"Massive, devastating air strikes, a full dose of "shock and awe" with hundreds of bunker-busting bombs slicing through concrete at more than a dozen nuclear sites across Iran is no longer just the idle musing of military planners and uber-hawks.
Like General Powell said, "these guys are fu*king nuts!"
Showing posts with label War Hawks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War Hawks. Show all posts
Friday, November 23, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Giuliani: U.S. can't afford to rule out war with Iran
by Joelle Farrell - Nov 6, 2007
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said yesterday that the U.S. needs its nuclear arsenal to strengthen its position in negotiating with Iran. If Americans want to leverage a better result from talks with Iran, they must be willing to go to war, he said.
"I wouldn't ever unilaterally disarm the United States," he said in response to a question at Saint Anselm College in Manchester yesterday. "And I think I certainly wouldn't do it right now in the face of the Islamic terrorists' war against us, in the face of an Iran that wants to be nuclear."
Giuliani's aggressive stance on Iran has worried some, especially Democrats who say the Bush administration's tough talk on Iran resembles the preparation for war against Iraq in 2002 and 2003. But Giuliani's message resonated with many who attended the town hall meeting yesterday.
"He makes me feel safe," said Jeanne Zelensky of Goffstown.
Betty Larson of Amherst said, "He's a mean son of a bitch, and that's exactly what we need."
None of the leading Republican and Democratic presidential candidates has ruled out a military option in Iran. Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton voted in the Senate last month to label Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, a decision her opponents called confrontational.
But Giuliani compared Iran's advancement of its uranium-enriching program to the Cold War and said that following President Reagan's tough negotiation tactics - a mix of military display and diplomacy - is the best way to negotiate with Iran.
Giuliani aims to emulate Ronald Reagan's optimism in his campaign, even when he talks about war and nuclear weapons.
"Of the major Republican candidates, Giuliani tends to sound the most optimistically aggressive," said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire. "John McCain often speaks of the war on terror as the great battle of our time, but . . . McCain has emphasized the sacrifice . . . whereas Giuliani tends to talk about the war on terror as something that we're winning."
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who leads the Republican polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, has stressed tougher sanctions and diplomatic isolation of Iran.
Yesterday, Giuliani said his stance on Iran is realistic, not provocative.
"I'm not overestimating the threat," he said. "I'm just taking them at their word, and my conclusion is that it would be too irresponsible and too dangerous to allow Iran to become nuclear."
He said the U.S. government shouldn't read too much into what Iran's leaders say.
"We have to take Iran' s leadership at its word," he said. "We have to take Iran at its word when they say that they're going to attack Israel . . . and when they say they want to destroy us. There's something behind that."
He added, "I think America has acted at its peril when it has discounted terrorist tyrants and dictators. And America has never been wrong when it takes them seriously."
Giuliani said military force would not be his first option in dealing with Iran, but sanctions and negotiations will only work if America appears poised for battle. He recalled Reagan's tactics with the Soviet Union, calling the nation an evil empire and sending missiles to Europe.
"There were a lot of things he did in advance to change the leverage," Giuliani said. "Of course we can negotiate, but we've got to have someone to negotiate who's tough and a realist."
Scala said Giuliani's rhetoric on Iran is red meat for Republicans who may be less enthused about a candidate who supports rights to abortion and gay marriage. And Giulaini's blend of social moderate and national defense hawk may be just right for New Hampshire Republicans.
"In the context of winning the Republican primary, it does not hurt him," he said.
Giuliani leads the Republicans in most national polls and is running close behind Romney in New Hampshire. With the New Hampshire primary expected to take place in early January, Giuliani has stepped up his pace in the state.
He's visited five times since he filed two weeks ago to put his name on the ballot.
Yesterday Giuliani made a brief campaign stop with Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta, a Republican running for re-election. The two split a slice at Caesario's Pizza on Elm Street in Manchester. Giuliani and his wife, Judith, nuzzled a baby, shook hands and posed for some pictures before heading out the door.
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said yesterday that the U.S. needs its nuclear arsenal to strengthen its position in negotiating with Iran. If Americans want to leverage a better result from talks with Iran, they must be willing to go to war, he said.
"I wouldn't ever unilaterally disarm the United States," he said in response to a question at Saint Anselm College in Manchester yesterday. "And I think I certainly wouldn't do it right now in the face of the Islamic terrorists' war against us, in the face of an Iran that wants to be nuclear."
Giuliani's aggressive stance on Iran has worried some, especially Democrats who say the Bush administration's tough talk on Iran resembles the preparation for war against Iraq in 2002 and 2003. But Giuliani's message resonated with many who attended the town hall meeting yesterday.
"He makes me feel safe," said Jeanne Zelensky of Goffstown.
Betty Larson of Amherst said, "He's a mean son of a bitch, and that's exactly what we need."
None of the leading Republican and Democratic presidential candidates has ruled out a military option in Iran. Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton voted in the Senate last month to label Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, a decision her opponents called confrontational.
But Giuliani compared Iran's advancement of its uranium-enriching program to the Cold War and said that following President Reagan's tough negotiation tactics - a mix of military display and diplomacy - is the best way to negotiate with Iran.
Giuliani aims to emulate Ronald Reagan's optimism in his campaign, even when he talks about war and nuclear weapons.
"Of the major Republican candidates, Giuliani tends to sound the most optimistically aggressive," said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire. "John McCain often speaks of the war on terror as the great battle of our time, but . . . McCain has emphasized the sacrifice . . . whereas Giuliani tends to talk about the war on terror as something that we're winning."
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who leads the Republican polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, has stressed tougher sanctions and diplomatic isolation of Iran.
Yesterday, Giuliani said his stance on Iran is realistic, not provocative.
"I'm not overestimating the threat," he said. "I'm just taking them at their word, and my conclusion is that it would be too irresponsible and too dangerous to allow Iran to become nuclear."
He said the U.S. government shouldn't read too much into what Iran's leaders say.
"We have to take Iran' s leadership at its word," he said. "We have to take Iran at its word when they say that they're going to attack Israel . . . and when they say they want to destroy us. There's something behind that."
He added, "I think America has acted at its peril when it has discounted terrorist tyrants and dictators. And America has never been wrong when it takes them seriously."
Giuliani said military force would not be his first option in dealing with Iran, but sanctions and negotiations will only work if America appears poised for battle. He recalled Reagan's tactics with the Soviet Union, calling the nation an evil empire and sending missiles to Europe.
"There were a lot of things he did in advance to change the leverage," Giuliani said. "Of course we can negotiate, but we've got to have someone to negotiate who's tough and a realist."
Scala said Giuliani's rhetoric on Iran is red meat for Republicans who may be less enthused about a candidate who supports rights to abortion and gay marriage. And Giulaini's blend of social moderate and national defense hawk may be just right for New Hampshire Republicans.
"In the context of winning the Republican primary, it does not hurt him," he said.
Giuliani leads the Republicans in most national polls and is running close behind Romney in New Hampshire. With the New Hampshire primary expected to take place in early January, Giuliani has stepped up his pace in the state.
He's visited five times since he filed two weeks ago to put his name on the ballot.
Yesterday Giuliani made a brief campaign stop with Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta, a Republican running for re-election. The two split a slice at Caesario's Pizza on Elm Street in Manchester. Giuliani and his wife, Judith, nuzzled a baby, shook hands and posed for some pictures before heading out the door.
If We Lose Iraq,You're to Blame
by William J. Astore & Tom Engelhardt - Nov 7, 2007
You know there's trouble ahead when Iraq, in its present state, is the good news story for Bush administration policy. While various civilian and military officials from the president on down have been talking up "success" in Iraq and beating the rhetorical war drums vis-à-vis Iran, much of the remainder of the administration's foreign policy in what the neocons used to call "the arc of instability" began to thoroughly unravel.
In the Horn of Africa, U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops are bogged down in a disastrous occupation of Somalia's capital, harried by a growing Islamist insurgency. Despite endless shuttle diplomacy by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the administration's Middle East peace conference, to be held at Annapolis, is already being dismissed as a failure before the first official invitations are issued. Meanwhile, the Turks are driving the administration to distraction by threatening to invade and destabilize the only moderately successful part of the new Iraq, its Kurdish region (while the Iraqi government in Baghdad calls on Iran for help in the crisis).
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently landed in Tehran and brazenly indicated that any U.S. attack on Iran would be considered an attack on Russia. He then convened a local "mini-summit" and formed a regional Caspian Sea-based alliance with Iran and three energy-rich former SSRs of the departed Soviet Union implicitly directed against the United States and its local allies. On the day Secretary of State Rice announced new, tough sanctions against the Iranians, Putin commented pointedly: "Why worsen the situation by threatening sanctions and bring it to a dead end? It's not the best way to resolve the situation by running around like a madman with a razor blade in his hand."
Meanwhile, one country to the east, the resurgent Taliban has, against all predictions, just captured a third district in Western Afghanistan near the Iranian border – and, as the most recent devastating suicide bomb indicates, attacks are spreading north. And then, of course, there's the president's greatest ally in the Muslim world, Pakistan's ruler, Pervez Musharraf.
Remember Bush's nightmare scenario, the one that guaranteed a surefire "preventive" attack from his administration: an autocratic and oppressive ruler with weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear ones, presiding over a country that functionally offers a safe haven for terrorists? Well, that's now Pakistan, whose security forces are busily jailing hundreds of lawyers, while the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and extremist Islamists, well armed and backed by their own radio stations broadcasting calls for jihad, are moving out of safe havens in the tribal areas along the Afghan border and into Pakistan proper to fight. And there's essentially nothing the administration can do, except mouth platitudes and look the other way. As Paul Woodward of the War in Context Web site has pointed out: When it comes to nuclear Iran and nuclear Pakistan, we have been living in "a Through-the-Looking-Glass world where nuclear weapons that do exist are less dangerous than those that can be imagined." Now, not much imagination is needed at all.
Strangely, from Ethiopia to Pakistan, despite all the signs, all the predictions, the Bush administration, as far as we can tell, expected none of the above. How often can it be caught off guard by the consequences of its own decisions and actions? Eternally, it seems.
The possible collapse of the president's foreign policy across the entire arc of instability was first written about by the always prescient Juan Cole at Salon.com. He commented that, "like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf." And he ventured a prediction: "The thunder of the bomb [that blew up as former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned home] in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his 'war on terror.'" Over at TPM Café, Todd Gitlin was the first to offer a wry, if grim, suggestion, as he considered Bush's "failure to crush the Taliban & Co." from Tora Bora 2001 on. "Talk about dominos," he wrote. "How about this for a Democratic slogan: Who Lost Pakistan?"
With the price of crude oil threatening to hit $100 a barrel and prices at the pump surging over $3 a gallon domestically – while, on the nightly news, experts mutter about oil at $150 a barrel and gas at $4 a gallon by next summer – a meltdown might be in the works. Invaded and occupied Iraq, like some festering sore, remains at the heart of this spreading disaster, the end of which is nowhere in sight. The U.S. military, the sole instrument with which Bush's top officials and his neocon followers imagined they could launch their "expeditionary" sorties around the globe, as if they were so many 19th-century British imperialists, has proved incapable of responding to such an essentially political situation. The president might as well be using a hammer to ward off gnats. No wonder, as retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian of early 20th-century Germany William Astore makes clear, the military and right-wing politicians are already preparing their own exit strategies in the form of stab-in-the-back explanations of what happened. Tom
The Enemy Within
Finding American backs to stab - by William J. Astore
The world's finest military launches a highly coordinated shock-and-awe attack that shows enormous initial progress. There's talk of the victorious troops being home for Christmas. But the war unexpectedly drags on. As fighting persists into a third, and then a fourth year, voices are heard calling for negotiations, even "peace without victory." Dismissing such peaceniks and critics as defeatists, a conservative and expansionist regime – led by a figurehead who often resorts to simplistic slogans and his Machiavellian sidekick, who is considered the brains behind the throne – calls for one last surge to victory. Unbeknownst to the people on the home front, however, this duo has already prepared a seductive and self-exculpatory myth in case the surge fails.
The United States in 2007? No, Wilhelmine Germany in 1917 and 1918, as its military dictators, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his loyal second, Gen. Erich Ludendorff, pushed Germany toward defeat and revolution in a relentless pursuit of victory in World War I. Having failed with their surge strategy on the Western Front in 1918, they nevertheless succeeded in deploying a stab-in-the-back myth, or Dolchstoßlegende, that shifted blame for defeat from themselves and Rightist politicians to Social Democrats and others allegedly responsible for losing the war by their failure to support the troops at home.
The German Army knew it was militarily defeated in 1918. But this was an inconvenient truth for Hindenburg and the Right, so they crafted a new "truth": that the troops were "unvanquished in the field." So powerful did these words become that they would be engraved in stone on many a German war memorial.
It's a myth we ourselves are familiar with. As South Vietnam was collapsing in 1975, Army Col. Harry G. Summers Jr., speaking to a North Vietnamese counterpart, claimed the U.S. military had never lost a battle in Vietnam. Perhaps so, the NVA colonel replied, "but it is also irrelevant." Summers recounts his conversation approvingly, without irony, in his book On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. For him, even if we lost the war, our Army proved itself "unbeatable."
Though Summers' premise was – and remains – dangerously misleading, it reassured the true believers who ran, and continue to run, our military. Those military men who were less convinced of our "unbeatable" stature tended to keep their own counsel. Their self-censorship, coupled with wider institutional self-deception, effectively opened the door to exculpatory myths.
A New American Stab-in-the-Back?
Warnings about a new stab-in-the-back myth may seem premature or overheated at this moment in the Iraq War. Yet, if the history of the original version of this myth is any guide, the opposite is true. They are timely precisely because the Dolchstoßlegende was not a postwar concoction, but an explanation cunningly, even cynically, hatched by Rightists in Germany before the failure of the desperate, final "victory offensive" of 1918 became fully apparent. Although Hindenburg's dramatic testimony in November 1919 – a full year after the armistice that ended the war – popularized the myth in Germany, it caught fire precisely because the tinder had been laid to dry two years earlier.
It may seem farfetched to compare a Prussian military dictatorship and its self-serving lies to the current Bush administration. Yet I'm not the first person to express concern about the emergence of our very own Iraqi Dolchstoßlegende. Back in 2004, Matthew Yglesias first brought up the possibility. Last year, in Harper's Magazine, Kevin Baker detailed the history of the stab-in-the-back, suggesting that Bush's Iraqi version was already beginning to germinate early in 2005, when news from Iraq turned definitively sour. And this October, in The Nation, Eric Alterman warned that the Bush administration was already busily sowing the seeds of this myth. Other Iraqi myth-trackers have included Gary Kamiya at Salon.com and Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith at CommonDreams.org. Just this August, Thomas Ricks, Washington Post columnist and author of the best-selling book Fiasco, worried publicly about whether the military itself wasn't already embracing elements of the myth whose specific betrayers would include "weaselly politicians" (are there any other kind?) and a "media who undercut us by focusing on the negative."
Is an American version of this myth really emerging then? Let's listen in on a recent Jim Lehrer interview with Sen. John McCain, who, while officially convinced that the president's surge plan in Iraq was working, couldn't seem to help talking about how we might yet lose. His remarks quickly took a disturbing turn as he pointed out that our Achilles' heel in Iraq is… well, we the people of the United States and our growing impatience with the war. And the historical analogy he employed was Vietnam, the catalyst for the deployment of the previous American Dolchstoßlegende.
While the Vietnam War was disastrous, McCain conceded, our military had – he argued – turned the tide after the enemy's Tet Offensive in 1968 and the replacement of Gen. William Westmoreland with Gen. Creighton Abrams as commander of our forces there. Precisely at that tipping-point moment, he insisted, the American people, their patience exhausted, had lost their will to win. For McCain, there really was a light at the end of that Vietnamese tunnel – the military saw it, yet the American people, blinded by bad news, never did.
In today's Iraq – again the McCain version – Gen. David Petraeus is the new Abrams, finally the right general for the job. And his new tactic of protecting the Iraqi people, thereby winning their hearts and minds, is working. Victory beckons at the end of the "long, hard path" (that evidently has replaced the Vietnamese tunnel), unless the American people run out of patience, as they did back in the late 1960s.
