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.
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...
Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran Gentle reader, imagine the consequences of America NOT pursuing military dominance of the oil-producing regions of the planet, and you will immediately perceive why America absolutely WILL use its military everywhere it can to claim resources it can ...
Out-Foxing Fox: Times Totes Water for War Crime Spin
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
We have often noted here the special role that New York Times reporter Michael Gordon plays in the national media. For years, he has served as a key conduit for government propaganda aimed at fomenting military aggression, then justifying it once it has begun. In many ways, he has probably been a far more effective tool of the militarists than the Fox News network.
The latter, of course, pumps the toxic, bloodstained sewage of Bush Regime spin directly into the public discourse 24 hours a day. But Fox is a very crude instrument. The network makes almost no attempt to hide its direct relationship with the warmongers, as demonstrated by its recent hiring of "news analyst" Karl Rove – who, though supposedly retired from politics, is of course still a principal adviser of both the White House and the McCain campaign. Fox preaches largely to the converted, and although it plays a vital role in keeping the faithful roused to fury, its partisan extremism tempers its credibility with the great and the good, the "serious" Establishment players.
The New York Times, on the other hand, is widely regarded as the nation's leading newspaper: somber, serious, independent. It is also seen as a bastion of "liberal" journalism, forever skeptical of government – especially a government run by Republicans. Thus a dollop of militarist propaganda in its pages has a much broader and deeper impact than whole truckloads of bile on Fox. "Wow, the New York Times says Saddam has WMD – and they hate Bush, so it can't be White House spin!" "Look at this: the New York Times says Iran is killing Americans in Iraq – and those liberals wouldn't publish anything that agreed with Bush unless it was really true." And because innumerable media venues throughout the country take their lead from the Times, a well-planted piece of "credible" spin appearing there immediately becomes "conventional wisdom" on the subject.
Not every reporter at the Times serves this function, of course. There is good journalism to be found in the paper; we draw on it here all the time. But Michael Gordon's work is a special case. His by-line on a story (with or without his former warmongering collaborator, Judith Miller) virtually guarantees that militarist propaganda is being "stovepiped" directly from the White House and Pentagon. These days he alternates between pounding the drum for an attack on Iran and prettying up the ghastly, on-going war crime in Iraq. His latest piece of psy-ops involves operations in Baghdad's Sadr City, where a looming massacre has been averted (or postponed) due to a deal brokered by -- not General David Petraeus, Ambassador Ryan Crocker or President George Bush – but by Iran.
After a fierce assault by U.S. and Iraqi government forces on the heavily populated area, Shiite nationalist Moqtada al-Sadr and the Green Zone government agreed, with Tehran's help, to a truce. Although it took a few days for the fighting to die down, the agreement is now in place, and is largely a victory for Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia. As McClatchy Newspapers – no stovepipe they – put it in a straightforward report:
Iraqi security forces entered Baghdad 's Sadr City in large numbers on Tuesday for the first time since followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed two weeks ago to let them in. No U.S. troops accompanied the Iraqi forces. The agreement specifically barred Americans from entering the Shiite Muslim enclave…
The agreement was brokered on May 9 and allows Iraqi security forces to enter all of Baghdad 's Sadr City and to arrest anyone found with heavy weapons. It also requires that Mahdi Army followers not be arrested without warrants unless they are in the possession of heavy arms. No U.S. forces were allowed into the neighborhood under the agreement.
In other words, Iraqi government troops entered Sadr City this week unmolested because Sadr told his militia to let them in, and told them to cooperate in restoring a semblance of stability to the area. He also demanded that American troops be kept out – and they were kept out. He demanded that his militia members be left alone, unless they were found with heavy weapons – and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki acquiesced. This was basically an agreement between two armed Shiite extremist factions – both of which are actually part of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. (The incessant demonization of Sadr in the American media conveniently overlooks the fact that his political wing is the largest single faction in the Iraqi parliament, and actually held six posts in al-Maliki's cabinet before leaving the coalition last year.) Both sides have ties to Iran, although al-Maliki and his allies are actually closer to Tehran, which regards Sadr's Iraqi nationalism with suspicion. They have now turned to Iran again, as in the recent fighting in Basra, to quell a violent upsurge in their intra-governmental, intra-sectarian conflict. This conflict could break out into slaughter again at any time, but for now the truce is holding.
That's the reality: Iran brokered a temporary peace between two warring factions of the American-backed government – in part to keep American forces, particularly airpower, from turning Sadr City into a charnel house. But that is not how it was portrayed by the ever-faithful toter of White House water, Michael Gordon. In his reports this week, blazoned on the front page of the Times, Gordon paints the picture of a triumphant Iraqi government which, "as it did in the southern city of Basra last month….advanced its goal of establishing sovereignty and curtailing the powers of the militias." Indeed, with these two "triumphs" – i.e., two Iran-brokered deals that left Sadr's militias intact – al-Maliki could now present himself "as a strong and decisive leader, the kind of leader many Iraqis, Sunni and Shiite, think is needed to control the country."
