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First, over the weekend the two top Israeli officials who remain anonymous talking to two equally anonymous Time Magazine reporters, they want to "clarify" that Israel did indeed attack convoys in Sudan, and making perfectly clear that this was to send a clear message to certain unspecified parties (i.e. Iran) that they can go anywhere they want.
The US doesn't condemn it, of course, because violating another country's territory is something that we have already gotten used to doing. Borders? Sovereign territory? Hey, man, WTF! we're entitle. We do kidnappings and illegal assassinations too.
And what wonderful timing--on Tuesday--Netanyahu gives his first interview to The Atlantic, in which he threatens to attack Iran unless President Obama disarms them successfully (you will find the full Atlantic article here.) On Wednesday, President Obama talked to him on the phone and said he was committed 100% to Israel's defense; and lo and behold that very day General Petraeus testifies before Congress and warns about the possibility that Israel may go off on its own and attack Iran. God almighty did you hear the Congress critters' outrage? Will you see the condemnation in the mainstream media this week? Watch for Bill O'Reilly to launch into appoplexy at the commission of another Obama crime. Well, the good general Petraeus carried water for the neocons. Why not carry it for the newly instituted racist government in Tel Aviv? It's a shame that the respected Atlantic has begun to carry the water as well.
You will hear no calls for caution, no calls for real hard evidence from the only folks that know what is going on, the AIEA (which unfortunately has its own internal problems trying to find a new director). No real diplomacy. Bush didn't question Israel's attack on Syria or call for an investigation, and the US didn't do it for this Sudan attack. (Our ambassador was apparently tipped off, however, and was telling the Sudanese about it when the missiles struck.) The more US diplomacy "changes" the more it remains the same.
At the end of his speech, Netanyahu warned that "When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran." Since the whole accusation of Iranian nuclear intentions and capability seems to be more a matter of belief than credible evidence, and since Israel has already got in its possession probably well over a hundred atomic weapons, I think that sentence provides a fine mirror:
When the paranoid believer possesses the air force and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Israel.
The problem is, of course, that the war-monger will never see the reflective irony in his statement of civic paranoia. Will someone finally demand some really hard evidence that Iran has the capability to make the bomb and not just fissionable material for its own nuclear power program? Will someone please explain how a country with one or two untested nuclear bombs would be stupid enough to risk its existence by attacking a country with at least 75 and perhaps as many as 200 nuclear weapons? When Netanyahu was asked that very question by interviewer Jeffrey Goldberg, his reply was, “I’m not going to get into that.” (Will somebody please remind Israel that they started the nuclear proliferation in the Middle East to begin with?)
To see Iran as a real nuclear warfare threat demands that you believe that Iran is truly and absolutely run by mad men. Proud, yes; wily, to be sure; but above all, practical realists. You really think they want to get hit? (I will concede that they are being incredibly foolish in their tempting the Israelis.)
It is clear to me that if the Iranians are pursuing a bomb it is out of a desperate move to place themselves in a deterrent situation, not one of suicidal foolishness.
If Netanyahu truly believes that Iran is stupid enough to attack Israel with even one weapon, then he is deeply deranged. If he fears Iran supplying nuclear weapons to terrrorists, he has a fear, but he must also know that Iran will never escape unscathed if nuclear terrorism happens in Israel--an incident which will of course, damage Palestinians as well as Israelis. I think Netanyahu is in touch with one idea: pushing things as far as he can right now to see how much he can get away with and to detract attention from his plan for denying Palestinians their state. Because I also think he is a wild-eyed one--albeit beneath a squinting gunslinger's lids. (We Americans can't perceive it because he such good command of American idiom and the bare hint of an accent. Trust me--having him as prime minister is something akin to having David Addington or John Bolton as president.)
We need to fear him much more than the Iranians. There is no more dangerous madman than the one who believes irrefutably in his own sanity.
You really have to read these things out loud sometimes and wonder how any one sleeps without nightmares. There is an analysis in Ha'aretz on line by Aluf Benn, "Budget will decide whether Israel attacks Iran."
Here's the nut graph:
The budget will decide whether Israel will seriously consider a military option against Iran. A decision focusing on defense and deterrance will mean that Israel has given up on attacking Iran. The dilemma becomes more serious in the context of economic recession, which limits the government's ability to expand the defense budget.