McCain is no Hindenburg. Yet his almost automatic displacement of ultimate responsibility from the Bush administration and the military to the American people indicates the traction the stab-in-the-back myth has already gained in mainstream politics. For the moment, with hope for some kind of victory, however defined, not quite vanquished in official circles, our latest dagger-myth remains sheathed, its murderous power as yet unwielded.
Then again, perhaps that's not quite the case, even now. In The Empire Strikes Back, young Luke Skywalker asks Yoda, his wizened Jedi Master, whether the dark side of the Force is stronger than the good. No, Yoda replies, just "easier, quicker, more seductive" – an accurate description of the dark power of the stab-in-the-back myth. Politicians sense its future power and alter their positions accordingly. For example, no leading presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat, dares to be labeled "defeatist" by calling for a major withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2008. Exceptions like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, or even Bill Richardson only prove the rule – with support in the low single-digits, they risk little in bucking the odds.
Fear of being labeled "the enemy within" is already silently reshaping our politics as even decorated combat veterans like Congressman (and retired Marine Corps colonel) John Murtha are not immune from being smeared for criticizing the president's war. Politicians recognize that, in a campaign, it's well-nigh impossible to overcome charges of weakness and pusillanimity. Sen. Hillary Clinton senses that she may be unelectable unless she argues for us to continue to fight the good fight in Iraq, albeit more intelligently. In fact, if you're looking for significant changes in troop levels or strategy there, better hunker in for Inauguration Day 2009 – and then prepare to wait some more.
Of Myths and Accountability
McCain's comments did echo a Clausewitzian truth. In warfare, the people's will is an indispensable component of a nation's war-fighting "trinity" (that also includes the government and the military). It's exceedingly difficult to prevail in a major war, if a leg of this triad is hobbled. By choosing not to mobilize the people's will, by telling us to go about our normal lives as others were fighting and dying in our name, the Bush administration actually hobbled its own long-term efforts. Now, they are getting ready to claim that it was all our fault. We were the ones who lost our patience and will to victory. This is rather like the boy who killed his father and mother, only to throw himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan.
Back in 2002-2003, with an all-volunteer military, a new Blitzkrieg strategy, and believing God to be on their side, it appears Bush and Company initially assumed that broader calls for support and sacrifice were militarily unnecessary – and unnecessarily perilous politically. Now, despite dramatic setbacks over the last four years, they still refuse to mobilize our national will. Their refusal reminds me of the tagline of those old Miller Lite beer commercials: Everything you always wanted in a war, and less – as in less (or even no) sacrifices.
So let me be clear: If we lose in Iraq, the American people will not be to blame. We cannot be accused of lacking a will that was never wanted or called upon to begin with. Yet the stab-in-the-back myth gains credibility precisely because so few high-level people either in government or the military are being held accountable for failures in Iraq.
In World War II, Thomas Ricks reminds us, our military relieved 17 division commanders and four corps commanders of duty. With the possible exception of Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski of Abu Ghraib infamy, has any senior officer been relieved for cause in Iraq? Since none apparently has, does this mean that, unlike the spineless American people, they have all performed well?
To cite just one typical case, Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hunzeker served as the commanding general, Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, from October 2006 to July 2007 in Iraq. Surely, this was a tough job, especially for a man with no proficiency in Arabic. Yet, by all accounts, Iraqi police units to this day remain remarkably corrupt, militia-ridden, and undependable. Does this mean Hunzeker failed? Apparently not, since he was promoted to lieutenant general and given a coveted corps command. Interestingly, his most recent official biography fails to mention his time in Iraq leading the police assistance team. Even if Hunzeker was indeed the best man for the job, what kind of progress could have been possible in a 10-month tour of duty? By the time Hunzeker learned a few painful lessons, he was already jetting to Germany and command of V Corps.
If no one is held accountable for failed policies, if, in fact, those closest to the failures are showered with honors – as was, for instance, L. Paul Bremer III, who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad for the President from May 2003 to June 2004 – it becomes easier to shift blame to anyone (or everyone). Here, German precedents are again compelling. Because the German people were never told they were losing World War I, even as their Army was collapsing in July and August 1918, they were unprepared for the psychological blow of defeat – and so, all-too-willing to accept the lie that the collapse was due to the enemy within.
This is not to say that today's military has been silent. To cite three examples, retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez recently criticized the surge strategy and called the Iraq war "a nightmare with no end in sight." Another perspective came from 12 Army captains formerly stationed in Iraq, who, writing in the Washington Post, also rejected the surge and called for rapid withdrawal as the best of a series of bad options. Finally, seven NCOs in the elite 82d Airborne Division (and then still in Iraq) offered graphic illustrations (on the op-ed page of the New York Times) of the one-step-forward, two-steps-back nature of "progress" on the ground in Iraq.
Think of these as three military perspectives on a disastrous war. But even they can serve as only a partial antidote to the myth that some kind of victory is inevitable as long as we, the American people, remain supinely supportive of administration policy.
Blaming You
Given the right postwar conditions, the myth of the stab-in-the-back can facilitate the rise of reactionary regimes and score-settling via long knives – just ask Germans under Hitler in 1934. It also serves to exonerate a military of its blunders and blind spots, empowering it and its commanders to launch redemptive, expansionist adventures that turn disastrous precisely because previous lessons of defeat were never faced, let alone absorbed or embraced.
Thus, the German military's collapse in World War I and the Dolchstoß myth that followed enabled the even greater disaster of World War II. Is it possible that our own version of this, associated with Vietnam, enabled an even greater disaster in Iraq? And, if so, what could the next version of the stab-in-the-back bring in its wake?
Only time will tell. But consider yourself warned. If we lose Iraq, you're to blame.
You know there's trouble ahead when Iraq, in its present state, is the good news story for Bush administration policy. While various civilian and military officials from the president on down have been talking up "success" in Iraq and beating the rhetorical war drums vis-à-vis Iran, much of the remainder of the administration's foreign policy in what the neocons used to call "the arc of instability" began to thoroughly unravel.
In the Horn of Africa, U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops are bogged down in a disastrous occupation of Somalia's capital, harried by a growing Islamist insurgency. Despite endless shuttle diplomacy by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the administration's Middle East peace conference, to be held at Annapolis, is already being dismissed as a failure before the first official invitations are issued. Meanwhile, the Turks are driving the administration to distraction by threatening to invade and destabilize the only moderately successful part of the new Iraq, its Kurdish region (while the Iraqi government in Baghdad calls on Iran for help in the crisis).
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently landed in Tehran and brazenly indicated that any U.S. attack on Iran would be considered an attack on Russia. He then convened a local "mini-summit" and formed a regional Caspian Sea-based alliance with Iran and three energy-rich former SSRs of the departed Soviet Union implicitly directed against the United States and its local allies. On the day Secretary of State Rice announced new, tough sanctions against the Iranians, Putin commented pointedly: "Why worsen the situation by threatening sanctions and bring it to a dead end? It's not the best way to resolve the situation by running around like a madman with a razor blade in his hand."
Meanwhile, one country to the east, the resurgent Taliban has, against all predictions, just captured a third district in Western Afghanistan near the Iranian border – and, as the most recent devastating suicide bomb indicates, attacks are spreading north. And then, of course, there's the president's greatest ally in the Muslim world, Pakistan's ruler, Pervez Musharraf.
Remember Bush's nightmare scenario, the one that guaranteed a surefire "preventive" attack from his administration: an autocratic and oppressive ruler with weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear ones, presiding over a country that functionally offers a safe haven for terrorists? Well, that's now Pakistan, whose security forces are busily jailing hundreds of lawyers, while the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and extremist Islamists, well armed and backed by their own radio stations broadcasting calls for jihad, are moving out of safe havens in the tribal areas along the Afghan border and into Pakistan proper to fight. And there's essentially nothing the administration can do, except mouth platitudes and look the other way. As Paul Woodward of the War in Context Web site has pointed out: When it comes to nuclear Iran and nuclear Pakistan, we have been living in "a Through-the-Looking-Glass world where nuclear weapons that do exist are less dangerous than those that can be imagined." Now, not much imagination is needed at all.
Strangely, from Ethiopia to Pakistan, despite all the signs, all the predictions, the Bush administration, as far as we can tell, expected none of the above. How often can it be caught off guard by the consequences of its own decisions and actions? Eternally, it seems.
The possible collapse of the president's foreign policy across the entire arc of instability was first written about by the always prescient Juan Cole at Salon.com. He commented that, "like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf." And he ventured a prediction: "The thunder of the bomb [that blew up as former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned home] in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his 'war on terror.'" Over at TPM Café, Todd Gitlin was the first to offer a wry, if grim, suggestion, as he considered Bush's "failure to crush the Taliban & Co." from Tora Bora 2001 on. "Talk about dominos," he wrote. "How about this for a Democratic slogan: Who Lost Pakistan?"
With the price of crude oil threatening to hit $100 a barrel and prices at the pump surging over $3 a gallon domestically – while, on the nightly news, experts mutter about oil at $150 a barrel and gas at $4 a gallon by next summer – a meltdown might be in the works. Invaded and occupied Iraq, like some festering sore, remains at the heart of this spreading disaster, the end of which is nowhere in sight. The U.S. military, the sole instrument with which Bush's top officials and his neocon followers imagined they could launch their "expeditionary" sorties around the globe, as if they were so many 19th-century British imperialists, has proved incapable of responding to such an essentially political situation. The president might as well be using a hammer to ward off gnats. No wonder, as retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian of early 20th-century Germany William Astore makes clear, the military and right-wing politicians are already preparing their own exit strategies in the form of stab-in-the-back explanations of what happened. Tom
The Enemy Within
Finding American backs to stab - by William J. Astore
The world's finest military launches a highly coordinated shock-and-awe attack that shows enormous initial progress. There's talk of the victorious troops being home for Christmas. But the war unexpectedly drags on. As fighting persists into a third, and then a fourth year, voices are heard calling for negotiations, even "peace without victory." Dismissing such peaceniks and critics as defeatists, a conservative and expansionist regime – led by a figurehead who often resorts to simplistic slogans and his Machiavellian sidekick, who is considered the brains behind the throne – calls for one last surge to victory. Unbeknownst to the people on the home front, however, this duo has already prepared a seductive and self-exculpatory myth in case the surge fails.
The United States in 2007? No, Wilhelmine Germany in 1917 and 1918, as its military dictators, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his loyal second, Gen. Erich Ludendorff, pushed Germany toward defeat and revolution in a relentless pursuit of victory in World War I. Having failed with their surge strategy on the Western Front in 1918, they nevertheless succeeded in deploying a stab-in-the-back myth, or Dolchstoßlegende, that shifted blame for defeat from themselves and Rightist politicians to Social Democrats and others allegedly responsible for losing the war by their failure to support the troops at home.
The German Army knew it was militarily defeated in 1918. But this was an inconvenient truth for Hindenburg and the Right, so they crafted a new "truth": that the troops were "unvanquished in the field." So powerful did these words become that they would be engraved in stone on many a German war memorial.
It's a myth we ourselves are familiar with. As South Vietnam was collapsing in 1975, Army Col. Harry G. Summers Jr., speaking to a North Vietnamese counterpart, claimed the U.S. military had never lost a battle in Vietnam. Perhaps so, the NVA colonel replied, "but it is also irrelevant." Summers recounts his conversation approvingly, without irony, in his book On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. For him, even if we lost the war, our Army proved itself "unbeatable."
Though Summers' premise was – and remains – dangerously misleading, it reassured the true believers who ran, and continue to run, our military. Those military men who were less convinced of our "unbeatable" stature tended to keep their own counsel. Their self-censorship, coupled with wider institutional self-deception, effectively opened the door to exculpatory myths.
A New American Stab-in-the-Back?
Warnings about a new stab-in-the-back myth may seem premature or overheated at this moment in the Iraq War. Yet, if the history of the original version of this myth is any guide, the opposite is true. They are timely precisely because the Dolchstoßlegende was not a postwar concoction, but an explanation cunningly, even cynically, hatched by Rightists in Germany before the failure of the desperate, final "victory offensive" of 1918 became fully apparent. Although Hindenburg's dramatic testimony in November 1919 – a full year after the armistice that ended the war – popularized the myth in Germany, it caught fire precisely because the tinder had been laid to dry two years earlier.
It may seem farfetched to compare a Prussian military dictatorship and its self-serving lies to the current Bush administration. Yet I'm not the first person to express concern about the emergence of our very own Iraqi Dolchstoßlegende. Back in 2004, Matthew Yglesias first brought up the possibility. Last year, in Harper's Magazine, Kevin Baker detailed the history of the stab-in-the-back, suggesting that Bush's Iraqi version was already beginning to germinate early in 2005, when news from Iraq turned definitively sour. And this October, in The Nation, Eric Alterman warned that the Bush administration was already busily sowing the seeds of this myth. Other Iraqi myth-trackers have included Gary Kamiya at Salon.com and Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith at CommonDreams.org. Just this August, Thomas Ricks, Washington Post columnist and author of the best-selling book Fiasco, worried publicly about whether the military itself wasn't already embracing elements of the myth whose specific betrayers would include "weaselly politicians" (are there any other kind?) and a "media who undercut us by focusing on the negative."
Is an American version of this myth really emerging then? Let's listen in on a recent Jim Lehrer interview with Sen. John McCain, who, while officially convinced that the president's surge plan in Iraq was working, couldn't seem to help talking about how we might yet lose. His remarks quickly took a disturbing turn as he pointed out that our Achilles' heel in Iraq is… well, we the people of the United States and our growing impatience with the war. And the historical analogy he employed was Vietnam, the catalyst for the deployment of the previous American Dolchstoßlegende.
While the Vietnam War was disastrous, McCain conceded, our military had – he argued – turned the tide after the enemy's Tet Offensive in 1968 and the replacement of Gen. William Westmoreland with Gen. Creighton Abrams as commander of our forces there. Precisely at that tipping-point moment, he insisted, the American people, their patience exhausted, had lost their will to win. For McCain, there really was a light at the end of that Vietnamese tunnel – the military saw it, yet the American people, blinded by bad news, never did.
In today's Iraq – again the McCain version – Gen. David Petraeus is the new Abrams, finally the right general for the job. And his new tactic of protecting the Iraqi people, thereby winning their hearts and minds, is working. Victory beckons at the end of the "long, hard path" (that evidently has replaced the Vietnamese tunnel), unless the American people run out of patience, as they did back in the late 1960s.
McCain is no Hindenburg. Yet his almost automatic displacement of ultimate responsibility from the Bush administration and the military to the American people indicates the traction the stab-in-the-back myth has already gained in mainstream politics. For the moment, with hope for some kind of victory, however defined, not quite vanquished in official circles, our latest dagger-myth remains sheathed, its murderous power as yet unwielded.
Then again, perhaps that's not quite the case, even now. In The Empire Strikes Back, young Luke Skywalker asks Yoda, his wizened Jedi Master, whether the dark side of the Force is stronger than the good. No, Yoda replies, just "easier, quicker, more seductive" – an accurate description of the dark power of the stab-in-the-back myth. Politicians sense its future power and alter their positions accordingly. For example, no leading presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat, dares to be labeled "defeatist" by calling for a major withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2008. Exceptions like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, or even Bill Richardson only prove the rule – with support in the low single-digits, they risk little in bucking the odds.
Fear of being labeled "the enemy within" is already silently reshaping our politics as even decorated combat veterans like Congressman (and retired Marine Corps colonel) John Murtha are not immune from being smeared for criticizing the president's war. Politicians recognize that, in a campaign, it's well-nigh impossible to overcome charges of weakness and pusillanimity. Sen. Hillary Clinton senses that she may be unelectable unless she argues for us to continue to fight the good fight in Iraq, albeit more intelligently. In fact, if you're looking for significant changes in troop levels or strategy there, better hunker in for Inauguration Day 2009 – and then prepare to wait some more.
Of Myths and Accountability
McCain's comments did echo a Clausewitzian truth. In warfare, the people's will is an indispensable component of a nation's war-fighting "trinity" (that also includes the government and the military). It's exceedingly difficult to prevail in a major war, if a leg of this triad is hobbled. By choosing not to mobilize the people's will, by telling us to go about our normal lives as others were fighting and dying in our name, the Bush administration actually hobbled its own long-term efforts. Now, they are getting ready to claim that it was all our fault. We were the ones who lost our patience and will to victory. This is rather like the boy who killed his father and mother, only to throw himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan.
