a duel with each one eager to shoot the other in the back, and neither having anything personal at stake, but instead both are competing for their financial backers, who control a massive betting game on the "duel."
My comments have been completely misinterpreted by most of you--something I'm used to almost anywhere I blog. Americans seem only capable of comic book views of reality.
Are there people in the administration that want war with Iran and, in fact, general war in perpetuity almost for the sake of it? Yes they exist and are a faction within government. My point is and has been that that particular faction is not dominant right now--could they be? It is possible. Unlike many of you, I know a little about professionals in the field and have been around government most of my life. Many if not most of the people in positions of power are sane decent folks. Some are pretty nasty but realistic, others are genuinly progressive in political outlook. Demonizing these folks feels good but ends up closing your mind to life as it really is, i.e., ambiguous, cloudy, and nuanced--at best we see through a glass darkly.
Funny, someone mentioned DKOS a place that banned me for arguing about 9/11. I follow "deep politics" a la Peter Dale Scott by the way if you want to know where I'm coming from. I suggest some of you go beyond wailing about "bad guys" and start seeing things in a more nuanced way--but perhaps that only comes through wide-reading, travel and age, I don't know. Some of the people commenting here are the reason why the "left" in the U.S. is, basically dead. The right does assertion equals truth far better. BTW I like Chris Floyd and enjoy his writing (good style is very important to me and he has it)--I just often don't agree.
My comments have been completely misinterpreted by most of you--something I'm used to almost anywhere I blog. Americans seem only capable of comic book views of reality.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