You really have to read it to get the dry and serious flavor, like first year business school comes to world holocaust to do a case study. It's a paragraph from a Pinter play. The ultimate bean-counter's insanity. These are the people--the Israelis--with, it is estimated 200 nuclear weapons ready to be dropped on Iran, which is apparently struggling to make its first--or at least suicidally wants to give the impression it is.
And even if they do, does Israel really think that Iran will attack with only one bomb? There, that'll show you, you evil Zionist louts, you are toast! Like, Iran wasn't even capable of calculating that if once they used the one bomb, they would be incinerated completely? Like, you would think that someone there in Tel Aviv is thinking to himself, maybe we should think about this a bit more . . . ? Or maybe, you know, it might be good if we talked this over some more, maybe in a town meeting or in a logic and ethics class . . . ?
It's at moments like this, contemplating the bean counting about nuclear war as if it were a monthly report to the executive committee that I understand that human beings--almost all men and more women than I want to believe--are essentially mad.
Alternet yesterday provided a translation from the original German article in Der Spiegel on the leak of a note from the White House indicating that Vice president Cheney 's strategy for striking Iran begins with an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The article is pretty frightening, but no more than what we have been reading and seeing in the news for the past 10 months, ever since the Russian Federation and China begin resisting strongly the saber rattling of the Bush Administration.
As for there being a leak in the White House, I don't believe it for a minute. These “leaks” often turn out to be just trial balloons to see what the world opinion would be; and since the Israelis have a number of German-built nuclear powered submarines now trolling around in the Persian Gulf area, capable of firing nuclear missiles (and with Germany footing 1/3 of the bill for the last two) what fitter place than in a well-known member of the German Press than to plant the leak? Who knows. When it comes to media these days and "white House leaks" I have no trust at all. Someone in the press room should ask Dana Perino about this in order to get her to deny it, since you never want to trust any fact until it's officially denied.
In one of those Pogo the Possum ironies (“We have met the enemy and he is us.”), the Der Spiegel article refers to the crazed neo-con Norman Podhoretz (aka Rudi Giuliani's senior foreign policy adviser) making his usually insane comparisons of the Iranian government to Hitler's Nazi Germany.
Podhoretz wrote, in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that he "hopes and prays" that Bush will finally bomb Iran. Podhoretz sees the United States engaged in a global war against "Islamofascism," a conflict he defines as World War IV, and he likens Iran to Nazi Germany. "Is it 1938 again?" he asks in a speech he repeats regularly at conferences.
Well, yes, it kind of is, I guess, except if you really want to make the analogy, which is ridiculous to start with, the forces of Nazi Germany do not appear to be massing their tanks and their Luftwaffe on the Iranian side of the borders. Now that the IAEA has formally come out and said that Iran does not appear to be making nuclear bombs, although to be fair, it still reserves the possibility that further information should be forthcoming, the Bush administration has found itself in a position of only minimal credibility on the nuclear weapons charge. (Note how Bush weaseled a bit in his WW III speech; now it has become "the knowledge to make nuclear weapons" that he is afraid of.) So they are now playing hard on "fixing" their casus belli around the “terrorism” of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards and will probably—as Hitler did with the Poles the night before the attack—try to create a scenario to be used as the cause for war. Of course, that is absurd as well, another irony of history.
It really is a shame that you have to point out things like this. Those analogies are not useful--just like the Vietnam=Iraq one this past summer, and the stupid absurdities of the far right should have been laughed out of existence years ago. There is no analogy, of course, and those like Podhoretz who have become trapped by their analogous thinking are just weaving themselves in the fantastic silk of their own paranoia. "Islamofascism" indeed, showing especially a total misunderstanding of the word fascism. The worms have eaten the brains of that intellectual class that Norman Podhoretz used to represent. And the people listening to Podhoretz, like Rudi Giuliani, and the people controlling this government, are fools.
No, if anyone is likely to find themselves on the wrong side of the analogy, it is our country, not Iran. We are the ones threatening a first strike. Ironically, under the laws of the United Nations, which we consistently fail to follow, and using the logic of our war of aggression, which we carried out in supposed "pre-emption" of an "immanent" attack ( "Immanent." There's another word they are incapable of understanding), we, by our continuing threats over the years, are giving Iran the justification for initiating war. Perhaps that's what the Jack O' Lanterns in the White House want them to do?
