As usual, Scott Ritter talks good sense -- in this case about the coming war with Iran, and the specious casus belli that the Bush-Cheney gang seem to have finally settled on: Iran's alleged "sanctuaries" for training and arming Iraqi insurgents. Ritter demolishes this argument, just as he crushed the lies in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. His truth-telling was of no avail then -- and it will likely be of no avail now. But go read the whole thing anyway.
Meanwhile, Juan Cole carries out some demolition work of his own, taking apart the ignorant mischief of Edward Luttwak, who was given a NYT pulpit to proclaim that Obama is an apostate Muslim -- and thus in danger of imminent death from one billion of his erstwhile co-religionists. (As if Luttwak and the Right are really, really concerned about Obama's survival.) What's most interesting here is not the defense of Obama, but Cole's learned insights into the Muslim world, which remains a minatory terra incognita (or should that be terror incognita?) to most folks in God's shining city on a hill.
Via the redoubtable Grandma Jefferson, at TomDispatch, Ann Jones reports on some small but effective counterattacks in the worldwide war against women -- a war which has united all classes, races, peoples and places down through the centuries. In Africa, a unique grass-roots program is giving women the chance to document the suffering and injustice that is the "normal" condition of their daily lives. The resulting photographs have produced some surprising results in places -- and some hard defeats as well.
Do you want hear Donald Rumsfeld telling a roomful of ex-brass now serving as Bush moles in the media that the only "correction" for the American people's "immaturity" -- exemplified by their giving control of Congress to the Democrats in 2006 -- is another terrorist attack on American soil? Then go to this site (via A Tiny Revolution), where, through the magic of audio, you can sit down with Rummy and the shills for a cozy, boozy lunch and settle the world's hash. There you can hear Rummy ruminate -- in his preppy whine -- on how some good old terrorist carnage would get everyone "energized" again for the sacred War on Terror.
Here of course Rumsfeld is merely regurgitating his long-held position on the efficacy of terror as a facilitator of one's political agenda. After all, he was one of the prime movers of the Project for a New American Century, which famously declared -- in September 2000 -- that PNAC's ambitious and aggresive plans for expanding American military dominance across the world would probably never be enacted -- unless the nation was hit by "a new Pearl Harbor" which would "catalyze" the American people into supporting the militarist agenda. And lo and behold, just one year later, the militarists got their new Pearl Harbor -- and immediately enacted almost the entire agenda laid out in PNAC's 2000 blueprint! Some people are just lucky, I guess.
But now they've just about run through the windfall of political capital they got from that amazingly incredible piece of luck, and are now openly yearning for that "energizing" lightning to strike again. Gosh, could they really be that lucky?
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."
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes Antifa beautifully sums up the view from the precipice we're all hanging from. My only very minor disagreement is that IMHO, the race won't need another 100 years of historical perspective to divine what we were, it's perfectly obvious now. But if th...
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes I an wearing my tinfoil cap at present and wonder if this is a set for the (attempted) assasination of Obama and who it will be carried out by. The scapegoat has probably already been selected and then Bush & co can wring their hands and say 'oh how...
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes Unless you've got a knack for viewing your nation and your generation from the vantage point of a century after you're dead and gone, a proper assessment of what drove your generation, and what human values survived your life and times is out of reac...
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes Hello Mr. Floyd!
Please pardon my rudeness for leaving this note within the comments to this post. I failed to find way through the EB home page to forward this to you privately.
At such time a technical enhancement of www.chris-floyd.com becomes ...
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes Helena Cobban his just published an excellent article on current Middle East and Palestinian/Israeli affairs at the Boston Review, 'Hamas and the end of the two-state solution'. Much of her reportage in this article covers information I've not seen ...
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes Maybe Juan Cole is missing the point of Luftwaffe's simple minded irrelevancies. Maybe Buttquack's (sp?) clients have an unthinkable purpose in suggesting fantastic dangers for unconventional pretenders to the throne. Only hardcore pagan hating Chris...