Of course, one of the ostensible goals of Bush's escalation of the war (known in the United States of Euphemism as the "surge") was "establishing the sovereignty" of America's client government and "curtailing the power of the militias." Yet as we see in both Basra and Sadr City, the Mahdi Army militia is alive and well. And it is a strange sort of "sovereignty" indeed that depends on the presence of 140,000 foreign troops (and vast cadres of foreign mercenares) who imprison tens of thousands of your own citizens, shoot them down in the streets and routinely bombs the hell out of your cities – not to mention the direct intervention of another foreign power to tamp down outbreaks of civil war in your own government.
But nonetheless, with Gordon's help, the narrative of the surge's "success" marches on. An anti-American cleric grants government troops permission to enter areas controlled by his militia – and this is ballyhooed as a triumph. Meanwhile, Gordon does not neglect his drumbeating duties in the push for war with Iran: the story is laced with unqualified references to mysterious "Iranian-backed militias" which, we're told, skulked away from Sadr City when al-Maliki flexed his muscles. Readers of the New York Times – and those disseminators of its conventional wisdom further down the media food chain – cannot be allowed to forget that Iraq is seething with perfidious Persia's evil agents, killing Americans in cold blood. Gordon actually shows some restraint in not ending every article with a stirring cry of "Furthermore, Iran delenda est!"
Needless to say, Gordon makes no mention of Iran's role in making the deal that allowed al-Maliki his great triumph – even though this fact had been featured in the first paragraph of story on truce that appeared earlier this month in….the New York Times, with contributions from…Michael Gordon. That piece, written by Alissa J. Rubin, outlined in some detail the Iranian role in defusing the situation, while also making clear the ambiguity and fragility of the outcome:
The deal would allow the sides to pull back from what was becoming a messy and unpopular showdown in the months leading up to crucial provincial elections. It is not clear who won, how long it would take for the truce to take effect or how long it would hold. But at least for now it would end the warfare among Shiite factions.
The Iranians helped end the standoff by throwing their weight behind the government after a delegation of Shiite members of Parliament visited Iran earlier this month, according to three people involved in negotiating the truce…
The visit to Iran by members of Parliament had been cited by the Americans as the first Iraqi effort to confront Iran with evidence of its training, financing and arming of Shiite militias in Iraq. But the trip evolved into a sophisticated political maneuver that could help the Iraqis out of a situation that was taking a rising toll on the country’s political stability.
The members of Parliament asked Iran to lean on the Shiite militias they have influence with, said Ali Adeeb, a Parliament member from Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party who was part of the delegation. “They said the better way to deal with the Sadrists is by negotiation; don’t fight them and don’t use force.”
What goes unsaid here, of course, is that the Iraqi army itself constitutes, for the most part, a "Shiite milita that Iran has influence with." So Tehran's ability to bring the two Shiite sides together is not so remarkable. What is remarkable – given Washington's hysterical insistence that Iran is now the prime mover behind all the violence spawned by Bush's war – is Tehran's insistence that the best way forward is through negotiation, not force. Could it be that the mullahs really don't want to see unrestrained carnage raging in a neighboring country with a government run by their own long-time allies?
But now that Gordon has wrested the story away from Rubin, all mention of Iranian mediation is gone. We are left only with the "strong and decisive" al-Maliki, some admiring American brass giving the l'il Iraqis a pat on the head for executing "a plan that was very much their own" – and those dark "Iranian-backed" killers roaming the Iraqi night.
The most important thing, of course, is that the Fallujah-like destruction planned for Sadr City has been averted, at least for now. Hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings under threat of imminent death have been given a reprieve – although they will live on in ruin, want, strife, repression and great, great suffering. But the propaganda assault on the American people will continue to intensify as the war criminals in Washington draw toward the end of their hellish reign, with much more bloodshed to come. ***
Oh joy, a Zogger has landed! Another one of those American exceptionalists who believe that good ole WASPy "real" Americans would never commit war crimes or do anything bad without dem ole devil Jews tricking them into it. That's right, Sparky, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld wouldn't hurt a fly; they're just dupes of masterminds like, er, Doug Feith. Why, they'd never try to dominate the world's oil supplies on their own, would they? Why should they? No gentile in the world has ever cared about money and power, right?
It must be nice to have a nice comfy security blanket to wrap around your brain and explain the big, scary, complicated world for you. But doesn't the air get stale in there?
gg, nursey doesn't like it when you go off your meds and commandeer the game-room computer. Now go crawl back to the gurney, it's time for another jolt of that "treatment".
The first three paragraphs of this essay are essential reading at any time, and could almost stand on their own without the excellent reporting that followed those 3 paragraphs. They put a perfect perspective on the charade of our "news" media.
And that response to General Grant wasn't half bad either!
Grandma, I don't think Our Fake Ulysses is off his meds. I think the problem with OFU is that he lives and works in a subculture in which he is the sane one among many who are far worse off. The entire lot of them should be lobotomized, pithed like lab rats.
