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."
Another Note Chris, you mention over at the My Space page you're kinda noodling for inspiration in developing the musical lines, and I immediately thought of Randy Newman's work,(a great, though I think unsung composer and orchestrator) since he takes "American" ...
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...
Iran and Reality: A Flickering Light on the Edge of Disaster
This is an extremely important article at a very dangerous moment in our nation's history. In a political scene that was even slightly sane, this piece would be dominating the national discourse. It should be printed in the New York Times and Washington Post, it should be the topic of every political yap show on television, people should be talking about it between downs and during commercials while they watch the NFL playoffs.
This article speaks truth – the stone-hard truth – to power. Or as Dylan said, "Every one of those words rang true, and glowed like burning coal." Here we have a prominent, American-based Iranian dissident peeling away the pernicious myths and lies that encrust the American understanding of the situation in Iran. This deliberately manufactured crud is so thick that it is almost impossible to have any kind of genuine debate about what is happening before our eyes: the slow, methodical, step-by-step, relentless, implacable march of the Bush Administration toward war with Iran. They want that war, they are planning for that war – and they will have that war, sooner rather than later, if they are not stopped somehow.
The very best outcome of a war with Iran – the most benign result possible to imagine – will be deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and a floodtide of terror and carnage set loose on a world in overwhelming economic crisis. That is the best possible outcome. The worst is the slaughter of tens of millions of innocent people from the nuclear attacks that we know George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have advocated in their maniacal war planning: tens of millions dead, hundreds of millions poisoned, whole nations brought to ruin and a planet mortally sickened. Between these two poles of ungodly mass slaughter and unfathomable genocide lie the only possible realistic outcome of a war with Iran. And we stand on the very brink.
We stand there because cunning thugs are exploiting the carefully cultivated ignorance of not only the general American people but also of almost all of the American Establishment as well – the "great and the good," the "best and the brightest," the technocrats and thinkers, the media and government, the tycoons and the corporate chiefs. Most of these "leaders of society" are as ignorant about the reality of Iran as any high school dropout stacking boxes at Wal-Mart. And so the terms of any discussion ("debate" is too strong a word to describe the bellicose bipartisan "consensus" against Iran) about the Bush Faction's accelerating rush to a new war is already completely divorced from reality. It's like trying to decide which cartoon character would be the best one to keep your house from burning down – while you stood there on your real-live lawn and watched your real-live house burn down. It's meaningless, it's stupid, it's destructive. And that's all we're getting out of Washington, that's all we're getting from the media.
But in his article in The Progressive, Professor Muhammad Sahimi offers a beacon of clarity, with straightforward prose, based on hard facts and experience. It is this perspective that should now be ascendant in the halls of Congress and ringing through the airwave – but it is nowhere to be found.
We've discussed here many times the various reasons why the Bush Faction wants war with Iran, and the political, financial and ideological aggrandizement they think they will gain from it. But as they push us closer and closer to this fateful conflict, it becomes less important why they want it; the obvious fact that they do want it, that they have been maddened by whatever inner worms of the spirit to pursue this lunatic course no matter what the cost – this is what is most important now. Whatever its origin, their mad ambition must be thwarted. To do this, we must know the truth and deal with reality. Professor Sahimi provides us with both.
Excerpts from the article: Back in March, the Bush Administration released its new “National Security Strategy of the United States,” and regime change in Iran leaps out of it as a goal. “We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,” the document baldly states in a grand exaggeration. And for all the recent talk about Iran’s nuclear threat, the document does not confine its discussion of Iran to the nuclear issue. “The United States has broader concerns,” it says. “The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism, threatens Israel, seeks to thwart Middle East peace, disrupts democracy in Iraq, and denies the aspirations of its people for freedom.”
All of these issues, along with the nuclear one, “can ultimately be resolved only if the Iranian regime makes the strategic decision to change these policies, open up its political system, and afford freedom to its people,” the document states. “This is the ultimate goal of U.S. policy.” President Bush and Condoleezza Rice may stress in public that they are giving diplomacy a try, but this document makes clear that they have something else in mind.
If the Bush Administration attacks Iran, it would be violating the U.N. Charter. And it would also be violating the Algiers Accord that the United States signed with Iran in 1981 to end the hostage crisis. Point I, paragraph 1, of that accord states, “The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.”
Not only is the goal of regime change illegal, it is also unachievable.
“Democracy cannot be imported, nor can it be given to a people by invading their nation, nor by bombing them with cluster bombs. It must be indigenous,” says Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights advocate who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.