Outside Agitators: Another Missile Attack Aimed at Peace Talks And one from the files of the merged War of Drugs and Terror: the dirty, targeted Colombian-American cross-border assassination of FARC commander Raul Reyes (and many others, while sleeping) in Ecuador during a hostage-release negotiation process. ...
The Monolith Crumbles: Reality and Revisionism in Iran
Thursday, 02 March 2006
It is a well-known fact – except among the American
media, the American government, and about 98.7 percent of the American
people – that Iran is not a monolithic state where sheep-like masses
bray with a single voice in chorus with their demented leaders, but is,
on the contrary, a complex society where many conflicting opinions on
matters political, religious, social, historical, etc., contend with
each other in open debate. True, it does have a government dominated by
repressive clerics, who exercise the kind of veto power over secular
law that George W. Bush's vaunted "base" dreams of seeing established
in the United States; but Iran is far more open than, say, Saudi Arabia
or China, just to name two countries where the Bush Family and friends
have long engorged their bellies through insider connections with the
ruling cliques.
Therefore it must have come as a great shock to the system for Americans this week to hear Iran's former president, Mohammad
Khatami, rail against the ignorant Holocaust revisionism mouthed by his
successor, the hardline flibbertigibbet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Excerpts
after the jump below.) Or rather, it would have come as a shock to the American system to hear Khatami's words – if Americans had actually been told about
them. But it serves no interests among America's own ruling cliques to
dilute the current line of the day: that Iran is a hellhole of
unremitting evil, a new Nazi Germany led by a new Hitler. So Khatami's
remarks, reported widely elsewhere in the world, were not allowed to
disturb the lie-drugged slumber of the American consciousness.
No one knows what
dark dreams stir in Ahmadinejad's noggin, of course; he seems from most
accounts to be an unpleasant character, as rabid fundamentalists
usually are, proud of his willful ignorance,
which he mistakes for steadfast integrity. (The type is not unknown
among world leaders today.) However, in coming to grips with the Iran
"crisis" that is being forced upon us, there are two salient facts to
keep in mind.
First of all, Ahmadinejad's malevolent blather does not represent the
entirety of the Iranian people – or even the entirety of the Iranian
government, as even a cursory examination of current Tehran politics
shows – any more than George W. Bush and his rapacious gang of cronies
and cranks represents the entirety of the American people. (Although at
the moment, Bush has far greater control over the American government
than Ahmadinejad has in Iran.)
Second, and perhaps most importantly, it is highly unlikely that
Ahmadinejad would have ever been elected president if Bush and his
crony-cranks had not relentlessly and ruthlessly undercut every attempt
by the moderate government of Khatami to forge a new relationship
between Iran and the United States. The greatest opportunity came after
September 11, of course, when Iran sought to help the US break al
Qaeda, a common enemy that threatened both nations. But Bush and his
circle, as we now know, were not interested in breaking al Qaeda or
fighting terrorism; they were interested in "establishing a military
footprint" in Iraq, as part of a wide-ranging plan to "project
dominance" over the energy resources of the Middle East and Central
Asia, while fomenting "creative destruction" throughout the region, in
the belief that when the resultant rivers of blood had at last
subsided, there would be a series of obedient client regimes installed
in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere – including, in the
dreams of some of the crankiest cronies, new, even more obedient
American satraps in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Therefore, there could be no accommodation with moderate elements in
Iran; on the contrary, the existence of a moderate faction within the
Iranian power structure could only be a hindrance to the Bushists'
avowed goals. How could you maintain the profitable, fear-fomenting
image of a dastardly nation – a member of the "axis of evil," no less –
bent on the destruction of "the American way of life," if its leaders
are trying reach an accommodation with you, if they speak of
moderation, of a "dialogue among civilizations"? Khatami – already
hemmed in by the hardline mullahs, unable to deliver all of his
promised domestic reforms – was also left with nothing to show for his
moderate foreign policy. Instead, Bush confirmed the mullah's criticism
of Khatami: "You reach out to the infidels, and what do you get? They
spit in your face, they try to destroy us."