Back in 2002-2003, with an all-volunteer military, a new Blitzkrieg strategy, and believing God to be on their side, it appears Bush and Company initially assumed that broader calls for support and sacrifice were militarily unnecessary – and unnecessarily perilous politically. Now, despite dramatic setbacks over the last four years, they still refuse to mobilize our national will. Their refusal reminds me of the tagline of those old Miller Lite beer commercials: Everything you always wanted in a war, and less – as in less (or even no) sacrifices.
So let me be clear: If we lose in Iraq, the American people will not be to blame. We cannot be accused of lacking a will that was never wanted or called upon to begin with. Yet the stab-in-the-back myth gains credibility precisely because so few high-level people either in government or the military are being held accountable for failures in Iraq.
In World War II, Thomas Ricks reminds us, our military relieved 17 division commanders and four corps commanders of duty. With the possible exception of Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski of Abu Ghraib infamy, has any senior officer been relieved for cause in Iraq? Since none apparently has, does this mean that, unlike the spineless American people, they have all performed well?
To cite just one typical case, Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hunzeker served as the commanding general, Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, from October 2006 to July 2007 in Iraq. Surely, this was a tough job, especially for a man with no proficiency in Arabic. Yet, by all accounts, Iraqi police units to this day remain remarkably corrupt, militia-ridden, and undependable. Does this mean Hunzeker failed? Apparently not, since he was promoted to lieutenant general and given a coveted corps command. Interestingly, his most recent official biography fails to mention his time in Iraq leading the police assistance team. Even if Hunzeker was indeed the best man for the job, what kind of progress could have been possible in a 10-month tour of duty? By the time Hunzeker learned a few painful lessons, he was already jetting to Germany and command of V Corps.
If no one is held accountable for failed policies, if, in fact, those closest to the failures are showered with honors – as was, for instance, L. Paul Bremer III, who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad for the President from May 2003 to June 2004 – it becomes easier to shift blame to anyone (or everyone). Here, German precedents are again compelling. Because the German people were never told they were losing World War I, even as their Army was collapsing in July and August 1918, they were unprepared for the psychological blow of defeat – and so, all-too-willing to accept the lie that the collapse was due to the enemy within.
This is not to say that today's military has been silent. To cite three examples, retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez recently criticized the surge strategy and called the Iraq war "a nightmare with no end in sight." Another perspective came from 12 Army captains formerly stationed in Iraq, who, writing in the Washington Post, also rejected the surge and called for rapid withdrawal as the best of a series of bad options. Finally, seven NCOs in the elite 82d Airborne Division (and then still in Iraq) offered graphic illustrations (on the op-ed page of the New York Times) of the one-step-forward, two-steps-back nature of "progress" on the ground in Iraq.
Think of these as three military perspectives on a disastrous war. But even they can serve as only a partial antidote to the myth that some kind of victory is inevitable as long as we, the American people, remain supinely supportive of administration policy.
Blaming You
Given the right postwar conditions, the myth of the stab-in-the-back can facilitate the rise of reactionary regimes and score-settling via long knives – just ask Germans under Hitler in 1934. It also serves to exonerate a military of its blunders and blind spots, empowering it and its commanders to launch redemptive, expansionist adventures that turn disastrous precisely because previous lessons of defeat were never faced, let alone absorbed or embraced.
Thus, the German military's collapse in World War I and the Dolchstoß myth that followed enabled the even greater disaster of World War II. Is it possible that our own version of this, associated with Vietnam, enabled an even greater disaster in Iraq? And, if so, what could the next version of the stab-in-the-back bring in its wake?
Only time will tell. But consider yourself warned. If we lose Iraq, you're to blame.
Iraq taught us nothing
The U.S. establishment's acceptance of a possible war with Iran shows that the folly that led to Iraq still rules Washington.
by Gary Kamiya - Nov. 6, 2007
The U.S. could attack Iran in the next few months.
Let's repeat that. The U.S. could attack Iran in the next few months.
The fact that this sentence can be written with a straight face proves that the Iraq debacle has taught us absolutely nothing. Talk of attacking Iran should be confined to the lunatic fringe. Yet America's political and media elite have responded to the idea of attacking Iran in almost exactly the same way they did to the idea of attacking Iraq. Four and a half years after Bush embarked on one of the most catastrophic foreign-policy adventures in our history, the same wrongheaded, ignorant and self-destructive approach to the Arab-Muslim world and to fighting terrorism still rules establishment thinking.
The disturbing thing is that we have no excuse this time. Five years ago, a wounded, fearful and enraged America was ready to attack anybody, and Bush waved his red cape and steered the mad bull toward Iraq. We now know that was folly. The completely unnecessary invasion has so far resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and almost 4,000 Americans, severely destabilized the region, cost billions of dollars, and increased the threat of terrorism. Yet today we are blithely considering attacking a much larger Middle Eastern country for equally dubious reasons, and mainstream politicians and the media are once again going along. The American people have signed off on the conventional "wisdom." In a recent poll, 52 percent of Americans say they would support attacking Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
This is surreal. It's as if we're back on Sept. 12 and Iraq never happened.
It is not surprising that the GOP is calling for a wider Mideast war. The party has nothing except fear to sell: Its initials might as well stand for "Grand Orgy of Paranoia." But the acquiescence of many Democrats, and the mainstream media, shows just how intractable are the myths and fallacies about the Middle East and terrorism.
Four related misconceptions continue to distort our Middle East policy: the terrorism freakout, the Satan myth, the they're-all-the-same fallacy, and the belief that we're innocent.
In many ways the terrorism freakout is our founding error, one that predates 9/11 by decades. Our obsession with terrorism, our failure to place it in historical context, our hypocrisy in defining it, and our overreaction to it have marred our ability to craft an intelligent Middle East policy. It has seriously deformed our response to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis (still the region's key conflict), provided much of the impetus for the Iraq war, and now is paving the way for possible war with Iran.
America's response to Palestinian terrorism has set the tone for our subsequent responses to the phenomenon. No one condones terrorism: It is morally repugnant to kill civilians, no matter how legitimate the terrorists' political goals may be. But by simply declaring that Palestinian terrorism was evil, and refusing to acknowledge or address the Palestinians' legitimate grievances, America long ago locked itself into a morally incoherent, historically obtuse and ultimately self-defeating position. As Robert Fisk noted in "The Great War for Civilisation," because of America's pro-Israel bias, it has always seen Palestinian terrorism as "comfortably isolated from reason, cause or history ... 'Terrorism' is a word that has become a plague on our vocabulary, the excuse and reason and moral permit for state-sponsored violence -- our violence -- which is now used on the innocent of the Middle East ever more outrageously and promiscuously." The uncomfortable fact is that Israeli-Palestinian crisis is the crucial frame through which America has always understood the Middle East: Palestinians were the first of a long line of Arab and Muslim supervillains. Once we ourselves suffered a massive terrorist attack, our atavistic rage at these evildoers knew no bounds -- and it was easy for the Bush administration to persuade us to attack Iraq.
Our overreaction to terrorism, combined with military triumphalism, found its supreme expression in Vice President Dick Cheney's notorious "one percent doctrine," which holds that if there is even a 1 percent chance that an enemy will acquire dangerous weapons, the United States must launch a preventive attack. As Iraq should have shown us, this doctrine is paranoid, delusional and self-defeating. (The doctrine is aptly named: It has a 1 percent chance of success.) Yet as the Iran war drums show, it still drives U.S. policy.
Hysteria about terrorism leads to a dangerous belief in the efficacy of military force. Of course U.S. forces can destroy any conventional adversary. But victory on the battlefield does not necessarily translate into foreign-policy success -- especially not in an asymmetric war, like the one we face in Iraq and would face in Iran if we sent in ground forces. In fact, as Iraq should have shown us, we should wage war in the Middle East only as an absolute last resort. The costs are much too high and the risks of unintended consequences (Turkey and the Kurds, the crisis in Pakistan) too great. "Toughness" makes a great sound bite for opportunistic politicians, but in the real world it strengthens our terrorist enemies and ends up getting Americans killed for no reason.
Next comes the Satan myth, which says that our foes in the Middle East are uniquely evil, irrational, motiveless and impervious to deterrence. Just as the United States has seen the Palestinians as evil anti-Semites, not as complex actors with some legitimate historical grievances, so we saw Saddam as insane and undeterrable -- and now are asked to believe the same thing about the mad mullahs of Iran. The terror attacks on 9/11, which were carried out by fanatics who really were impervious to deterrence, made the Satan myth practically untouchable. Lost in the rage and fear over the attacks was the fact that violent jihadists like al-Qaida are few in number and have almost no popular support. Claiming that Iraq, like al-Qaida, was part of an "axis of evil," Bush used the Satan myth to sell the war against Iraq. And it now provides the key support for a war with Iran. If Iran is an insane, fanatical, undeterrable state, the equivalent of al-Qaida, then if follows that we must consider attacking it to prevent it from acquiring nuclear bombs.
The myth of a demonic, irrational, powerful Iran has no basis in fact. Iran, as Juan Cole has pointed out, "has not launched an aggressive war against a neighbor since 1785 and does not have a history of military expansionism. Its population is a third that of the United States and its military is small and weak." Nor is it bent on fighting the United States or Israel to the death. Iran made a major peace offer to the United States in 2003, offering a comprehensive diplomatic settlement, including ending its support for Hamas and recognition of Israel, in exchange for normal relations. The Bush administration, smugly certain that it was about to get rid of the entire regime, refused to talk.
Nor is Iran undeterrable. It obviously has significant differences with the United States. But it is a rational actor, concerned like any other state to maximize its regional power and minimize threats to its existence. As Trita Parsi, author of the new book "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S.," argued in a recent piece in the Nation, "a careful study of Iran's actions -- not just its rhetoric -- reveals systematic, pragmatic and cautious maneuvering toward a set goal: decontainment and the re-emergence of Iran as a pre-eminent power in the Middle East." This is why retired Gen. John Abizaid recently said that America could live with a nuclear Iran.
Under the specious heading of "Islamofascism," we have dangerously conflated completely different regimes and non-state actors -- this is the "they're all the same" fallacy. The Bush administration has aggressively promoted the idea that every Mideast state or militant movement that isn't on the same side as the United States or Israel poses the same threat as al-Qaida -- or simply asserted that those states are synonymous with al-Qaida, as the Bush administration did before the Iraq war. This is absurd and violates the first principle of both statesmanship and generalship: See the situation clearly and objectively. It leads to completely false assessments of entities like Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, and leads us to make far more enemies than we need to in the Arab-Muslim world.
Iran has no more to do with al-Qaida than Iraq did. Iran sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah, which have employed terrorism, but their fight is with Israel, not the United States. If we attack Iran because it supports Hezbollah, we might as well declare war on Kurdistan because it abets the PKK's far more deadly guerrilla campaign against Turkey. By treating Iran, or national-liberation groups like Hamas, as if they were al-Qaida, the United States is making an elementary and quite dangerous category error.
The final error is our invincible belief in our innocence, which derives from our almost complete ignorance of the region's history and its people. Americans can entertain notions of marching smartly into some Middle Eastern country, killing a bunch of evil ragheads, fixing things up, shaking hands all around, and marching out because most Americans simply have no knowledge of Middle Eastern history or America's long and often shameful record of imperialist and colonialist meddling. Perhaps Americans might view Iran differently if more of them knew that in 1953, America and Great Britain overthrew their democratically elected leader and installed a bloody but pro-U.S. tyrant, the Shah. The 1979 revolution that brought Khomeini to power, and put Iran and United States on the collision course that has lasted to this day, was a direct result of that infamous coup (which we engineered because we wanted cheap Iranian oil). Neither Iranians nor anyone else in the Middle East has forgotten such matters -- why should they? Until we understand and come to terms with our often-ugly track record in the region, we will be doomed to play the part of Graham Greene's haplessly idealistic Quiet American, blundering into places we don't understand, not knowing why the natives don't like us, and making things infinitely worse.
There are not many indications that Americans, whether Democrats or Republicans, can break away from these persistent fallacies about the Middle East and terrorism. There are a few glimmers of hope, however. Sen. Barack Obama broke decisively with the establishment position last week, stating that if elected, he would "engage in aggressive personal diplomacy with Iran" without preconditions. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel took the same position in a letter he sent to Bush calling for "direct, unconditional and comprehensive talks with the Government of Iran." And in a noteworthy column, ultra-establishment pundit Fareed Zakaria recently attacked the entire set of assumptions behind the campaign to whip up war fever against Iran. "The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality," Zakaria wrote in Newsweek.
But the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, has not broken with the establishment paradigm. She has hedged her bets but not staked out a completely new course. And her refusal to do so means that the Democratic Party is failing to speak with one voice on the most important issue of our time. Until it does so, the paradigm shift that is so urgently necessary will not occur. Soon it may be too late -- either to prevent war with Iran or to find the will to break away from the ruinous assumptions that have left our Middle East policy in tatters.
by Gary Kamiya - Nov. 6, 2007
The U.S. could attack Iran in the next few months.
Let's repeat that. The U.S. could attack Iran in the next few months.
The fact that this sentence can be written with a straight face proves that the Iraq debacle has taught us absolutely nothing. Talk of attacking Iran should be confined to the lunatic fringe. Yet America's political and media elite have responded to the idea of attacking Iran in almost exactly the same way they did to the idea of attacking Iraq. Four and a half years after Bush embarked on one of the most catastrophic foreign-policy adventures in our history, the same wrongheaded, ignorant and self-destructive approach to the Arab-Muslim world and to fighting terrorism still rules establishment thinking.
The disturbing thing is that we have no excuse this time. Five years ago, a wounded, fearful and enraged America was ready to attack anybody, and Bush waved his red cape and steered the mad bull toward Iraq. We now know that was folly. The completely unnecessary invasion has so far resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and almost 4,000 Americans, severely destabilized the region, cost billions of dollars, and increased the threat of terrorism. Yet today we are blithely considering attacking a much larger Middle Eastern country for equally dubious reasons, and mainstream politicians and the media are once again going along. The American people have signed off on the conventional "wisdom." In a recent poll, 52 percent of Americans say they would support attacking Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
This is surreal. It's as if we're back on Sept. 12 and Iraq never happened.
It is not surprising that the GOP is calling for a wider Mideast war. The party has nothing except fear to sell: Its initials might as well stand for "Grand Orgy of Paranoia." But the acquiescence of many Democrats, and the mainstream media, shows just how intractable are the myths and fallacies about the Middle East and terrorism.
Four related misconceptions continue to distort our Middle East policy: the terrorism freakout, the Satan myth, the they're-all-the-same fallacy, and the belief that we're innocent.
In many ways the terrorism freakout is our founding error, one that predates 9/11 by decades. Our obsession with terrorism, our failure to place it in historical context, our hypocrisy in defining it, and our overreaction to it have marred our ability to craft an intelligent Middle East policy. It has seriously deformed our response to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis (still the region's key conflict), provided much of the impetus for the Iraq war, and now is paving the way for possible war with Iran.
America's response to Palestinian terrorism has set the tone for our subsequent responses to the phenomenon. No one condones terrorism: It is morally repugnant to kill civilians, no matter how legitimate the terrorists' political goals may be. But by simply declaring that Palestinian terrorism was evil, and refusing to acknowledge or address the Palestinians' legitimate grievances, America long ago locked itself into a morally incoherent, historically obtuse and ultimately self-defeating position. As Robert Fisk noted in "The Great War for Civilisation," because of America's pro-Israel bias, it has always seen Palestinian terrorism as "comfortably isolated from reason, cause or history ... 'Terrorism' is a word that has become a plague on our vocabulary, the excuse and reason and moral permit for state-sponsored violence -- our violence -- which is now used on the innocent of the Middle East ever more outrageously and promiscuously." The uncomfortable fact is that Israeli-Palestinian crisis is the crucial frame through which America has always understood the Middle East: Palestinians were the first of a long line of Arab and Muslim supervillains. Once we ourselves suffered a massive terrorist attack, our atavistic rage at these evildoers knew no bounds -- and it was easy for the Bush administration to persuade us to attack Iraq.
Our overreaction to terrorism, combined with military triumphalism, found its supreme expression in Vice President Dick Cheney's notorious "one percent doctrine," which holds that if there is even a 1 percent chance that an enemy will acquire dangerous weapons, the United States must launch a preventive attack. As Iraq should have shown us, this doctrine is paranoid, delusional and self-defeating. (The doctrine is aptly named: It has a 1 percent chance of success.) Yet as the Iran war drums show, it still drives U.S. policy.