Two great responses Evan, as always. I didn't think OFU deserved the compliment of rational argument, which takes far more time than his moonbat ravings are worth. ;-)
I know, Grandma. Part of the frustration of e-forums is that such people as OFU exist and it's damned hard to not respond to their provocations, insults, defamation. I see them as the sorts of people who try to impugn the credibility of the blogger/essayist/author by raising doubts about that writer, usually doubts of the sort that make the writer seem unhinged. In a group conversation in person, such pot-shotting can be answered quickly with challenges, and before the pot-shot registers in anyone's mind, it is dissected with challenging questions and defiant demands to prove the bogus allegations.
In the long run they're often best ignored but that route is very hard for me to follow. However, since Mr Floyd already de-pantsed The Fake General, I was less inclined to rend him with my verbal cavalry saber.
GG and his peers probably think that the NY Times backs Zionist Israel because publisher Pinch Sulzberger is a Jew. I don't know if they look far enough past Sulzberger's Jewishness to see that he's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and known to collaborate with the CIA. Thus they don't understand that the Times' support for Zionist Israel may have more to do with the fact that Sulzberger is a crypto-Nazi (AKA New Liberal) than with the fact of his Jewishness.
FYI -- Those who don't read Moon of Alabama may not know that "The New American Century Has Ended."
Says the Moon -- "The New American Century Has Ended
"Apparently for financial reasons, the new American century has prematurely ended.
"In a symbolic act, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), run by Bill Kristol and other neocons, has lost its internet presence.
"When accessing www.newamericancentury.org one now gets redirected to the webhosters 'account suspended' page.
"It says:
"Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.
"The website was hosted by btnaccess.com which is a subsidary of Hong Kong based PCCW Global.
"PNAC is unable to pay for the new American century and the Chinese, after checking America's sinking FICO scores, are obviously not willing to finance it with further credit lines.
Chris, Perhaps you would consider spearheading a project to revive LOOT (Lies of Our Times). LOOT was one of the best political rags of the early nineties along with Z Mag. And Chomsky, who contributed greatly to both those magazines' success has been writing about the Times for years and years. I don't know if there is a database of LOOT articles available on-line but all of Chomsky's contributions can be found at http://www.chomsky.info
For anyone who missed LOOT:
Lies of Our Times ((LOOT) A Magazine to Correct the Record) was published between January 1990 and December 1994. It served not only as a general media critic, but as a watchdog of The New York Times, which the magazine referred to as "the most cited news medium in the U.S., our paper of record."
In 1995, Lies of Our Times won the Orwell Award, given out annually by the National Council of Teachers of English for outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse.
GG and his peers probably think that the NY Times backs Zionist Israel because publisher Pinch Sulzberger is a Jew. I don't know if they look far enough past Sulzberger's Jewishness to see that he's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and known to collaborate with the CIA. Thus they don't understand that the Times' support for Zionist Israel may have more to do with the fact that Sulzberger is a crypto-Nazi (AKA New Liberal) than with the fact of his Jewishness.
Exactly, Jimmy.
Although, if you spend time at InformationClearingHouse, you will read stuff from the Jew-hater/Jew-baiter crowd who say that the CFR is another "Jewish cabal." These anti-Jew people find "Jewish control" everywhere they look and they determine "Jewishness" by assessing people's names. In the early days of Bush/Cheney there were idiot bigots who thought Don Rumsfeld was a Jew because he has a "Jewish name." What morons. There is no such thing as a "Jewish name." And when it comes right down to it, those like Pinch Sulzberger do what they do for personal gain of monetary and power privileges, and not to advance a "Jewish agenda." They are too busy being in league with bigoted WASPs and other White Protestants like Rumsfeld, people who have no allegiance to a "Jewish agenda," no more than they have an allegiance to "promoting democracy" on a global or domestic level.
Blame The Joooos is a tired old game. But there are many who like tired old games, despite their fraudulent nature.
My own feelings about the Council on Foreign Relations are mixed. I know there are a lot of major pigs involved in CFR. I also know that thinkers such as Lewis H. Lapham belong to CFR. Because there are hundreds of members, I expect CFR doesn't have a single mind or a single outlook or a group opinion of anything. Lapham and perhaps Sulzberger and other journalists probably belong as much to cultivate sources as for any other reason. So it isn't CFR membership that bothers me about Sulzberger -- it's his connections with the CIA.
I agree with the tenor of your article...except for the translated quotation. The correct version in Latin is: "ceterum censio carthaginem esse delendam" - and means - Furthermore "Carthage (Iran) should be destroyed. In any case Iran neither is nor should be destroyed - but effectively contained and intelligently subversed by trade and the active promotion of Democracy. However and furthermore, Bush should be impeached. Francis
Francis, what exactly is your problem with Iran, why do you want to "subvert it by trade," and why do you think that your view of "democracy" is what they need?
"GG and his peers probably think that the NY Times backs Zionist Israel because publisher Pinch Sulzberger is a Jew."
Yet another fool who decides to assert his straw man resides in my mind.
CFR works for the folks at Needlethread Street, City of London. Do any of you ill educated lot even know what that means? (There is an Ophalus nearby ... go sit on it .. :)
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