(There is a remarkable parallel here to the curious dynamic between
Bush and Osama bin Laden, whereby almost every action undertaken by
Bush tends to confirm bin Laden's vision of the world: "You see? I told
you America was a Crusader Nation bent on attacking Islam – and now
Bush has invaded Iraq and all its holy sites for no reason whatsoever.
You see? I told you America regards Muslims as nothing more than dogs
and beasts – now see how they treat our brothers in their secret
prisons!" And so on and depressingly on. Even Bush himself has
acknowledged this odd symbiosis, when, just this week, he admitted that
bin Laden's (or "bin Laden's") sudden appearance in the closing days of
the 2004 presidential election tipped the race in his favor. As Eric
Alterman and others have noted, bin Laden is more than savvy enough to
know
that such an intervention would have precisely that effect: bolstering
Bush. Both men need each other to stoke the fear and hatred they feed
upon.)
Just as the September 11 attacks were openly regarded by the Bushists
as an "opportunity" for implementing their long-planned militarist
agenda – "Through my tears, I see opportunity," Bush declared just days
after the strike – so too the election of Ahmadinejad was a god-send
for the gang: a hard-line goon straight out of central casting, waving
the red flag of Holocaust-denial before the world. Now some serious warmongering
and fear-fomenting could be done! For who would defend such a moral
cretin? Through him, you could defame and dehumanize an entire nation:
the necessary prerequisite for any mass blood-letting you have in mind.
But one doesn't have to defend Ahmadinejad – or Khatami, for that
matter – in order to oppose the instigation of a foolish and murderous
military action against Iran. It is self-evident that such an action
would kill thousands of innocent people and set in motion a chain of
monstrous consequences beyond anyone's control – including the
certainty of more terrorism and more hatred for
America, the great likelihood of global economic ruin, and the very
real possibility of actually launching the world war between the West
and Islam that the Bushists like to pretend is already taking place.
Yet that appears to be where we are heading. Although some say that the
Bushists are now too weak politically and perhaps militarily to strike
at Iran – an argument that is more of a projected wish than a reality,
I fear – no one should ever underestimate the foolishness,
recklessness, avarice, greed and callousness of the Bush Faction. The
disaster in Iraq stands as indisputable proof of their own moral
cretinism and incompetent folly.
So it would be nice if the American people could be given a more
variegated view of Iran, as represented in the comments below from
Khatami and some of the Iranian press. But where's the "opportunity"
for war profits, war powers and world dominance in that? Excerpts from Agence France Presse:
Iran's former reformist President Mohammad Khatami has described the
Holocaust as a "historical reality" - a stinging attack on his
controversial and revisionist successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "We
should speak out if even a single Jew is killed. Don't forget that one
of the crimes of Hitler, Nazism and German national socialism was the
massacre of innocent people, among them many Jews," the cleric said in
comments carried in the Iranian press Wednesday.
The Holocaust, he asserted, should be recognized "even if this
historical reality has been misused and there is enormous pressure on
the Palestinian people." Ahmadinejad has caused international outrage
by insisting the Holocaust was a myth used to justify the creation of
Israel.
Khatami served as Iran's president from 1997 to 2005, and attempted to
open up Iran to the West and initiate a "dialogue among civilizations"
- in stark contrast to the ultra-conservative agenda of Ahmadinejad.
The former president, who has shied away from the political limelight
since leaving office, also asserted Muslims were not out to persecute
Jews.
"The persecution of Jews, just like Nazism, is a Western phenomenon. In
the east, we have always lived side by side with them. And we follow a
religion that states that the death of an innocent person is the death
of all of humanity," Khatami said…
Ahmadinejad also came under attack from the prominent and centrist
Shargh newspaper, which complained that "the Holocaust has, as wished
for by the president, become a topic of our foreign policy. The Jewish
question was never a problem for Iran or Islam, and is a
Christian-European problem," the paper argued. "Don't we have enough
with the nuclear question, human rights, free elections and political
in-fighting, so do we need to add another problem to that?" it said,
saying Iran would be better off "thinking of the creation of a
Palestinian state rather than the destruction of Israel."