(More after the jump)
...Iran is not Iraq. Iraq was formed only in 1932 with artificial boundaries that have no historical roots. Iran, on the other hand, has existed for thousands of years as an independent nation. Hence, Iranian nationalism is extremely fierce. Military strikes on Iran would create a potent mixture that combines fierce Iranian nationalism with the Shiites’ long tradition of martyrdom in defense of their homeland and religion. The attacks would engulf the entire region in flames.
“Iranians will not allow a single U.S. soldier to set foot in Iran,” declares Ebadi, and this is a woman who has been imprisoned by Iran’s hardliners and is constantly harassed for her work on behalf of political prisoners…
Although a large majority of Iranians despise the hardliners, anyone who has the slightest familiarity with Iran’s history knows that intense bombing of Iran will not lead to their downfall. Rather, it will help them consolidate power.
“The conservatives need an external enemy in order to preserve their power,” says Mohammad Reza Khatami, a leading reformist and younger brother of the former president. By creating an unnecessary crisis over Iran’s nuclear program, the Administration has played right into the hands of Iran’s hardliners…
During Iran’s presidential elections of 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ran on a platform of “bringing the oil wealth to people’s homes,” promising a robust economy, elimination of corruption, and ample employment opportunities for Iran’s young and educated people. It has now become clear that Ahmadinejad could not deliver on those promises. Knowing this, he has used the U.S.-created nuclear crisis not only for inciting Iranian nationalism, but also for distracting people’s attention from Iran’s vast economic, social, and political problems, as well as attempting to suppress Iran’s democratic movement.
“The best the U.S. government can do for democracy in Iran is to leave us alone,” Akbar Gangi, an Iranian investigative journalist who spent six years in prison for reporting on the murder of dissidents by Iran’s intelligence agents, said on a recent trip to the United States.
Iran has a wide spectrum of reformist and democratic groups that are all against U.S. intervention in Iran’s internal affairs and its goal of regime change. They favor political evolution and have made it clear that, for many reasons, they will not work with the United States. Many wonder aloud why the U.S. did nothing when the reformist Khatami was elected in 1997. Washington could have lifted its economic sanctions against Iran that hurt only ordinary Iranians, but it did not. After Khatami’s government helped the U.S. defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, President Bush responded by listing Iran as a charter member of the “axis of evil.”
… With his deplorable statements regarding Israel and the Holocaust, President Ahmadinejad has not helped the situation any. But within Iran’s political power structure, important decisions regarding its foreign policy and national security are not made by its president. Iran’s official policy is to recognize the two-state solution for the Israel-Palestinian conflict, if the Palestinians also accept it.
Much has been made of Iran enriching a minuscule amount of uranium at 4.8 percent that is far from serviceable in the making of nuclear weapons. By contrast, Brazil enriched uranium to a 20 percent level and limited IAEA’s visits to its enrichment facilities. South Korea, Taiwan, and Egypt have all been caught by the IAEA trying to secretly enrich uranium or design a nuclear bomb or engage in experiments without declaring them to the IAEA. But where is the U.S. outrage at such violations? And Israel, of course, already has about 200 nuclear weapons, and Pakistan, Iran’s neighbor to the east, is also armed with nuclear weapons. Such hypocrisy has angered Iranian reformists and human rights advocates.
An excellent article, but unfortunately the following excerpt is perhaps the closest to describing what, other than oil geopolitics, is at the heart of the Bush strategy regarding military action against Iran:
Iran, on the other hand, has existed for thousands of years as an independent nation. Hence, Iranian nationalism is extremely fierce. Military strikes on Iran would create a potent mixture that combines fierce Iranian nationalism with the Shiites’ long tradition of martyrdom in defense of their homeland and religion. The attacks would engulf the entire region in flames.
Apart from the geopolitical aim toward petroleum reserves control in the Middle East, the other issue that the Bush agenda seeks to address is the problem that Islam poses regarding western materialistic capitalistic culture. Islam rejects that culture completely. It is the primary reason why there is so much anti-American attitudes among Islamic people... and by anti-American I do not mean anti-every-single-American-that-ever-lived, but more accurately, anti-Bush Administration-led-America.
The notion of control of geopolitically significant petroleum reserves is tied to this problem of Islam vs Western Materialistic Capitalism. Under the guise of "modernizing" second and third world nations, America and The World Bank seek to expand their business bases into all hidden corners of the world. Islamic principles pretty well reject that sort of culture, placing Allah before worldly riches. And that is what makes Messrs Dubya Bush & Co want to wage a cultural war against Islamic people.