Hysteria about terrorism leads to a dangerous belief in the efficacy of military force. Of course U.S. forces can destroy any conventional adversary. But victory on the battlefield does not necessarily translate into foreign-policy success -- especially not in an asymmetric war, like the one we face in Iraq and would face in Iran if we sent in ground forces. In fact, as Iraq should have shown us, we should wage war in the Middle East only as an absolute last resort. The costs are much too high and the risks of unintended consequences (Turkey and the Kurds, the crisis in Pakistan) too great. "Toughness" makes a great sound bite for opportunistic politicians, but in the real world it strengthens our terrorist enemies and ends up getting Americans killed for no reason.
Next comes the Satan myth, which says that our foes in the Middle East are uniquely evil, irrational, motiveless and impervious to deterrence. Just as the United States has seen the Palestinians as evil anti-Semites, not as complex actors with some legitimate historical grievances, so we saw Saddam as insane and undeterrable -- and now are asked to believe the same thing about the mad mullahs of Iran. The terror attacks on 9/11, which were carried out by fanatics who really were impervious to deterrence, made the Satan myth practically untouchable. Lost in the rage and fear over the attacks was the fact that violent jihadists like al-Qaida are few in number and have almost no popular support. Claiming that Iraq, like al-Qaida, was part of an "axis of evil," Bush used the Satan myth to sell the war against Iraq. And it now provides the key support for a war with Iran. If Iran is an insane, fanatical, undeterrable state, the equivalent of al-Qaida, then if follows that we must consider attacking it to prevent it from acquiring nuclear bombs.
The myth of a demonic, irrational, powerful Iran has no basis in fact. Iran, as Juan Cole has pointed out, "has not launched an aggressive war against a neighbor since 1785 and does not have a history of military expansionism. Its population is a third that of the United States and its military is small and weak." Nor is it bent on fighting the United States or Israel to the death. Iran made a major peace offer to the United States in 2003, offering a comprehensive diplomatic settlement, including ending its support for Hamas and recognition of Israel, in exchange for normal relations. The Bush administration, smugly certain that it was about to get rid of the entire regime, refused to talk.
Nor is Iran undeterrable. It obviously has significant differences with the United States. But it is a rational actor, concerned like any other state to maximize its regional power and minimize threats to its existence. As Trita Parsi, author of the new book "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S.," argued in a recent piece in the Nation, "a careful study of Iran's actions -- not just its rhetoric -- reveals systematic, pragmatic and cautious maneuvering toward a set goal: decontainment and the re-emergence of Iran as a pre-eminent power in the Middle East." This is why retired Gen. John Abizaid recently said that America could live with a nuclear Iran.
Under the specious heading of "Islamofascism," we have dangerously conflated completely different regimes and non-state actors -- this is the "they're all the same" fallacy. The Bush administration has aggressively promoted the idea that every Mideast state or militant movement that isn't on the same side as the United States or Israel poses the same threat as al-Qaida -- or simply asserted that those states are synonymous with al-Qaida, as the Bush administration did before the Iraq war. This is absurd and violates the first principle of both statesmanship and generalship: See the situation clearly and objectively. It leads to completely false assessments of entities like Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, and leads us to make far more enemies than we need to in the Arab-Muslim world.
Iran has no more to do with al-Qaida than Iraq did. Iran sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah, which have employed terrorism, but their fight is with Israel, not the United States. If we attack Iran because it supports Hezbollah, we might as well declare war on Kurdistan because it abets the PKK's far more deadly guerrilla campaign against Turkey. By treating Iran, or national-liberation groups like Hamas, as if they were al-Qaida, the United States is making an elementary and quite dangerous category error.
The final error is our invincible belief in our innocence, which derives from our almost complete ignorance of the region's history and its people. Americans can entertain notions of marching smartly into some Middle Eastern country, killing a bunch of evil ragheads, fixing things up, shaking hands all around, and marching out because most Americans simply have no knowledge of Middle Eastern history or America's long and often shameful record of imperialist and colonialist meddling. Perhaps Americans might view Iran differently if more of them knew that in 1953, America and Great Britain overthrew their democratically elected leader and installed a bloody but pro-U.S. tyrant, the Shah. The 1979 revolution that brought Khomeini to power, and put Iran and United States on the collision course that has lasted to this day, was a direct result of that infamous coup (which we engineered because we wanted cheap Iranian oil). Neither Iranians nor anyone else in the Middle East has forgotten such matters -- why should they? Until we understand and come to terms with our often-ugly track record in the region, we will be doomed to play the part of Graham Greene's haplessly idealistic Quiet American, blundering into places we don't understand, not knowing why the natives don't like us, and making things infinitely worse.
There are not many indications that Americans, whether Democrats or Republicans, can break away from these persistent fallacies about the Middle East and terrorism. There are a few glimmers of hope, however. Sen. Barack Obama broke decisively with the establishment position last week, stating that if elected, he would "engage in aggressive personal diplomacy with Iran" without preconditions. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel took the same position in a letter he sent to Bush calling for "direct, unconditional and comprehensive talks with the Government of Iran." And in a noteworthy column, ultra-establishment pundit Fareed Zakaria recently attacked the entire set of assumptions behind the campaign to whip up war fever against Iran. "The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality," Zakaria wrote in Newsweek.
But the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, has not broken with the establishment paradigm. She has hedged her bets but not staked out a completely new course. And her refusal to do so means that the Democratic Party is failing to speak with one voice on the most important issue of our time. Until it does so, the paradigm shift that is so urgently necessary will not occur. Soon it may be too late -- either to prevent war with Iran or to find the will to break away from the ruinous assumptions that have left our Middle East policy in tatters.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
On the path to barbarity
It is no accident that those who advocate war for humanitarian reasons end up justifying torture
by John Laughland, The Guardian - Nov 6, 2007
Arguments in favour of the legalisation of torture have not lost their capacity to shock. The fact that US attorneys-general and the senior legal adviser at the state department have said they are in favour of it seems proof to many of America's slide into barbarism. In reality, however, their pro-torture arguments are no different from the claims made in favour of "humanitarian war" and of other forms of military intervention - arguments that, unfortunately, have become increasingly popular since the end of the cold war.
Torture and "humanitarian war" are similar in many ways. Both involve the inflicting of violence in order to force a change of behaviour. Both are predicated on the assumption of guilt: torture is justified because the victim is said to be a terrorist, or an "illegal combatant" who has committed or is about to commit a terrible crime, while pre-emptive war is justified because a state is said to be "a rogue state" violating international law (Iraq) or committing crimes against humanity (Yugoslavia). It is therefore no coincidence that the US administration that justifies its wars in the name of claims about humanity and its right to liberty also advocates the use of torture to protect these.
Torture and war have been the subject of absolute or near-absolute interdiction in international law. In the aftermath of the second world war, the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials established the principle that crimes against peace are the supreme crime. Aggressive war "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole", said the Nuremberg judges, who understood that once war starts, war crimes will inevitably follow. It was therefore better to ban it completely. This was done by the UN charter, which declared all war, including so-called humanitarian war, illegal. War is allowed only in the very restricted and clear-cut cases of self-defence and when authorised by the security council. Torture was similarly banned by UN convention in 1985.
Any attempt to legalise torture or war was simply regarded as the thin end of the wedge. Today, however, many people who say they shudder at the abuses committed by the Spanish Inquisition, or by the Americans at Guantánamo, campaign actively in favour of war. Humanitarian intervention became fashionable as soon as Iraq was bombed in 1991 "to protect the Kurds and the Shia". Now the trump question put to anti-interventionists is: "What would you have done about Rwanda?" Yet this is the same argument as that advocated by the torturer who says he is trying to save lives. Activists in favour of international judicial and military intervention denounce peacemaking and amnesty laws as acts of appeasement, and they typically strive to break down antiwar sentiment by getting people to admit that intervention might be justified in some extreme cases. But if it is, then why not torture too?
This unwelcome campaign to give war a chance persists in spite of the fact that the very abuses that inspired the universal ban on war in 1945 have indeed been committed by the Americans and their allies in their assault on the old postwar sovereignty-based system of the UN charter. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there was no genocide in Kosovo (Milosevic was never charged with it), but many people still regard war as something at least potentially civilised. We need instead to renew the deep conviction that seized the collective conscience of mankind in 1945 that the international system, and the ideas that underpin it, should be structured so as to ensure peace at any price.
by John Laughland, The Guardian - Nov 6, 2007
Arguments in favour of the legalisation of torture have not lost their capacity to shock. The fact that US attorneys-general and the senior legal adviser at the state department have said they are in favour of it seems proof to many of America's slide into barbarism. In reality, however, their pro-torture arguments are no different from the claims made in favour of "humanitarian war" and of other forms of military intervention - arguments that, unfortunately, have become increasingly popular since the end of the cold war.
Torture and "humanitarian war" are similar in many ways. Both involve the inflicting of violence in order to force a change of behaviour. Both are predicated on the assumption of guilt: torture is justified because the victim is said to be a terrorist, or an "illegal combatant" who has committed or is about to commit a terrible crime, while pre-emptive war is justified because a state is said to be "a rogue state" violating international law (Iraq) or committing crimes against humanity (Yugoslavia). It is therefore no coincidence that the US administration that justifies its wars in the name of claims about humanity and its right to liberty also advocates the use of torture to protect these.
Torture and war have been the subject of absolute or near-absolute interdiction in international law. In the aftermath of the second world war, the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials established the principle that crimes against peace are the supreme crime. Aggressive war "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole", said the Nuremberg judges, who understood that once war starts, war crimes will inevitably follow. It was therefore better to ban it completely. This was done by the UN charter, which declared all war, including so-called humanitarian war, illegal. War is allowed only in the very restricted and clear-cut cases of self-defence and when authorised by the security council. Torture was similarly banned by UN convention in 1985.
Any attempt to legalise torture or war was simply regarded as the thin end of the wedge. Today, however, many people who say they shudder at the abuses committed by the Spanish Inquisition, or by the Americans at Guantánamo, campaign actively in favour of war. Humanitarian intervention became fashionable as soon as Iraq was bombed in 1991 "to protect the Kurds and the Shia". Now the trump question put to anti-interventionists is: "What would you have done about Rwanda?" Yet this is the same argument as that advocated by the torturer who says he is trying to save lives. Activists in favour of international judicial and military intervention denounce peacemaking and amnesty laws as acts of appeasement, and they typically strive to break down antiwar sentiment by getting people to admit that intervention might be justified in some extreme cases. But if it is, then why not torture too?
This unwelcome campaign to give war a chance persists in spite of the fact that the very abuses that inspired the universal ban on war in 1945 have indeed been committed by the Americans and their allies in their assault on the old postwar sovereignty-based system of the UN charter. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there was no genocide in Kosovo (Milosevic was never charged with it), but many people still regard war as something at least potentially civilised. We need instead to renew the deep conviction that seized the collective conscience of mankind in 1945 that the international system, and the ideas that underpin it, should be structured so as to ensure peace at any price.
Joe Lieberman's War
by Philip Giraldi - Nov 6, 2007
Neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz has written that "as an American and as a Jew" he prays that President George W. Bush will attack Iran. He rests his case on his belief that 2007 is really 1938, that Iran is Nazi Germany, and that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler. His most recent book, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, was described by a reviewer as "a hectoring, often illogical screed based on cherry-picked facts and blustering assertions (often made without any supporting evidence), a book that furiously hurls accusations of cowardice, anti-Americanism, and sheer venality at any and all opponents of the Bush doctrine, be they on the right or the left."
Unlike people who subscribe to the view that a war with Iran would be a catastrophe for the United States, Podhoretz reportedly has regular access to the White House to promote his insightful historical analysis. But as Podhoretz is not in government and he controls no carrier groups, he has only a limited capability to bring about his dream of an emasculated Iran to take its place alongside an emasculated Iraq and a presumably soon-to-be emasculated Syria.
But while Podhoretz cannot start a war alone, there are plenty of others in the government, including Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council's Elliott Abrams, who share his enthusiasm for a preemptive attack on Iran. The leader of Congress' Iran hawks is undoubtedly Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Lieberman, currently an independent, has long been regarded as a "conservative Democrat," but his voting record reveals that his conservatism is largely limited to foreign policy and more specifically to the Middle East, where he is a strong and uncritical defender of Israel. When he successfully ran for reelection as an independent in Connecticut in 2006, he accused his Democratic opponent Ned Lamont of not being a forceful enough advocate for Israel, claiming that Lamont was "surrounded by people who are either naïve or are isolationists or, frankly, some more explicitly against Israel." A former senior official of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC also endorsed that view, stating that "the pro Israel community … will stick with Joe Lieberman."
Lieberman has never counted the costs to the United States of pursuing Israeli objectives in the Middle East. He continues to be a vocal supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, frequently mentioning Saddam's alleged links to terrorists and invoking a variation of the White House line that if the U.S. does not fight terrorists in Iraq it will be necessary to fight them in New Haven. In 1998 he co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Baghdad official U.S. policy. His regular forays to Baghdad have convinced him that Iraq has been transformed from "primitive, killing tyranny" into "modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood." He saw clear evidence by 2005 of the democratization of Iraq: "Progress is visible … there are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones." More recently, he enthusiastically supported last summer's Israeli invasion of Lebanon and has tried to make Syria the newest member of the axis of evil, claiming without any evidence that it is Syria "through which up to 80 percent of the Iraq-bound extremists transit. Indeed, even terrorists from countries that directly border Iraq travel by land via Syria to Iraq, instead of directly from their home countries, because of the permissive environment for terrorism that the Syrian government has fostered."
Lieberman has also been front and center in taking on the thorny problem of Iran, promoting a military response as the most effective option. In an April 2006 interview in the Jerusalem Post, he freely discussed using military force to disarm Iran, noting that the U.S. had learned a lesson from both Osama bin Laden and Hitler that "sometimes when people say really extreme things … they may actually mean it." In December 2006, Lieberman followed up by explaining that he opposed direct talks with Iran because it would be like going to "your local fire department asking a couple of arsonists to help put out the fire. These people are flaming the fire. They are extremists." On Dec. 29, 2006, Lieberman wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he explained the situation in the Middle East in simple terms: "On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States."
On June 10, 2007, Lieberman told Face the Nation, "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me that would include a strike into … over the border into Iran … where they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers." He later stated that "By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers," and, for good measure, he added that if Iran is not willing to live "according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can't just talk to them." On the following day, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said "It sure does," after being asked if the Lieberman statement would make it easier for the White House to consider an attack against Iran.
On July 6, 2007, Lieberman wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he claimed, "The Iranian government, by its actions, has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East. American now has a solemn responsibility to utilize the instruments of our national power to convince Tehran to change its behavior," employing "credible force" because Iran is bringing "about the death of American service members in Iraq." He described, without providing any evidence, how the "Iranian government has been using the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to train and organize Iraqi extremists, who are responsible in turn for the murder of American service members." He called Iran's role as "hostile and violent" and complained that Tehran's "fanatical government" demonstrates "expansionistic, extremist behavior." After again referring to Iran's "fanatical regime," he cited "attacks on American soldiers" as a reason why Iran "must be confronted head on."
Lieberman was the co-sponsor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the recently passed defense appropriations bill, which passed by a Senate vote of 76 to 22 on Sept. 26, 2007. The amendment stated that "the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility against the United States."
Lieberman's press release on the subject, dated July 11, 2007, accused Iran of "murdering our troops" and quoted Sen. John Kyl, who blamed Iran for "actively supporting terrorists who are killing our troops in Iraq." When the Kyl-Lieberman amendment was debated in the Senate, James Webb of Virginia said, "At best, it's a deliberate attempt to divert attention from a failed diplomatic policy. At worst, it could be read as a backdoor method of gaining congressional validation for military action, without one hearing and without serious debate." Webb also called the amendment "Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream" and noted correctly that the attempt to categorize the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary guard as a "foreign terrorist organization" would mandate military action against Iran: "What do we do with terrorist organizations? … We attack them."