The Herald (UK) on October 29 reports that the hangar infrastructure for stealth bombers based on the island of Diego Garcia (a British colony--though that is another story) in the Indian Ocean is being fitted for bunker buster bombs in preparation for the strike on Iran. And according to Jonathan Karl on ABC news on October 25, 2007, the Pentagon has ordered
$88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.The MOP is the the military's largest conventional bomb, a super "bunker-buster" capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to "an urgent operational need from theater commanders.
What urgent need?
The Pentagon referred questions on this to Central Command.ABC News called CENTCOM to ask what the "urgent operational need" is. CENTCOM spokesman Maj. Todd White said he would look into it, but, so far, no answer.
You think your gas and oil bill is high now, wait until the next Bushinator "shock and awe." Of course, the oil companies don't really care. All they do is increase the prices as the market goes up. But I have a feeling that high oil prices will be the least of our worries if we act on that insanity of attacking Iran.
Here is one rational response to the situation quoted in the Der Spiegel piece:
Former presidential adviser [Gary] Sick thinks Iran would strike back with terrorist attacks. "The generals of the Revolutionary Guard have had several years to think about asymmetrical warfare," says Sick. "They probably have a few rather interesting ideas."
According to Sick, detonating well-placed bombs at oil terminals in the Persian Gulf would be enough to wreak havoc. "Insurance costs would skyrocket, causing oil prices to triple and triggering a global recession," Sick warns. "The economic consequences would be enormous, far greater than anything we have experienced with Iraq so far."
Because the catastrophic consequences of an attack on Iran are obvious, many in Washington have a fairly benign take on the current round of saber rattling. They believe the sheer dread of war is being used to bolster diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis and encourage hesitant members of the United Nations Security Council to take more decisive action. The Security Council, this argument goes, will be more likely to approve tighter sanctions if it believes that war is the only alternative.
But that's what we would all like to think is a reasonable response to the news, and we hope that the saber-rattling is all a ploy. One then has to rely on the reasonableness and rationality of the president, the vice-president, and their supporting conservative fanatics. I don't think the reasonableness and the rationality are there.
Given this information--especially the gearing up with the bunker buster bombs--I believe the decisions have already been made and the 'deciders' as they did with the Iraq war, are merely waiting for the scenarios to play out, fixing the facts around the intention. I hope that this is wrong, I hope that at the end of January, 2009, I will be breathing a sigh of relief and laughing at my fears. It would be nice to think so, wouldn't it?
"Every person is entitled to his own opinion. He is not entitled to his own facts, " said Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Great quote, great notion to hold to.
Have you been watching the media blitz supporting War with Iran? It will be continuing. A war hawk, Reuel Marc Gerecht, from the American Enterprise Institute in Newsweek; a Washington Post editorial attacking Mohammed el Baradei as if he were in league with the Iranians against the United States rather than a man trying to establish a rational alternative to another war of aggression; a few "expert" interviews on NPR.
(The people NPR calls upon for commentary on foreign affairs these days are so supportive of administration policy, almost all of them from the more conservative side of the spectrum. I don't see what the right wingers are so concerned about these days. NPR hath capitulated. The one exception was Terri Gross's interview with Charlie Savage about his new book on how the Bush administration has usurped the Constitution and re-created an "Imperial Presidency." You will remember that phrase. It was used during Nixon's era--I can remember he once had personally approved--or may even personally have designed some uniforms for the marines who guarded the White House--his own Eastern European braided and beribboned "palace guard." Or was it a design for the Washington, DC police? Funny what you remember and what you don't.)
So with Charlie Savage putting the usurpation in context, it is also good to have solid facts and common sense to go against the grain of the propaganda. Thus, I recommend that you read these, even go so far as to print them out, and make your own talking points against the supporters of the invasion of Iran--those who have had their consent manufactured by the Main Stream Media ("MSM" as I learned to call it in Memphis back in January).
First, some common sense about the Iranian (and Syrian threats) from Michael Scheuer, ex CIA analyst who is no defender of terrorism but is smart enough to see fanaticism when it appears in Washington, DC: read his article "Syria and Iran: The Threats that aren't" at Antiwar.com. It's worth a few excerpts:
And then there is Iran. How does one explain the U.S. governing elite's fear of Iran? Here we have a country that admittedly is led by one of the world's more histrionic politicians, but one that also is ringed by U.S. military bases and surrounded by an overwhelmingly more numerous Sunni world that hates Shi'ites far more than it hates Westerners. Iran‘s Islamic regime, moreover, is helplessly watching the final stages of the march of its energy resources toward oblivion, and preparing for the impoverishment and resulting internal political instability that event will usher in.