Thus the "regime change" that in public speeches hinges upon nuclear capabilities and the supposed threats posed by those capabilities, the truth has to do with eliminating all obstacles to imposing and permanently installing Western Materialistic Consumerist Capitalism.
And Bush & Co have no problem putting all of Iran into flames to achieve that end. They will sacrifice thousands (if not tens or hundreds of thousands) of US military personnel and many more Iranian and Iraqi and other middle eastern natives to achieve that end. So any kind of forewarning about the whole of Iran going up in flames, flames of martyrdom for Allah and for the Iranian nation, might be just what Mr Bush seeks.
It's been a clown juggle day: trying to listen to the radio-replay's of Martin Luther King's tribute speech/thought. Plus, the happy birthday celebration get-together's for my 26 year old daughter, conversation about bio-technology-geonome conversation, inter-Net-technology., etc., And it really is about time to demand neo-con's get off-stage! Beat the sword (those who advocate the sword-die by the sword? huh?) into plow-tools, and pull with drag-hooks, bush's-stooges off stage with functional prune-0-shears: ALLOW plumbers, farmers, the serious enviromental-degradation-aware people, and honest Whoever's in THIS NOBLE struggle to survive...neocon's, GET!
As J. Donne said, and Martin Luther King verified and reminded us..."We are all parts of a continent, if the soldier or street-urchin secumbs to premature death as a result of this maladministration...when the bell tolls, it tolls for Thee. That's you/me.
Nobody talks about the humand right abuses, media censorship, addiction, unemployment within Iran while Iran sends millions to support Hezbollah and other terrorist supporting organizations.
The current regime is not good for the world. Ignoring Iran right now will have devastating effects in the near future. Bush should have taken care of Iran even before it decided to set foot inside Iraq.
Everybody talks about devastating effects of dropping boms on Iran, while the mullahs kill, rape, torture, imprison and hand Iranians in mass numbers daily.
Many people talk about the human rights abuses, media censorship, addiction and unemployment within Iran -- including the Iranians mentioned in the article referenced above. The very people in Iran who are working to change things are the ones who say the US should not invade, that it would be an absolute disaster for positive change in Iraq.
But this commenter evidently has some trouble with the language (bom, the mullahs "hand Iranians" daily, whatever that means), and has apparently not read the excerpts from the Iranian fighter for human (not "humand") rights who is pleading against an invasion of his country. I suggest that Jame read what the Iranian human rights advocates have to say about the situation, not what Rush and Fox -- or Bush -- has to say about it.
It's not just the "high school dropout" you mentioned in yet excellent article, almost anybody who is 'out of work' and got banks doing rigged-loan foreclosures who are looking for work at Wal-Mart. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere (The Mahablog?) that when a walmart conglomerate wipes out mom/pop stores on our countries neighborhood's, 26,000 applicants apply for 350 Wal-Mart stock-box jobs. At least the county spending the most it can in America's Plutocracy's economy...on war...Weze doin' great! Dylan's album should get stocked in Wal-mart and given away free by the smile-sticker faced elders who got-jobs there and greet shoppers. The rhythm, if nothing else, in the album would help harmonize a world. Pax mentis should be the official theme we agree and insist on in 2007 if a future world is going to me possible. Invest in the Floyd-plow-share associates LTD. Inc. (?) Thanks.
Your incoherant regurgitations demonstrate an acute inability to look at the larger picture in any rational, let alone objective manner.
First of all, as Chris said, please read the article written by the esteemed Iranian human rights activitst, Professor Muhammad Sahimi.... one of the Iranians you seem to consider nothing more than a crude statistic to be used in some sort of macabre moral litmus test for bombing the shit out of a whole country.
And with regards to your comments on Iran's funding of Hezbollah, please broaden the scope of your criticism if you're want to embrace even a brief semblance of fairness. Iran is a Shia protectorate - as such it funds Hezbollah, a Shia militant faction. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni protectorate, and they are reportedly providing arms and money to fuel the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, as well as having sent money to prop up the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. America has funded MANY different "terrorist groups" in the region... including their current support for the MKU in their campaign of bombings being carried out against Iran. Israel, for its part, provided the initial funding for Hamas to divest Palestinian support for the more secular P.L.O.... so don't single out Iran's material support of Hezbollah as justification for the slaughter of tens or hundreds of thousands of people - many of whom would no doubt be the very same civilians whose suffering you hold up as a justification for any such attack.
printed in the New York Times and Washington Post, it should be the topic of every political yap show on television, people should be talking about it between downs and during commercials while they watch the NFL playoffs.
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