When I was a kid growing up in Australia I used to think that Americans would be really well-educated, with a firm grasp of national and international politics. As I grew older I realsied that it was untrue, and thought that Americans didn't really care about what anybody else thought or did. Combine that attitude with media manipulation and you've got a populace that would vote for Dubya. And a lot of them did - twice!
I am a clinical psychologist in the United States. Of course the main stream media carry no real news of anything. It serves only the whims of power. I am ashamed of our country's global ambitions driven by peak oil. I detest the Muslim fundamentalism no more than I detest the Christian equivalent. I have no ill towards the Iranian people but a great deal towards my own government which I currently regard as evil beyond compare in the world -- as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women and children's deaths attest.
Is it too much of a leap to suspect that the same press that ignores the moderate voice of Khatami has invented the "hardline goon"?
I read some lengthy excerpts from Ahmadinejad's speech in which he made the same "moderate" points quoted above, particularly that the Holocaust was a European Christian crime for which only Islamic countries were paying. The U.N. told the Jews "We are agreed that you should have a national territory -- take his."
Widespread acknowledgement that this was not just, and also acknowledgement that "right of return" is a fundamental human right (see the Charter) might go a long way towards moderating the Islamic position towards "Israel has no right to exist, but there they are and we have to find a way to live with it."
Chris, does anyone remember that this cranky Ahmadinejad is the direct product of bush's grossly counter-productive saber rattling and war pimping prior to the Iranian elections?
I wonder if there was a need in the mind of the neo-cons to derail liberalization of internal Iranian policies which wer gaining strenght prior to the elections.
Perhaps I am over-estimating Bush's influence, but I think the Iranians are acutely aware of what is happening to the next door neighbor, and don't like it one damn bit.
regardless of who says it, It is a historical fact that anti-semitism was a european/christien problem. Particularly Persians have never had any problem with the jews. Cyrus the great, emancipated jews from babylon and a lot of them immigrated to Iran and have lived there ever since, Shaul Mofaz the Israeli DM being one decendent of them. Israelli intelligence knows Iranian policy makers have no intention of having a military conflict with Israel. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon program if Iran did have such a program, it would have been much easier to simply walk out of NPT long time ago. Every country that has had a nuclear weapon program has found it impossible to develope this plan clandestinely while pretending to abide by the terms of NPT. Uranium Enrichment is a national pride issue for Iranians, they want to have nuclear fuel technology so that they can have reliable energy. US would make a catastrophic mistake to launch any attack against Iran. US can not afford to fund such a campaigne. With $8.18 Trillion national debt, and oil market at its most sensitive state, another military conflict in the middle east, persian gulf, would cause enormous economic havoc and will cause US to default on its debt and the dollar to fall sharply, sending devastating shock waves through the entire global economy. There is little doubt that the US domestic economy will head for recession faster than the first bombs would fall.
Ahmadi Nejad only spoke of the truth. Khatami has always tried to win hearts by seet talks even if those sweet talks meant covering over the bitter truth.
bin laden is a cia puppet the video found in kanndahar is a fake ,poor quality ,binladen is left handed accordung to cia reports ,yet is seen writing with his right ,he is also seen wearing a gol;d watch and ring apparantly forbidden under strict islamic law
I agree that Iran has a very educated population. They are at risk as a result of many manipulations over many years by America. I am ashamed of how our country has abused the position we have in the world - turning our opportunities for creating good into opportunities for domination. I am also ashamed of those who represent us for not rising up in the face of criminal behaviors. Finally, I am ashamed that as individual Americans, we remain silent.
Khatami, rail against the ignorant Holocaust revisionism mouthed by his
successor, the hardline flibbertigibbet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Excerpts
after the jump below.) Or rather, it 
what
dark dreams stir in Ahmadinejad's noggin, of course; he seems from most
accounts to be an unpleasant character, as rabid fundamentalists
usually are, proud of his willful ignorance,
which he mistakes for steadfast integrity. (The type is not unknown
among world leaders today.) However, in coming to grips with the Iran
"crisis" that is being forced upon us, there are two salient facts to
keep in mind. 
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