And his analysis of the real threat to the United States:
So where in this portrait is the threat to the United States? While Iran is a threat to Israel, there is surely no threat to America in Iran's less-than-impressive military forces, nuclear development program, or unattractive public diplomacy. No, the threat to the United States comes from two sources. First, the relentless "Iran is the new Nazi Germany" propaganda pushed by Israel and the American citizen Israel-firsters, and, second, the multi-decade failure of the U.S. Congress to seriously address the national-security issues of energy, borders, and immigration.
Second, another great riposte by Paul Craig Roberts, "Who Are the Fanatics?" defining further the real enemies in this conflict, the warmongers who refuse to pay attention to reality:
If Americans did rely on reason, tolerance and deliberation, they might free their minds of shrill propaganda long enough to consider the "Muslim threat." Muslims are disunited. Their disunity makes them a threat to one another, not to the West. . . .There is no such thing as Islamofascism. This is a coined propaganda word used to inflame the ignorant. There is no factual basis for the hatred that neoconservative Islamophobes instill in Americans. God did not tell America to destroy the Muslims for the Israelis. . . .In America today, blind ignorant hate against Muslims has been brought to a boiling point. The fear and loathing is so great that the American public and its elected representatives in Congress offer scant opposition to the Bush administration's plan to make Iran the third Middle East victim of American aggression in the 21st century.
Third, if any of your friends tries to adopt Bush's idiotic comparison of Iraq to Vietnam, here's ammunition from Andrew Bacevich, a man who actually fought in Vietnam, rather than hanging out in a National Guard unit based in Texas after Daddy pulled some strings in order to avoid getting sent to fly combat missions--a soldier who was a real conservative and supporter of the military until he began to study US Imperialism. And, sadly, a man who just this year, lost his officer son in the Iraq War. The man knows what he is about, and his thoughts can be heard on Antiwar radio, interviewed by Charles Goyette, the wonderful conservative voice of conscience down in Phoenix.
And finally, some more ammunition from Barnet Rubin, the Middle East scholar who I first referred to a few days back talking about how the propaganda machine was cranking up. His latest piece appears in the "Informed Comment Global Affairs" blog entry for Wednesday, September 5, 2007: "Theses on Policy toward Iran." Rubin talks about "regime change" as the motivating factor for any attack on Iran, posits some results that might come from an attack, and suggests two strategies Congress might adopt in order to avoid a conflagration. (Don't hold your breath.)
Armed with the facts and some common sense thinking, you are now ready to face the bizarre fantasies of the warmongers. Go and be gratified.
Sara Baxter, "Pentagon 'Three-Day Blitz' Plan For Iran" reporting in the Sunday Times in the UK gives a good roundup of the information beginning to accumulate about the justification for going into war with Iran.
She picks up on a speech given at the Nixon Center by Alexis Dabat revealing that the Pentagon has strike plans against 1200 targets in Iran. He spoke at a meeting organized by The National Interest--a conservative foreign policy group. The article also sources the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) which is part of the MEK, an anti-Iranian group seeking to overthrow the Iranian regime. The MEK , and also in a supplementary order, the NCRI have both been named as terrorist groups by the State department. That seems not to matter to our government which relies on terrorist connections when in our interest to do so. According to Scott Ritter in his book Target Iran (2007) the NCRI statements in the past have been the means through which Israel's intelligence services "made public" their information.
Although the recent positive report of the IAEA saying Iran has been very cooperative is mentioned, it is immediately followed by a comment that "Washington fears" that this report will be used as a stalling tactic by Iran. The reporter is for The Times in the UK, but she might as well be working for the Washington Times, since many of the sources she refers to are on the right side of the spectrum and have been militating for war with Iran for many many months, if not years.
The final argument presented is that Iran is fighting a "proxy war" in Iraq, and the logic of that position is laid out in a report just published by the recently founded Institute for the Study of War (so recent in fact it is still, according to its web-site, applying for tax-exempt status). The report is written by Kimberly Kagan, its executive director and former professor of military history. It was published in conjunction with The Weekly Standard, whose logo appears on the bottom right of all the pages of the report.