There is hardly any point in identifying Lieberman's numerous errors in fact in an attempt to refute his assertions, as he is ideologically driven and not interested in the truth. His sloganeering is more in the nature of propaganda than a careful consideration of policy options or the U.S.' national interests. He twists and embroiders the facts to enable him to rule out speaking to Iran while at the same time blaming it for all of the problems in the region. Lieberman also disregards the reality in Iraq, which is that Iran is deeply embedded there as a result of the United States' invasion, which removed Tehran's traditional rival and empowered the Shia.
Lieberman repeats over and over again that American soldiers are being killed by Iran. Apparently, the neocons have found it too difficult to make the case that Iran is actually seeking a nuclear weapon. That American soldiers are being killed through the active intervention of the Iranian government is in any event debatable, and most of the international media appears to believe that the allegations lack hard evidence. That many Americans do not see the need to attack Iran does not faze Sen. Joseph Isadore Lieberman, a man of self-proclaimed principle who obviously has clearer vision and knows better than his fellow countrymen what is right and what is wrong. If Iran turns into a major catastrophe not only for the U.S. and Iran but also for the entire region, will Lieberman take the blame as a principal enabler of the war so desired by Norman Podhoretz? If Lieberman's lack of contrition over Iraq is anything to go by, almost certainly not.
Neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz has written that "as an American and as a Jew" he prays that President George W. Bush will attack Iran. He rests his case on his belief that 2007 is really 1938, that Iran is Nazi Germany, and that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler. His most recent book, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, was described by a reviewer as "a hectoring, often illogical screed based on cherry-picked facts and blustering assertions (often made without any supporting evidence), a book that furiously hurls accusations of cowardice, anti-Americanism, and sheer venality at any and all opponents of the Bush doctrine, be they on the right or the left."
Unlike people who subscribe to the view that a war with Iran would be a catastrophe for the United States, Podhoretz reportedly has regular access to the White House to promote his insightful historical analysis. But as Podhoretz is not in government and he controls no carrier groups, he has only a limited capability to bring about his dream of an emasculated Iran to take its place alongside an emasculated Iraq and a presumably soon-to-be emasculated Syria.
But while Podhoretz cannot start a war alone, there are plenty of others in the government, including Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council's Elliott Abrams, who share his enthusiasm for a preemptive attack on Iran. The leader of Congress' Iran hawks is undoubtedly Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Lieberman, currently an independent, has long been regarded as a "conservative Democrat," but his voting record reveals that his conservatism is largely limited to foreign policy and more specifically to the Middle East, where he is a strong and uncritical defender of Israel. When he successfully ran for reelection as an independent in Connecticut in 2006, he accused his Democratic opponent Ned Lamont of not being a forceful enough advocate for Israel, claiming that Lamont was "surrounded by people who are either naïve or are isolationists or, frankly, some more explicitly against Israel." A former senior official of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC also endorsed that view, stating that "the pro Israel community … will stick with Joe Lieberman."
Lieberman has never counted the costs to the United States of pursuing Israeli objectives in the Middle East. He continues to be a vocal supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, frequently mentioning Saddam's alleged links to terrorists and invoking a variation of the White House line that if the U.S. does not fight terrorists in Iraq it will be necessary to fight them in New Haven. In 1998 he co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Baghdad official U.S. policy. His regular forays to Baghdad have convinced him that Iraq has been transformed from "primitive, killing tyranny" into "modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood." He saw clear evidence by 2005 of the democratization of Iraq: "Progress is visible … there are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones." More recently, he enthusiastically supported last summer's Israeli invasion of Lebanon and has tried to make Syria the newest member of the axis of evil, claiming without any evidence that it is Syria "through which up to 80 percent of the Iraq-bound extremists transit. Indeed, even terrorists from countries that directly border Iraq travel by land via Syria to Iraq, instead of directly from their home countries, because of the permissive environment for terrorism that the Syrian government has fostered."
Lieberman has also been front and center in taking on the thorny problem of Iran, promoting a military response as the most effective option. In an April 2006 interview in the Jerusalem Post, he freely discussed using military force to disarm Iran, noting that the U.S. had learned a lesson from both Osama bin Laden and Hitler that "sometimes when people say really extreme things … they may actually mean it." In December 2006, Lieberman followed up by explaining that he opposed direct talks with Iran because it would be like going to "your local fire department asking a couple of arsonists to help put out the fire. These people are flaming the fire. They are extremists." On Dec. 29, 2006, Lieberman wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he explained the situation in the Middle East in simple terms: "On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States."
On June 10, 2007, Lieberman told Face the Nation, "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me that would include a strike into … over the border into Iran … where they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers." He later stated that "By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers," and, for good measure, he added that if Iran is not willing to live "according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can't just talk to them." On the following day, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said "It sure does," after being asked if the Lieberman statement would make it easier for the White House to consider an attack against Iran.
On July 6, 2007, Lieberman wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he claimed, "The Iranian government, by its actions, has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East. American now has a solemn responsibility to utilize the instruments of our national power to convince Tehran to change its behavior," employing "credible force" because Iran is bringing "about the death of American service members in Iraq." He described, without providing any evidence, how the "Iranian government has been using the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to train and organize Iraqi extremists, who are responsible in turn for the murder of American service members." He called Iran's role as "hostile and violent" and complained that Tehran's "fanatical government" demonstrates "expansionistic, extremist behavior." After again referring to Iran's "fanatical regime," he cited "attacks on American soldiers" as a reason why Iran "must be confronted head on."
Lieberman was the co-sponsor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the recently passed defense appropriations bill, which passed by a Senate vote of 76 to 22 on Sept. 26, 2007. The amendment stated that "the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility against the United States."
Lieberman's press release on the subject, dated July 11, 2007, accused Iran of "murdering our troops" and quoted Sen. John Kyl, who blamed Iran for "actively supporting terrorists who are killing our troops in Iraq." When the Kyl-Lieberman amendment was debated in the Senate, James Webb of Virginia said, "At best, it's a deliberate attempt to divert attention from a failed diplomatic policy. At worst, it could be read as a backdoor method of gaining congressional validation for military action, without one hearing and without serious debate." Webb also called the amendment "Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream" and noted correctly that the attempt to categorize the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary guard as a "foreign terrorist organization" would mandate military action against Iran: "What do we do with terrorist organizations? … We attack them."
There is hardly any point in identifying Lieberman's numerous errors in fact in an attempt to refute his assertions, as he is ideologically driven and not interested in the truth. His sloganeering is more in the nature of propaganda than a careful consideration of policy options or the U.S.' national interests. He twists and embroiders the facts to enable him to rule out speaking to Iran while at the same time blaming it for all of the problems in the region. Lieberman also disregards the reality in Iraq, which is that Iran is deeply embedded there as a result of the United States' invasion, which removed Tehran's traditional rival and empowered the Shia.
Lieberman repeats over and over again that American soldiers are being killed by Iran. Apparently, the neocons have found it too difficult to make the case that Iran is actually seeking a nuclear weapon. That American soldiers are being killed through the active intervention of the Iranian government is in any event debatable, and most of the international media appears to believe that the allegations lack hard evidence. That many Americans do not see the need to attack Iran does not faze Sen. Joseph Isadore Lieberman, a man of self-proclaimed principle who obviously has clearer vision and knows better than his fellow countrymen what is right and what is wrong. If Iran turns into a major catastrophe not only for the U.S. and Iran but also for the entire region, will Lieberman take the blame as a principal enabler of the war so desired by Norman Podhoretz? If Lieberman's lack of contrition over Iraq is anything to go by, almost certainly not.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Iran, World War III, and the Madness of President George
by Doug Bandow - Nov 2, 2007
Put a straight-jacket on them. That seems to be Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks's position on President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney.
As she explains, "We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe." Yet Bush and Cheney appear to want another war, this one against Iran.
It does seem mad. Iran has more territory, a larger population, bigger GDP, and more effective military than did Iraq. Tehran possesses missiles capable of hitting Israel and is aligned with America's client government in Iraq. If any regime is capable of destabilizing Arab regimes allied with the U.S., it is Iran. A cakewalk such a war would not be.
In contrast, being concerned about a nuclear-armed Iran is not mad. Tehran unsettles the world for obvious reasons. It is hard to find anyone anywhere who believes that a nuclear-empowered mullocracy would be a good thing. Although the Islamic republic has behaved as a rational actor for three decades and seems subject to deterrence like other, more normal, states, a residue of doubt remains.
But concern about an unlikely future threat is not the same as a clear and present danger. The former certainly does not justify the kind of rhetoric tossed around by President Bush and Vice President Cheney. They might not be mad in a clinical sense, but they are pretty nutty if they really believe their rhetoric.
First, the vice president said the administration would not stand by in the face of "the Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power." This is, to coin a phrase, a hoot. It has been more than two centuries since Iran, or a nation resembling Iran, attacked anyone. The last war in which Tehran was involved was started by Iraq – which was supported in its aggression by America and several American allies.
Second, the administration, through its invasion of Iraq, has destabilized the Mideast. If Iran is poised for regional hegemony, it has that opportunity only because Washington was kind enough to take out both of its principal enemies: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Washington also urged Israel on in its botched war against Lebanon, which weakened Israel and strengthened Iran's ties to Hezbollah.
Moreover, in 2003, after Washington appeared to be invincible, Iran indicated its willingness to negotiate a regional settlement on America's terms. The Bush administration, full of hubris, rejected Tehran's initiative. Indeed, Washington refused to even respond, instead chastising hapless Switzerland for passing along Iran's offer (since Washington and Tehran do not have diplomatic relations).
But forget the U.S. government's past mistakes. It still is not clear how Iran could gain "hegemony." Presumably even the vice president doesn't believe Tehran thinks it can supplant America as the globe's strongest power. Last year the U.S. GDP was estimated at $13.2 trillion, number one in the world. Iran came in at number 31 with $212 billion. It ranked just behind Argentina and slightly ahead of Finland. America's per capita GDP is 15 times as great as that in Iran. The U.S. population is more than 300 million, compared to about 70 million for Iran.
America's military edge is equally overwhelming. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Iran spent $6.6 billion on its military last year. The country rated about 2.5 pages in the IISS publication The Military Balance. The comparable IISS figures for the U.S. were $535 billion and 10 pages – supplemented by five pages listing foreign deployments of American forces.
Okay, forget competing with the U.S. President Bush opined on the need "to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat." Not the revived Russian threat. Not the possible future Chinese threat. But "the emerging Iranian threat."
Egads. Does he really believe Iran is aspiring to European hegemony? The Europeans had a collective GDP of $14.5 trillion last year, more than a trillion dollars above that of America. Europe's total population runs about 535 million, almost 80 percent more than that of the U.S. The Europeans do spend less on the military than does Washington, but even so, the IISS figures the collective EU expenditure at about $212 billion. And two European states, France and Great Britain, possess nuclear weapons. The Europeans might be wimps compared to America, but they aren't likely to fall to an Iranian invasion any time soon.
So how about regional hegemony? Could Iran dominate the Middle East?
Not likely. Israel is by far the region's strongest military power. Israel spends substantially more than Iran on the military and has upwards of 200 to 300 nuclear weapons. War with Israel would yield suicide, not hegemony, for Iran. Absent evidence of ill intent more substantial than a rabid speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tehran's presumed nuclear program looks more like an effort at deterrence than aggression. (Indeed, correctly translated, Ahmadinejad's famous threat against Israel apparently meant something closer to pushing regime change than national destruction.)
Moreover, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has dismissed the frenzied rhetoric about Iran posing an existential threat to Israel. She was particularly critical of the attempt by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with poll ratings below those of President Bush, to use the issue for political purposes. Former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy has voiced similar sentiments. As Trita Parsi details in his book, Treacherous Alliance, beneath Tehran's hostile rhetoric lurks shared regional interests that have long bound Israel and Iran, even after the so-called Islamic revolution.
No doubt, Iran makes the Gulf kingdoms nervous, but they have an incentive to carefully balance against Tehran. A more sophisticated U.S. diplomatic approach to the region might help detach Syria from Iran. Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan also could play a balancing role to some degree. Iran faces significant internal economic and political challenges, and is not poised for regional greatness.
However, Vice President Cheney's argument about the danger of Iranian hegemony seems rational compared to the president's recent remarks. President Bush recently declared: "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
Along the same lines, Norman Podhoretz, a foreign policy adviser to Rudy Giuliani, says President Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler" in that the Iranian leader wants to replace the international system with "the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) compared today's Iran to Nazi Germany: "During the run up to World War II, Europe failed to heed the warnings." He believes that Washington has given Tehran too many concessions, including allowing some private trade. "The price of their aggression has been too cheap for too long," he added.
World War III? Adolf Hitler? Nazi Germany? Aggression? Eh?
Precisely how would Iranian knowledge of nuclear weapon technology bring on World War III? In fact, Tehran probably already knows how to make nuclear weapons. After all, Pakistan does. North Korea does. Iraq did. Libya probably did. Even South Africa did. But no war, let alone world war, erupted in any of these cases.
Moreover, there's obviously a significant difference between knowing how to make nuclear weapons and building them – and especially using them. If the president really believes world war stems from nuclear knowledge, it's already far too late.
But even if Iran builds nuclear weapons, it's hard to imagine how world war would result, at least absent an American attack on Iran. So far there's no evidence that the Iranian leadership is suicidal. True, they don't mind sending young people off to die – the Iraq-Iran war featured World War I-style human wave attacks against Iraqi trenches. But as yet no one in the mullocracy has volunteered for a similar mission.
What evidence is there that Ahmadinejad is a new Hitler dedicated to transforming the international system? More important, does anyone, even Norman Podhoretz, believe that Ahmadinejad has the domestic political support and effective military power to overturn the international system? Well, maybe Podhoretz does – he attacked Ronald Reagan for being an "appeaser." But does anyone else outside of an insane asylum believe this?
And how is Iran like Nazi Germany? Where is this aggression of which Sen. Kyl speaks? Fearmongers have cheapened the Hitler brand over the years. There was something uniquely hideous and evil about that man and the regime that he created. Hitler really was dedicated to military conquest, ethnic slaughter, and Jewish extermination.
Moreover, he had the means, the Nazi-controlled German state, to come distressingly close to achieving his objective. That is, Hitler dominated the most populous, most prosperous, most industrialized, and most militarized country located in the center of Europe. His nation effectively fought much the world alone a generation before. (Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire hurt almost as much as they helped imperial Germany; Berlin never did choose allies well.)
Since then everyone from Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam to Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia to Saddam Hussein of Iraq has been attacked as the new Hitler. Now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is supposed to be the reincarnation of one of the greatest mass murderers in human history. None of these political leaders, evil though all might be, comes close to the original either in intent or means. Moreover, Tehran's recent behavior has been eminently rational despite the Islamic revolution. (Of course, that is not the same as saying that the Iranian government is moral, legitimate, or democratic, or has aided American objectives.) The Khomeini government actually increased oil production after taking power and maintained back-channel relations with Israel.
Although control of the Iraqi presidency has oscillated between seemingly moderate and immoderate Islamists, the establishment mullahs who hold real power have done nothing to risk their power or influence. They have made what appears to be serious efforts to reach an accommodation with Washington. They have been working to assuage the concerns of their neighbors. Indeed, Srdja Trifkovic of Chronicles writes of Iran's "broad diplomatic counter-offensive," reaching out to "Central Asian, Caucasian, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and North African leaders in a series of talks on security and energy."
And there is yet solid evidence that Tehran is actually developing nuclear weapons. There's good reason for suspicion, but even in the worst case, the regime appears to be years away from creating a usable weapon. A minute before midnight this moment ain't.
In any case, the best way to test the Iranian position is to negotiate seriously with Tehran. The Iranians made just such an offer when Washington was at its arrogant worst in 2003. Now the Bush administration should swallow its pride and back away from its foolish "we don't talk to mean people" stance. Just as it did with North Korea.
The latest U.S. sanctions – imposed, it appears, in frustration more at America's growing international isolation on this issue than at any Iranian advance on its nuclear program – will make contact even less likely. By targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Washington makes it even less likely that this powerful political force will allow the Iranian government to yield to the U.S. Which means, at the end of the day, America will face either an Iran with not just nuclear knowledge, but nuclear weapons, or a war whose hideous impact will radiate outward around the world.
Unfortunately, there the leading presidential candidates in both parties seem unwilling to or capable of crafting a sensible strategy towards Iran. John McCain, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani all say "bombs away" when it comes to Iran. The latter even made the astonishing assertion that Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, who join Hitler in the pantheon of humanity's moral monsters, were rational actors compared to Ahmadinejad, who, Fareed Zakaria asks, "has done what that compares?"
Mitt Romney, whatever he actually believes, obviously doesn't want to be seen as Mr. Milquetoast in comparison: he has threatened a blockade or "bombardment" of Iran. (Even more weirdly, Romney has proposed indicting Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide. Hunh?) The Democratic pack is better, but not the front-runner. Last month Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) voted for a resolution that endorsed "military" means to "combat, contain, and roll back" Iranian power.
In short, U.S. policy, if not U.S. policymakers, is mad. Vice President Cheney articulated the standard refrain when he proclaimed: "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon." Yet no one wants to admit what that likely means in practice: war.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney, as well as the long line of hawkish presidential wannabees, probably aren't clinically insane. But their policy prescriptions are foolish and dangerous. There are rare occasions when war is necessary, but Iran today is not one of those moments. With the Iraq debacle ongoing, Washington desperately requires a new mix of humility and realism. Without it the U.S. government could easily trigger a much larger conflict than it imagines possible. Maybe that's what President Bush really meant when he talked about World War III.
Put a straight-jacket on them. That seems to be Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks's position on President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney.
As she explains, "We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe." Yet Bush and Cheney appear to want another war, this one against Iran.
It does seem mad. Iran has more territory, a larger population, bigger GDP, and more effective military than did Iraq. Tehran possesses missiles capable of hitting Israel and is aligned with America's client government in Iraq. If any regime is capable of destabilizing Arab regimes allied with the U.S., it is Iran. A cakewalk such a war would not be.
In contrast, being concerned about a nuclear-armed Iran is not mad. Tehran unsettles the world for obvious reasons. It is hard to find anyone anywhere who believes that a nuclear-empowered mullocracy would be a good thing. Although the Islamic republic has behaved as a rational actor for three decades and seems subject to deterrence like other, more normal, states, a residue of doubt remains.
But concern about an unlikely future threat is not the same as a clear and present danger. The former certainly does not justify the kind of rhetoric tossed around by President Bush and Vice President Cheney. They might not be mad in a clinical sense, but they are pretty nutty if they really believe their rhetoric.
First, the vice president said the administration would not stand by in the face of "the Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power." This is, to coin a phrase, a hoot. It has been more than two centuries since Iran, or a nation resembling Iran, attacked anyone. The last war in which Tehran was involved was started by Iraq – which was supported in its aggression by America and several American allies.
Second, the administration, through its invasion of Iraq, has destabilized the Mideast. If Iran is poised for regional hegemony, it has that opportunity only because Washington was kind enough to take out both of its principal enemies: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Washington also urged Israel on in its botched war against Lebanon, which weakened Israel and strengthened Iran's ties to Hezbollah.
Moreover, in 2003, after Washington appeared to be invincible, Iran indicated its willingness to negotiate a regional settlement on America's terms. The Bush administration, full of hubris, rejected Tehran's initiative. Indeed, Washington refused to even respond, instead chastising hapless Switzerland for passing along Iran's offer (since Washington and Tehran do not have diplomatic relations).
But forget the U.S. government's past mistakes. It still is not clear how Iran could gain "hegemony." Presumably even the vice president doesn't believe Tehran thinks it can supplant America as the globe's strongest power. Last year the U.S. GDP was estimated at $13.2 trillion, number one in the world. Iran came in at number 31 with $212 billion. It ranked just behind Argentina and slightly ahead of Finland. America's per capita GDP is 15 times as great as that in Iran. The U.S. population is more than 300 million, compared to about 70 million for Iran.
America's military edge is equally overwhelming. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Iran spent $6.6 billion on its military last year. The country rated about 2.5 pages in the IISS publication The Military Balance. The comparable IISS figures for the U.S. were $535 billion and 10 pages – supplemented by five pages listing foreign deployments of American forces.
Okay, forget competing with the U.S. President Bush opined on the need "to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat." Not the revived Russian threat. Not the possible future Chinese threat. But "the emerging Iranian threat."
Egads. Does he really believe Iran is aspiring to European hegemony? The Europeans had a collective GDP of $14.5 trillion last year, more than a trillion dollars above that of America. Europe's total population runs about 535 million, almost 80 percent more than that of the U.S. The Europeans do spend less on the military than does Washington, but even so, the IISS figures the collective EU expenditure at about $212 billion. And two European states, France and Great Britain, possess nuclear weapons. The Europeans might be wimps compared to America, but they aren't likely to fall to an Iranian invasion any time soon.
So how about regional hegemony? Could Iran dominate the Middle East?
Not likely. Israel is by far the region's strongest military power. Israel spends substantially more than Iran on the military and has upwards of 200 to 300 nuclear weapons. War with Israel would yield suicide, not hegemony, for Iran. Absent evidence of ill intent more substantial than a rabid speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tehran's presumed nuclear program looks more like an effort at deterrence than aggression. (Indeed, correctly translated, Ahmadinejad's famous threat against Israel apparently meant something closer to pushing regime change than national destruction.)
Moreover, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has dismissed the frenzied rhetoric about Iran posing an existential threat to Israel. She was particularly critical of the attempt by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with poll ratings below those of President Bush, to use the issue for political purposes. Former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy has voiced similar sentiments. As Trita Parsi details in his book, Treacherous Alliance, beneath Tehran's hostile rhetoric lurks shared regional interests that have long bound Israel and Iran, even after the so-called Islamic revolution.
No doubt, Iran makes the Gulf kingdoms nervous, but they have an incentive to carefully balance against Tehran. A more sophisticated U.S. diplomatic approach to the region might help detach Syria from Iran. Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan also could play a balancing role to some degree. Iran faces significant internal economic and political challenges, and is not poised for regional greatness.
However, Vice President Cheney's argument about the danger of Iranian hegemony seems rational compared to the president's recent remarks. President Bush recently declared: "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
Along the same lines, Norman Podhoretz, a foreign policy adviser to Rudy Giuliani, says President Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler" in that the Iranian leader wants to replace the international system with "the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) compared today's Iran to Nazi Germany: "During the run up to World War II, Europe failed to heed the warnings." He believes that Washington has given Tehran too many concessions, including allowing some private trade. "The price of their aggression has been too cheap for too long," he added.
World War III? Adolf Hitler? Nazi Germany? Aggression? Eh?
Precisely how would Iranian knowledge of nuclear weapon technology bring on World War III? In fact, Tehran probably already knows how to make nuclear weapons. After all, Pakistan does. North Korea does. Iraq did. Libya probably did. Even South Africa did. But no war, let alone world war, erupted in any of these cases.
Moreover, there's obviously a significant difference between knowing how to make nuclear weapons and building them – and especially using them. If the president really believes world war stems from nuclear knowledge, it's already far too late.
But even if Iran builds nuclear weapons, it's hard to imagine how world war would result, at least absent an American attack on Iran. So far there's no evidence that the Iranian leadership is suicidal. True, they don't mind sending young people off to die – the Iraq-Iran war featured World War I-style human wave attacks against Iraqi trenches. But as yet no one in the mullocracy has volunteered for a similar mission.
What evidence is there that Ahmadinejad is a new Hitler dedicated to transforming the international system? More important, does anyone, even Norman Podhoretz, believe that Ahmadinejad has the domestic political support and effective military power to overturn the international system? Well, maybe Podhoretz does – he attacked Ronald Reagan for being an "appeaser." But does anyone else outside of an insane asylum believe this?
And how is Iran like Nazi Germany? Where is this aggression of which Sen. Kyl speaks? Fearmongers have cheapened the Hitler brand over the years. There was something uniquely hideous and evil about that man and the regime that he created. Hitler really was dedicated to military conquest, ethnic slaughter, and Jewish extermination.
Moreover, he had the means, the Nazi-controlled German state, to come distressingly close to achieving his objective. That is, Hitler dominated the most populous, most prosperous, most industrialized, and most militarized country located in the center of Europe. His nation effectively fought much the world alone a generation before. (Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire hurt almost as much as they helped imperial Germany; Berlin never did choose allies well.)
Since then everyone from Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam to Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia to Saddam Hussein of Iraq has been attacked as the new Hitler. Now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is supposed to be the reincarnation of one of the greatest mass murderers in human history. None of these political leaders, evil though all might be, comes close to the original either in intent or means. Moreover, Tehran's recent behavior has been eminently rational despite the Islamic revolution. (Of course, that is not the same as saying that the Iranian government is moral, legitimate, or democratic, or has aided American objectives.) The Khomeini government actually increased oil production after taking power and maintained back-channel relations with Israel.
Although control of the Iraqi presidency has oscillated between seemingly moderate and immoderate Islamists, the establishment mullahs who hold real power have done nothing to risk their power or influence. They have made what appears to be serious efforts to reach an accommodation with Washington. They have been working to assuage the concerns of their neighbors. Indeed, Srdja Trifkovic of Chronicles writes of Iran's "broad diplomatic counter-offensive," reaching out to "Central Asian, Caucasian, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and North African leaders in a series of talks on security and energy."
And there is yet solid evidence that Tehran is actually developing nuclear weapons. There's good reason for suspicion, but even in the worst case, the regime appears to be years away from creating a usable weapon. A minute before midnight this moment ain't.
In any case, the best way to test the Iranian position is to negotiate seriously with Tehran. The Iranians made just such an offer when Washington was at its arrogant worst in 2003. Now the Bush administration should swallow its pride and back away from its foolish "we don't talk to mean people" stance. Just as it did with North Korea.
The latest U.S. sanctions – imposed, it appears, in frustration more at America's growing international isolation on this issue than at any Iranian advance on its nuclear program – will make contact even less likely. By targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Washington makes it even less likely that this powerful political force will allow the Iranian government to yield to the U.S. Which means, at the end of the day, America will face either an Iran with not just nuclear knowledge, but nuclear weapons, or a war whose hideous impact will radiate outward around the world.
Unfortunately, there the leading presidential candidates in both parties seem unwilling to or capable of crafting a sensible strategy towards Iran. John McCain, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani all say "bombs away" when it comes to Iran. The latter even made the astonishing assertion that Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, who join Hitler in the pantheon of humanity's moral monsters, were rational actors compared to Ahmadinejad, who, Fareed Zakaria asks, "has done what that compares?"
Mitt Romney, whatever he actually believes, obviously doesn't want to be seen as Mr. Milquetoast in comparison: he has threatened a blockade or "bombardment" of Iran. (Even more weirdly, Romney has proposed indicting Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide. Hunh?) The Democratic pack is better, but not the front-runner. Last month Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) voted for a resolution that endorsed "military" means to "combat, contain, and roll back" Iranian power.
In short, U.S. policy, if not U.S. policymakers, is mad. Vice President Cheney articulated the standard refrain when he proclaimed: "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon." Yet no one wants to admit what that likely means in practice: war.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney, as well as the long line of hawkish presidential wannabees, probably aren't clinically insane. But their policy prescriptions are foolish and dangerous. There are rare occasions when war is necessary, but Iran today is not one of those moments. With the Iraq debacle ongoing, Washington desperately requires a new mix of humility and realism. Without it the U.S. government could easily trigger a much larger conflict than it imagines possible. Maybe that's what President Bush really meant when he talked about World War III.
'Invade and Bomb With Hillary and Rahm'
Why war with Iran is likely
by Justin Raimondo - Nov 2, 2007
They're ginning up another war, and the target is Iran. While the propaganda campaign started shortly after we invaded Iraq, with Rummy and the President ratcheting up the warlike rhetoric early on, the accusations and threats against Iran have lately taken on a new urgency. Whereas in the early Rumsfeld era we mainly restricted ourselves to warning Tehran against meddling in our newly-acquired province, these days we are blaming the mullahs for our failure to stabilize the country: Iraq won't stay conquered, dammit, and it must be the Iranians' fault – that's the narrative the War Party is pushing to rationalize the ongoing disaster, while simultaneously making the case for opening up a new front.
And an increasing number of Americans are falling for it. A new Zogby poll says 52 percent of the American people favor attacking Iran to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons. A recent Pew survey similarly indicates that war hysteria is on the rise, with 82 percent convinced that a nuclear-armed Iran would pass off nukes to terrorists, and two-thirds believing Iran is likely to attack the US. The yearlong hate-fest directed at Tehran is clearly paying off.
I can't say I'm surprised. After all, as of this past summer, 41 percent of the American people still believe Saddam Hussein was responsible for planning, financing, and/or carrying out the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Gee, I wonder how they got that impression….
The neocons are giving us the same song-and-dance that preceded our last glorious Middle Eastern "victory" – as administration spokesmen conjure the Halloweenish specter of mad-mullahs-with-nukes, the "evidence" is being doctored, massaged, and otherwise manipulated to fit the War Party's stipulations. Get ready for another massive "intelligence failure" and cries of "But everybody thought they had ‘weapons of mass destruction'!"
Yet, one has to ask: how many times are we going to fall for this guff?
To begin with, there is no chance Iran will have a nuclear weapon in anything short of 5 to 10 years: a few thousand centrifuges, while it sounds impressive, is not the equivalent of a nuke factory. It would take many more thousands to enrich uranium to weapons-grade quality, and Iran hasn't got the technical capability to construct and maintain such a large-scale operation, as pointed out by as Peter Beaumont, foreign-affairs editor of The Observer.
Secondly, even if Iran did one day join its neighbors Israel and Pakistan in the nuclear club, there is every reason to believe that "we have the power to deter" them, as General Abizaid put it: "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."
The real fear, however, is that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the continental United States by passing off the technology to a terrorist group, such as al-Qaeda. It doesn't matter that this is the most unlikely scenario of them all: no nuclear power would ever give a non-state actor access to such technology for fear of the fallout, quite literally. With al-Qaeda in possession of nuclear weapons, the likelihood that they would attack Iran, or someplace nearby, is quite high – far more plausible a scenario than the dim prospect of somehow smuggling a nuke into the US, or delivering it by some other means. Yet no matter how far-fetched the possibility, even such a slim chance conjures a nighmarish fear, and that, in turn, is not quite rational.
This fear of nukes, and of another 9/11, was the clincher in the run-up to the last war. These two themes were so skillfully interwoven, and evoked, that, in spite of the prolonged debunking of the alleged Saddam-Osama connection, the myth persists to this day.
In fact, it worked so well the last time around that the War Party, in preparing for it's next act, is engaged in a vast recycling project, revamping some pretty familiar lies, half-truths, and cherry-picked bits of "intelligence," albeit with a new twist. Think of the time, energy, and money they'll be saving: they don't need new propaganda, all they have to do is haul out the old stuff, insert Iran in place of Iraq, and replace Saddam Hussein with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That was Winston Smith's job at the Ministry of Truth, and his real-world equivalents are getting awfully good at it: why, just look at those poll numbers.
How do we account for the sudden rise of a new war hysteria, this time directed against Iran? While the administration has turned up the volume of its anti-Iranian rhetoric, and the mass media has duly – and largely uncritically – reported it, this is only part of the reason for the ominous uptick. The core reason is that we're entering the political season, and none of the presidential candidates presented to us as "major" will take war with Iran off the table: indeed, the Republicans – with one exception – seem to be competing with each other to see who can take the most ferociously provocative stance. When it comes to Iran, the Democrats are almost as bad – and, in the case of the putative frontrunner, perhaps even worse. As Bill Safire put it on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, in the context of discussing Hillary's possible picks for the VP slot,
"What about Rahm Emanuel, the most powerful voice in the House of Representatives that agrees with Hillary Clinton on foreign affairs. He's a hawk. And although he's a rootin' tootin' liberal on domestic affairs, he is a hawk on foreign affairs. I was at the—a roast for him for Epilepsy Association, and Hillary Clinton was there, and I said, quite frankly, here you have the hawkish side of the Democratic Party. If they get together, the bumper sticker will read ‘Invade and bomb with Hillary and Rahm.'"
As the issues are increasingly framed in terms of presidential politics, there is little vocal opposition to the rush to war with Iran, even in the supposedly "antiwar" Democratic party. Many of the same people who think George W. Bush is a war criminal who lied us into invading Iraq will nonetheless dutifully pull the lever for Hillary, who has criticized the president for being soft on the mullahs. Having already given her moral and political sanction for attacking Iran by voting for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution – which, even in the slightly watered-down version passed by the Senate, provides enough cover for the Bush administration, or its successor, to claim the authority to take military action – Hillary Clinton will inherit and continue the neocons' wars, and will be no less committed to "victory."