It's impressively footnoted until you see that all of the information is completely dependent upon US forces press releases (especially those of the former advisor to the President, Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, who began cranking out questionable and weakly supported anti-Iranian statements as soon as he arrived in Iraq on his fresh assignment). Other conservative groups, or people whose credibility can be legitimately questioned, are cited. That is to say, almost all the sources have an Iranian axe to grind. Most obviously, what is missing is any information which questions the facts or suggests other possible interpretation. Jim Lobe has detailed the "Kagan network" and as Lobe suggests, watch for this study to be quoted again and again by Cheney, Bush, the Weekly Standard, WSJ (on its editorial pages to be sure, and now that Rupert Murdock is taking over, maybe even the journalistic side, See if the news people begin the to use the report without looking into the full story the full story). I have read the report almost completely now and it looks to me like it will be the Bush and Cheney catechism for the pushing the justification of an attack.
(If the link to The Times is broken, you can find an reprint on International Clearing House's site.)
Three more links will help you get grounded on the context of what is going on:
First, another ripper from the wonderfully outspoken and blunt Paul Craig Roberts. He does a better job than I can of summing up the situation and the moral implications in his piece, "The War Criminal in the Living Room." Here's an excerpt:
Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening “the security of nations everywhere” and of the Iraqi resistance for “a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power.” Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration. The Pew Foundation’s world polls show that despite all the American and Israeli propaganda against Iran, the US and Israel are regarded as no less threats to world stability than demonized Iran [itself].
I love reading his things. They pin the administration's insects right through the abdomen and to the felt and let them wriggle.
Next, constitutional scholar, and a writer who is becoming a conscience for the country, Glenn Greenwald has done a fine job in Salon of studying the President's speeches and recent statements.
And finally, some incisive weapons to attack the arguments you will hear in the patriotic rush to war, from George Packer at The New Yorker. Read this short post if you do nothing else! Packer is a great reporter who has jumped on and begun to write on the propaganda campaign. He provides the questions that he thinks the press should be asking of the administration as the campaign unfolds. Here they are from his posting for Friday, August 31, 2007, "Test Marketing":
It’s one thing for the American Enterprise Institute, the Weekly Standard, et al to champion a war they support. It’s another to jump like circus animals at the crack of the White House whip. If the propaganda campaign predicted by Rubin’s friend is launched, less subservient news organizations should ask certain questions, and keep asking them: Does the Administration expect the Iranian regime to fall in the event of an attack? If yes, what will replace it? If no (and it will not), why would the Administration deliberately set about to strengthen the regime’s hold on power? What will the Administration do to protect highly vulnerable American lives and interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world against the Iranian reprisals that will follow? What if Iran strikes against Israel? What will be the strategy when the Iranian nuclear program, damaged but not destroyed, resumes? How will the Administration handle the international alarm and opprobrium that would be an attack’s inevitable fallout?
And he ends his piece with one of the most pessimistic statements we are going to read:
If this really is a return to the early fall of 2002 all over again, then I’m fairly sure that no one at the top of the Administration is worrying about the answers.
Oh, I fear that the fix in in. You can feel it. Watch carefully all of the speeches coming out of Washington, check the sources and look for cross quotes.
A good friend of mine in Sacramento sent me a wonderful excerpt from the recently departed Kurt Vonnegut, which he had read in a book quoting Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut's novel about being traumatized by the fire bombing of Dresden in WW II. In the novel, Vonnegut imagines that the film of a bombing raid over Germany begins to run backwards:
"American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off
backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German
fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell
fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for
wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up
backwards to join the formation.
"The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames.
The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted miraculous magnetism
which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel
containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the
planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks.....There were
still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were
in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again,
made everything and everybody as good as new.
"When the bombers got back to the base, the steel containers were
taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States, where
factories were operating day and night, dismantling the cylinders,
separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was
mainly women who did the work. The minerals were then shipped to
specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into
the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody
ever again."
I remembered reading that many years ago, in the early seventies, when the Vietnam War, which Nixon promised to end in his campaign, was still grinding down to its terrible end. The passage really is a wonderfully peaceful thing, isn't it, almost with the grace and simplicity of scripture.
I put it up here as a wonderful antidote to the war fever that will be coming over the next few months.
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