Americans see their leading politicians "debating," but none of them are opposing war with Iran: indeed, they all seem to be going along with it, with a few exceptions – and these exceptions, precisely because they aren't going along to get along, are invariably dismissed by the pundits as "minor" or "fringe" candidates, who cannot under any circumstances be taken seriously. The majority of Americans now want a definite deadline for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, and yet not a single "major" candidate for president proposes such a course. What's more, if he or she did, they would be immediately relegated to second or third-tier status, even as their campaign fundraising dried up for reasons convincingly explained by Wesley Clark.
Beating the drums for war, the Israel lobby is pulling out all the stops, and this time they are out in the open about it. The fear that the Lobby would be too visible in promoting Israel's interests motivated them to keep a relatively low profile during the run-up to war with Iraq, but it isn't holding them back now. AIPAC, for one, is openly leading the charge for war, and, as the overwhelming vote in favor of Kyl-Lieberman indicates, they are doing a bang-up job of it. The Democrats are terrified of the Lobby: the loss of all that New York money, which is essential for Hillary's victory, would be a disaster for them. Not that there is much danger of Hillary forgetting her good friends in the military-industrial complex, who have donated more to her than to all the others combined. She, after all, has a lot to prove: can a woman be a tough commander-in-chief? Faced with a "choice" between someone who is bound to over-compensate in the direction of unreasonable belligerence, and … Rudy Giuliani – well, all I can say is, ain't "democracy" wonderful?
Public opinion is shaped, in part, by the political discourse, and when it comes to foreign policy, rather than debating, the two parties are singing a duet. As the Iraq war widens into a burgeoning conflict with Iran, and not a single major political figure rises to oppose it, we are stumbling into an even bigger quagmire than the one in which we are presently immersed. Gen. Abizaid says that we'll be in Iraq for the next 50 years: if we go to war with Iran, make that a century or so.
by Justin Raimondo - Nov 2, 2007
They're ginning up another war, and the target is Iran. While the propaganda campaign started shortly after we invaded Iraq, with Rummy and the President ratcheting up the warlike rhetoric early on, the accusations and threats against Iran have lately taken on a new urgency. Whereas in the early Rumsfeld era we mainly restricted ourselves to warning Tehran against meddling in our newly-acquired province, these days we are blaming the mullahs for our failure to stabilize the country: Iraq won't stay conquered, dammit, and it must be the Iranians' fault – that's the narrative the War Party is pushing to rationalize the ongoing disaster, while simultaneously making the case for opening up a new front.
And an increasing number of Americans are falling for it. A new Zogby poll says 52 percent of the American people favor attacking Iran to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons. A recent Pew survey similarly indicates that war hysteria is on the rise, with 82 percent convinced that a nuclear-armed Iran would pass off nukes to terrorists, and two-thirds believing Iran is likely to attack the US. The yearlong hate-fest directed at Tehran is clearly paying off.
I can't say I'm surprised. After all, as of this past summer, 41 percent of the American people still believe Saddam Hussein was responsible for planning, financing, and/or carrying out the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Gee, I wonder how they got that impression….
The neocons are giving us the same song-and-dance that preceded our last glorious Middle Eastern "victory" – as administration spokesmen conjure the Halloweenish specter of mad-mullahs-with-nukes, the "evidence" is being doctored, massaged, and otherwise manipulated to fit the War Party's stipulations. Get ready for another massive "intelligence failure" and cries of "But everybody thought they had ‘weapons of mass destruction'!"
Yet, one has to ask: how many times are we going to fall for this guff?
To begin with, there is no chance Iran will have a nuclear weapon in anything short of 5 to 10 years: a few thousand centrifuges, while it sounds impressive, is not the equivalent of a nuke factory. It would take many more thousands to enrich uranium to weapons-grade quality, and Iran hasn't got the technical capability to construct and maintain such a large-scale operation, as pointed out by as Peter Beaumont, foreign-affairs editor of The Observer.
Secondly, even if Iran did one day join its neighbors Israel and Pakistan in the nuclear club, there is every reason to believe that "we have the power to deter" them, as General Abizaid put it: "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."
The real fear, however, is that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the continental United States by passing off the technology to a terrorist group, such as al-Qaeda. It doesn't matter that this is the most unlikely scenario of them all: no nuclear power would ever give a non-state actor access to such technology for fear of the fallout, quite literally. With al-Qaeda in possession of nuclear weapons, the likelihood that they would attack Iran, or someplace nearby, is quite high – far more plausible a scenario than the dim prospect of somehow smuggling a nuke into the US, or delivering it by some other means. Yet no matter how far-fetched the possibility, even such a slim chance conjures a nighmarish fear, and that, in turn, is not quite rational.
This fear of nukes, and of another 9/11, was the clincher in the run-up to the last war. These two themes were so skillfully interwoven, and evoked, that, in spite of the prolonged debunking of the alleged Saddam-Osama connection, the myth persists to this day.
In fact, it worked so well the last time around that the War Party, in preparing for it's next act, is engaged in a vast recycling project, revamping some pretty familiar lies, half-truths, and cherry-picked bits of "intelligence," albeit with a new twist. Think of the time, energy, and money they'll be saving: they don't need new propaganda, all they have to do is haul out the old stuff, insert Iran in place of Iraq, and replace Saddam Hussein with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That was Winston Smith's job at the Ministry of Truth, and his real-world equivalents are getting awfully good at it: why, just look at those poll numbers.
How do we account for the sudden rise of a new war hysteria, this time directed against Iran? While the administration has turned up the volume of its anti-Iranian rhetoric, and the mass media has duly – and largely uncritically – reported it, this is only part of the reason for the ominous uptick. The core reason is that we're entering the political season, and none of the presidential candidates presented to us as "major" will take war with Iran off the table: indeed, the Republicans – with one exception – seem to be competing with each other to see who can take the most ferociously provocative stance. When it comes to Iran, the Democrats are almost as bad – and, in the case of the putative frontrunner, perhaps even worse. As Bill Safire put it on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, in the context of discussing Hillary's possible picks for the VP slot,
"What about Rahm Emanuel, the most powerful voice in the House of Representatives that agrees with Hillary Clinton on foreign affairs. He's a hawk. And although he's a rootin' tootin' liberal on domestic affairs, he is a hawk on foreign affairs. I was at the—a roast for him for Epilepsy Association, and Hillary Clinton was there, and I said, quite frankly, here you have the hawkish side of the Democratic Party. If they get together, the bumper sticker will read ‘Invade and bomb with Hillary and Rahm.'"
As the issues are increasingly framed in terms of presidential politics, there is little vocal opposition to the rush to war with Iran, even in the supposedly "antiwar" Democratic party. Many of the same people who think George W. Bush is a war criminal who lied us into invading Iraq will nonetheless dutifully pull the lever for Hillary, who has criticized the president for being soft on the mullahs. Having already given her moral and political sanction for attacking Iran by voting for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution – which, even in the slightly watered-down version passed by the Senate, provides enough cover for the Bush administration, or its successor, to claim the authority to take military action – Hillary Clinton will inherit and continue the neocons' wars, and will be no less committed to "victory."
Americans see their leading politicians "debating," but none of them are opposing war with Iran: indeed, they all seem to be going along with it, with a few exceptions – and these exceptions, precisely because they aren't going along to get along, are invariably dismissed by the pundits as "minor" or "fringe" candidates, who cannot under any circumstances be taken seriously. The majority of Americans now want a definite deadline for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, and yet not a single "major" candidate for president proposes such a course. What's more, if he or she did, they would be immediately relegated to second or third-tier status, even as their campaign fundraising dried up for reasons convincingly explained by Wesley Clark.
Beating the drums for war, the Israel lobby is pulling out all the stops, and this time they are out in the open about it. The fear that the Lobby would be too visible in promoting Israel's interests motivated them to keep a relatively low profile during the run-up to war with Iraq, but it isn't holding them back now. AIPAC, for one, is openly leading the charge for war, and, as the overwhelming vote in favor of Kyl-Lieberman indicates, they are doing a bang-up job of it. The Democrats are terrified of the Lobby: the loss of all that New York money, which is essential for Hillary's victory, would be a disaster for them. Not that there is much danger of Hillary forgetting her good friends in the military-industrial complex, who have donated more to her than to all the others combined. She, after all, has a lot to prove: can a woman be a tough commander-in-chief? Faced with a "choice" between someone who is bound to over-compensate in the direction of unreasonable belligerence, and … Rudy Giuliani – well, all I can say is, ain't "democracy" wonderful?
Public opinion is shaped, in part, by the political discourse, and when it comes to foreign policy, rather than debating, the two parties are singing a duet. As the Iraq war widens into a burgeoning conflict with Iran, and not a single major political figure rises to oppose it, we are stumbling into an even bigger quagmire than the one in which we are presently immersed. Gen. Abizaid says that we'll be in Iraq for the next 50 years: if we go to war with Iran, make that a century or so.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS
by Rev. WILLIAM E. ALBERTS - Oct 31, 2007
A classic denial of reality is seen in the defensive reactions of CBS "60 Minutes" reporter Scott Pelley in his September 23, 2007 interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Pelley's defensiveness is an attempt to deny the reality of an American foreign policy soaked in blood: "The American people believe . . . your country is a terrorist nation," and that "you have American blood on your hands," because "it is an established fact now that Iranian bombs and know-how are killing Americans in Iraq." Ahmadinejad responded that "American officials" were making that charge to divert attention from their failed policy in Iraq, a policy opposed by many Americans, and that he was "amazed" that Pelley, "representing a media and . . . a reporter" would "speak for . . . 300 million" Americans. Pelley repeated, "Many Americans believe that you have American blood on your hands." Scott Pelley and CBS do not want the American people to know who really has "American blood" on their hands.
CBS itself has "American blood" on its hands. On February 5, 2003, CBS's "60 Minutes II" presented a program designed to build public support for pre-emptive war against Iraq called, "The Case Against Saddam" [italics added]. "The Case" began with Secretary of State Colin Powell, fresh from his blatantly false, dishonorable UN presentation on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction that morning, telling host Dan Rather, "I spent most of the last four days going over every sentence in my statement. . . . What you see is the truth . . . I think I put forward a case today that said . . . there are many smoking guns."
CBS's "The Case Against Saddam" followed Secretary of State Powell with a clip of Saddam Hussein in a recent rare interview saying, "I tell you, as I have said on many occasions before, that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq whatsoever. And we challenge those who say the opposite to give the simplist proof. These weapons are not aspirin pills that one can have in his pockets."
"60 Minutes II" commentator Bob Simon then introduced CBS News consultant and Johns Hopkins University professor of Middle Eastern Studies Fouad Ajami "to help us make sense of Saddam's answers" [italics added]. Ajami responded, "The charm of Saddam Hussein. If you will, in a very perverse way, is this attempt to seem like a reasonable man." But he is not: as Ajami then explained, "Saddam . . . gets this softball question: 'Do you have weapons of mass destruction?' He says, 'you can't hide them.' Well, in fact we know you can hide them."
CBS News Consultant Fouad Ajami's "own judgment is that the people of Iraq will not fight for Saddam Hussein." His "own guess [is] that were we to enter Baghdad when the time comes to do so [italics added], it will be exactly a repeat of what happened in Kabal when the Americans came into Afghanistan and were greeted by kites and music and boom boxes, and people were glad to be rid of the Taliban."(Feb. 5, 2003)
Tragically for the lifeblood of Iraqi and US citizens alike, Fouad Ajami obviously was saying what he thought CBS and the Bush administration wanted to hear. There is no "music to anyone's ears in Afghanistan or Iraq today. In fact, a recent United Nation's report states that "violence in Afghanistan has surged nearly 30% this year and suicide bombings are inflicting a high toll on civilians." ("Afghan violence up 30 percent, UN says," by Jason Straziuso and Rahim Faiez, Associated Press, The Boston Globe, Oct. 3, 2007)
Nor were weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, nor ties to the horrible attack against America on 9/11/01, as the Bush administration repeatedly charged to justify its fear-and-war-mongering invasion and occupation of Iraq. There is only ground soaked with much Iraqi and American blood.
Bob Simon ended "The Case Against Saddam" by saying "The interview is vintage Saddam." It was actually "vintage" CBS news that's fit to cover up the Bush administration's blood-soaked foreign policy for oil and empire. Blood for oil.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? Secretary of State Colin Powell's dramatic falsely-based indictment of a weapons of mass destruction "armed" Iraq before the UN was not only reported but affirmed by many in mainstream media. "Powell's briefing was not only breathtaking in scope but utterly convincing," Boston Globe colunist H.D.S. Greenway wrote in a piece called "A compelling case is made for action." (Feb. 7, 2003) "Powell has convinced me," was the title of syndicated columnist Mary McGrory's piece, "and I was as tough as France to convince," she wrote. (The Boston Globe, Feb. 8, 2003) New York Times writer William Safire's column hailed Powell's "proof of Saddam's cover-up" as "irrefutable and undeniable." (Feb. 6, 2003) A New York Times editorial said that "Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the United Nations and a global television audience yesterday with the most powerful case to date that Saddam Hussein stands in defiance of Security Council resolutions and has no intention of revealing or surrendering whatever unconventional weapons he may have." (Feb. 6, 2003). And there was New York Times writer Judith Miller taking falsehoods of US administration and military officials and Iraqi exiles and spinning terrifying front-page stories of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. (See "The New York Times' role in promoting war in Iraq," by Antony Loewenstein, Fairfax Digital, Mar. 23, 2004.)
Boston Globe media writer Mark Jurkowitz's piece entitled "Powell's UN speech proves persuasive for commentators" began, "Secretary of State Colin Powell's dramatic Feb. 5 presentation at the UN may not have convinced the French, German or Russians of the need to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. But is seemed to work wonders on opinion makers and editorial shakers in the media universe." Jurkowitz's conclusion was based on two studies of the editorials in many of the nation's largest newspapers before and after Powell's speech: one survey found "those considered 'war skeptics' plummeted from 29 to 11." (Feb. 13, 2003)
Who has "American blood" on their hands? Many mainstream media played a largely advocacy rather than an investigative role in the run-up to the Bush administration's criminal war of choice against Iraq. The following Boston Globe editorials, most written long before Secretary of State Powell's UN presentation, are believed to be typical of widespread uncritical dominant media acceptance and promotion of the Bush administration's "Case Against Saddam." "Bush was fittingly candid in saying that 'though all options are on the table,' the 'one thing I will not allow is a nation such as Iraq to threaten our very future by developing weapons of mass destruction.' In reality," the editorial continued, "Saddam already has large quantities of chemical and biological weapons [italics added]. (Mar. 15, 2002) "[Britian Prime Minister Tony] Blair's lucid truth [italics added] is that . . . the world cannot allow such a mass murderer to threaten the use of weapons of mass destruction." (Sept. 29, 2002) "The surest way to unveil his weapons of mass destruction[italics added] is to make certain [Hans] Blix [chief UN weapons inspector] brings knowledgeable Iraqi scientists and officials out of Iraq with their families so that they can tell the truth without fear. The international community can then free Iraqis from Saddam's tyranny." (Dec. 6, 2002) "The particular means for liberating Iraqis [from "Saddam's police state"] will be less important in the long run [italics added] than the character of the government that comes after Saddam's fall." (June 19, 2002) "If U.S. action in coming months leads to Saddam Hussein's overthrow, there will be jubilation in Iraq [italics added] that the monster who murdered and tortured so many people and ruined the life of entire generations is finally gone." (Oct. 21, 2002) "Nothing could mean more to the reputation of America in the world [italics added] than for Bush to keep his promise to support a democratic future for Iraqis after the long nightmare of Saddam's regime." (Mar. 18, 2003)
Who has "American blood" on their hands? The dominant uncritical daily widespread advance billing of many mainstream media was "Showdown with Iraq." A media image was presented of Saddam Hussein waiting in the desert at high noon with weapons of mass destruction hidden in the sand, ready to take on the deadliest "dead-or-alive" gun-fighting superpower in the West-and that superpower's British sidekick to boot. Coming soon to your living room television screen: the Mother of all reality shows. A predominantly pro-Bush administration American media then presented a "sanitized" war for our patriotic viewing, reading and listening pleasure. Nightly "shock and awe" bombs bursting in air, as entertaining "fireworks over Baghdad," on our television screens. With the blood-spattered lives of dead Iraqi men, women and children hidden under media-glamorized "precision" and "smart" bombs. The war-marketing slogan: "We aim to please!"
Who has "American blood" on their hands? In a pre-war Action Alert called "Do Media Know That War Kills?," Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) reveals the culpability of mainstream media: "Despite daily reports about the 'showdown' with Iraq, Americans heard very little from mainstream media about the most basic fact of war: People will be killed and civilian infrastructure will be destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops." FAIR found, "Since the beginning of the year, according to a search of the Nexis database (1/1/03 3/12/03), none of the three major television networks' nightly national newscasts ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, or NBC Nightly News have examined in detail what long-term impact war will have on humanitarian conditions in Iraq. They've also downplayed the immediate civilian deaths that will be caused by a U.S. attack." (Mar. 14, 2003)
The reality of "Showdown with Iraq": "people [continue being] killed and civilian infrastructure . . . destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops." Over a million Iraqi civilians dead, the country's life-sustaining infrastructure decimated; some four million citizens forced to flee as refugees inside and outside their country; a deadly massive civil war raging, triggered by the US-led invasion and occupation; over 3800 U.S. deaths confirmed and tens of thousands wounded in body, mind and spirit; ("Casualties in Iraq-2007, antiwar.com); the terrible waste of our nation's resources; and a Bush-administration-bred mercenary "Blackwater" mentality's indiscriminate killing of Iraqi people, further inflaming Iraqi and world opinion against America. A horrible, blood-soaked international American-made criminal war and occupation, seeking to be denied and hidden by a defensive foreign reporter of a bloodstained news outlet telling Iraq's neighboring president, "Many American believe that you have American blood on your hands."
"The Case Against Saddam." "Showdown with Iraq." "The Battle for Iraq." "The Struggle for Iraq" "America in Iraq" These and other mainstream media's palatable-for-public-consumption captions change. But they cannot make culpability for the criminal sacrifice of "American [and Iraqi] blood" disappear. Smoke and mirror captions of advocacy rather than investigative American mainstream press.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? As recently as a news conference in Chicago on July 7, 2006, President Bush repeated an outright lie in front of uncritical national and local reporters: "I have always said that it's important for an American president to exhaust all diplomatic avenues before the use of force. . . . All diplomatic avenues were exhausted, as far as I was concerned, with Saddam Hussein [italics added]. (Transcript, 'President Bush Holds a News Conference in Chicago," CQ Transcripts Wire washingtonpost.com, July 7, 2006)
Reporters could have had a field day with President Bush's falsehoods. He repeatedly justified his administration's pre-emptive war against Iraq by saying, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof-and the smoking gun-that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." ("President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat," Cincinnati, Ohio, The White House, Oct. 7, 2002). And three days before invading Iraq, he warned, "The danger is clear. Using chemical, biological or one day nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambition to kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other." ("President Bush Presents 48 Hour Ultimatum," Address to the Nation, The White House, Mar. 17, 2003)
"All diplomatic options were exhausted," President Bush could even get away with repeating to reporters over three years later. Over two months before Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, an Associated Press story quoted chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix as saying, 'We have now been there [in Iraq] for some two months and been covering the country in ever widening sweeps and we haven't found any smoking guns. ("Blix Says No Smoking Guns Found in Iraq," by Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, Jan. 9, 2003). Later Blix was reported to have "lamented" the aborting of the UN inspections by Bush's invasion of Iraq. A Boston Globe story quoted Blix as saying, "I don't think it is reasonable to close the door to inspections after three-and-a-half months." He "would have welcomed some months more. . . . While inspectors followed up leads from US intelligence," the story continued, "Blix said, 'I must regret we have not found the results in so many cases.' We certainly have not found any smoking guns." (Mar. 19, 2003)
"We cannot wait for the final proof-and the smoking gun." President Bush repeatedly charged to a receptive mainstream media that Saddam Hussein was playing "a game of deception" with the UN inspectors. Bush was playing a game of deception and not Hussein. The only weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq are America's.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? A glaring example of "news" that's "print to fit" was President Bush's orchestrated March 6, 2003 news conference shortly before his administration launched its war of choice. Typical of the controlled "give-and-take" was a question from a black woman reporter: "As the nation is at odds over war, with many organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus pushing for continued diplomacy through the UN, how is your faith guiding you?" Bush replied, "I appreciate that question a lot." He then said, "My faith sustains me. Because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength . . . I pray for peace. I pray for peace." (The New York Times, Mar. 7, 2003) Two weeks later the Bush administration unleashed its long-planned pre-emptive war against Iraq-with few in mainstream media asking to whom does President Bush pray. Bush then repeatedly used his god to justify and hide his administration's blood-drenched aggression against the Iraqi people: "Freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to every man and woman in the world." ("Acceptance speech to Republican Convention Delegates," The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2004) Tell that to the millions of Iraqi mothers and fathers and children being ground under by such "freedom." The idolatry of ideology and theology used to justify high crimes. It should be painfully obvious by now: President Bush's god has "American blood" on his hands-and so much Iraqi and other Muslim blood as well.
Reporters like Scott Pelley would find instructive certain comments of Iranian President Ahmadinejad. When Pelley asked Ahmadinejad, "What do you admire in President Bush?," the Iranian president hesitated, which led Pelley to say, "Well, Mr. Bush is, without question, a very religious man [italics added] for example, as you are. I wonder if there's anything that you've seen in President Bush that you admire." A disingenuous question by a reporter who knows Bush has condemned Ahmadinejad as a tyrant, called Iran part of an "axis of evil," and has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear power facilities-which he sees as hiding a nuclear weapon-"mushroom cloud" like he did Iraq. Ahmadinejad replied, "Well, is Mr. Bush a religious man?" "Very much so. As you are," Pelley responded. Ahmadinejad then asked the question American reporters should have been asking from the moment Bush said, "I pray daily . . . for peace," and two weeks later launched his administration's criminal war. Ahmadinejad responded:
What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people? Please tell me. Does Christianity tell its followers to do that? Judaism, for that matter? Islam, for that matter? What prophet tells you to send 160,000 troops to another country, kill men, women and children? You just can't wear your religion on your sleeve or just go to church. You should be truthfully religious. Religion tells us all that you should respect the property, the life of different people. Respect human rights. Love your fellow man.
Pelley avoided Ahmadinejad's response to his assertion that "Mr. Bush is without question, a very religious man," by saying "I take it you can't think of anything you like about President Bush."
Scott Pelley's assertion that "Mr. Bush is without question, a very religious man," reveals an incredible lack of investigative skepticism and inquisitiveness.
In the face of the falsehoods underlying "The Case Against Saddam," and the bloodbath of "Showdown with Iraq," a needfully defensive Scott Pelley says to President Ahmadinejad, "But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world . . . You have American blood on your hands." And "want[ing] to be very direct and very clear," Pelley repeated, "Many Americans believe that you have American blood on your hands . . . Sir, forgive me, you're smiling," Pelley observed, "but this is a very serious matter to America." Ahmadinejad's reponse clearly indicates which one is in touch with reality and which is defending against it. "Well, it's serious for us as well. I daresay it's serious to everyone." Ahmadinejad then said,
I'm just amazed as the representative of the media, why do you insist on the untrue accusation leveled by your government? This doesn't solve anything. It seems to me it's laughable for someone to turn a blind eye to the truth and accuse others. It doesn't help. And the reason that I'm smiling again, it's because the picture's so clear. But American officials refuse to see it. And I think that as a member of the media, your responsibility here is to talk about the truth and back home to force your officials to appreciate the truth and to take the correct decision. . . . Many thousands of American soldiers have been killed. They need to answer for their action. Instead of answering those questions, they are accusing others."
Scott Pelley accused Ahmadinejad of "dodging the questions" and repeated, "Will you pledge tonight to do everything in your power to prevent Iranian arms from entering Iraq?," The Iranian President replied, "Well, I think you have been charged with a mission to repeat a sentence over and over again. My comments are very clear. I think you should go back and take American officials to task. Use the same force you are using right now so that they take the troops out."
The New York Times reports that "the Bush administration has been considering whether to classify the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group." (Oct. 8, 2007) The Bush administration is a terrorist group.
The "American officials" who need to hear the truth include the leading Democratic presidential candidates. In a September 26 debate in Hanover, New Hampshire, they refused to pledge to end the occupation of Iraq and bring the US forces home by 2013, the end of their presidential term, if elected. When asked if they could make such a commitment, Illinois Senator Barack Obama replied, "I think it is hard to project four years from now, and I think it would be irresponsible. We don't know what contingency will be out there." Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards responded. "I cannot make that commitment." And Senator Hillary Clinton of New York answered, " . . . I agree with Barack. It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting." ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC," Transcript, The New York Times, Sept. 26, 2007) Obama, Edwards and Clinton are willing to have "American blood" on their hands through their presidency.
Senator Clinton also appears to be willing to have "American blood" on her hands in Iran. She voted for the recent Senate resolution calling on the Bush administration to classify Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. ("Obama launches attack on Clinton over Iran," By Marcella Bombardieri, The Boston Globe, Oct. 12, 2007) And in a policy statement on "Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-first Century," appearing in the Nov./Dec. 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, she wrote, "Iran . . . must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table" (italics added). In the face of her support for the Bush administration's falsely-based, criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq, she also wrote, "Iran . . . is the country that most practices state-sponsored terrorism." She even stated, "Our quarrel is not with {the Iranian people} but with their government." Echoes of President Bush's words before US state-sponsored terrorism was unleashed on Iraq.
The commitment of the leading presidential candidates is about dodging reality. Whoever is elected president in 2008 will have "inherited" a blatant, globally condemned, international war crime against humanity that needs to be ended now. Accompanied by American-led reparations and works of restitution beginning immediately. And the glaring perpetrators of this horrific crime brought to justice before they trigger a war against Iran to further cover up their imperialistic blood for oil policies against the people of Iraq and America. Instead of a planned presidential library for George W. Bush at accommodating Southern Methodist University, there should be a jail cell in his future-and that of his vice president and other war-mongering imperialistic advisors.
Everyone bleeds human. And the lifeblood of every human being is sacred.
A classic denial of reality is seen in the defensive reactions of CBS "60 Minutes" reporter Scott Pelley in his September 23, 2007 interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Pelley's defensiveness is an attempt to deny the reality of an American foreign policy soaked in blood: "The American people believe . . . your country is a terrorist nation," and that "you have American blood on your hands," because "it is an established fact now that Iranian bombs and know-how are killing Americans in Iraq." Ahmadinejad responded that "American officials" were making that charge to divert attention from their failed policy in Iraq, a policy opposed by many Americans, and that he was "amazed" that Pelley, "representing a media and . . . a reporter" would "speak for . . . 300 million" Americans. Pelley repeated, "Many Americans believe that you have American blood on your hands." Scott Pelley and CBS do not want the American people to know who really has "American blood" on their hands.
CBS itself has "American blood" on its hands. On February 5, 2003, CBS's "60 Minutes II" presented a program designed to build public support for pre-emptive war against Iraq called, "The Case Against Saddam" [italics added]. "The Case" began with Secretary of State Colin Powell, fresh from his blatantly false, dishonorable UN presentation on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction that morning, telling host Dan Rather, "I spent most of the last four days going over every sentence in my statement. . . . What you see is the truth . . . I think I put forward a case today that said . . . there are many smoking guns."
CBS's "The Case Against Saddam" followed Secretary of State Powell with a clip of Saddam Hussein in a recent rare interview saying, "I tell you, as I have said on many occasions before, that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq whatsoever. And we challenge those who say the opposite to give the simplist proof. These weapons are not aspirin pills that one can have in his pockets."
"60 Minutes II" commentator Bob Simon then introduced CBS News consultant and Johns Hopkins University professor of Middle Eastern Studies Fouad Ajami "to help us make sense of Saddam's answers" [italics added]. Ajami responded, "The charm of Saddam Hussein. If you will, in a very perverse way, is this attempt to seem like a reasonable man." But he is not: as Ajami then explained, "Saddam . . . gets this softball question: 'Do you have weapons of mass destruction?' He says, 'you can't hide them.' Well, in fact we know you can hide them."
CBS News Consultant Fouad Ajami's "own judgment is that the people of Iraq will not fight for Saddam Hussein." His "own guess [is] that were we to enter Baghdad when the time comes to do so [italics added], it will be exactly a repeat of what happened in Kabal when the Americans came into Afghanistan and were greeted by kites and music and boom boxes, and people were glad to be rid of the Taliban."(Feb. 5, 2003)
Tragically for the lifeblood of Iraqi and US citizens alike, Fouad Ajami obviously was saying what he thought CBS and the Bush administration wanted to hear. There is no "music to anyone's ears in Afghanistan or Iraq today. In fact, a recent United Nation's report states that "violence in Afghanistan has surged nearly 30% this year and suicide bombings are inflicting a high toll on civilians." ("Afghan violence up 30 percent, UN says," by Jason Straziuso and Rahim Faiez, Associated Press, The Boston Globe, Oct. 3, 2007)
Nor were weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, nor ties to the horrible attack against America on 9/11/01, as the Bush administration repeatedly charged to justify its fear-and-war-mongering invasion and occupation of Iraq. There is only ground soaked with much Iraqi and American blood.
Bob Simon ended "The Case Against Saddam" by saying "The interview is vintage Saddam." It was actually "vintage" CBS news that's fit to cover up the Bush administration's blood-soaked foreign policy for oil and empire. Blood for oil.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? Secretary of State Colin Powell's dramatic falsely-based indictment of a weapons of mass destruction "armed" Iraq before the UN was not only reported but affirmed by many in mainstream media. "Powell's briefing was not only breathtaking in scope but utterly convincing," Boston Globe colunist H.D.S. Greenway wrote in a piece called "A compelling case is made for action." (Feb. 7, 2003) "Powell has convinced me," was the title of syndicated columnist Mary McGrory's piece, "and I was as tough as France to convince," she wrote. (The Boston Globe, Feb. 8, 2003) New York Times writer William Safire's column hailed Powell's "proof of Saddam's cover-up" as "irrefutable and undeniable." (Feb. 6, 2003) A New York Times editorial said that "Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the United Nations and a global television audience yesterday with the most powerful case to date that Saddam Hussein stands in defiance of Security Council resolutions and has no intention of revealing or surrendering whatever unconventional weapons he may have." (Feb. 6, 2003). And there was New York Times writer Judith Miller taking falsehoods of US administration and military officials and Iraqi exiles and spinning terrifying front-page stories of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. (See "The New York Times' role in promoting war in Iraq," by Antony Loewenstein, Fairfax Digital, Mar. 23, 2004.)
Boston Globe media writer Mark Jurkowitz's piece entitled "Powell's UN speech proves persuasive for commentators" began, "Secretary of State Colin Powell's dramatic Feb. 5 presentation at the UN may not have convinced the French, German or Russians of the need to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. But is seemed to work wonders on opinion makers and editorial shakers in the media universe." Jurkowitz's conclusion was based on two studies of the editorials in many of the nation's largest newspapers before and after Powell's speech: one survey found "those considered 'war skeptics' plummeted from 29 to 11." (Feb. 13, 2003)
Who has "American blood" on their hands? Many mainstream media played a largely advocacy rather than an investigative role in the run-up to the Bush administration's criminal war of choice against Iraq. The following Boston Globe editorials, most written long before Secretary of State Powell's UN presentation, are believed to be typical of widespread uncritical dominant media acceptance and promotion of the Bush administration's "Case Against Saddam." "Bush was fittingly candid in saying that 'though all options are on the table,' the 'one thing I will not allow is a nation such as Iraq to threaten our very future by developing weapons of mass destruction.' In reality," the editorial continued, "Saddam already has large quantities of chemical and biological weapons [italics added]. (Mar. 15, 2002) "[Britian Prime Minister Tony] Blair's lucid truth [italics added] is that . . . the world cannot allow such a mass murderer to threaten the use of weapons of mass destruction." (Sept. 29, 2002) "The surest way to unveil his weapons of mass destruction[italics added] is to make certain [Hans] Blix [chief UN weapons inspector] brings knowledgeable Iraqi scientists and officials out of Iraq with their families so that they can tell the truth without fear. The international community can then free Iraqis from Saddam's tyranny." (Dec. 6, 2002) "The particular means for liberating Iraqis [from "Saddam's police state"] will be less important in the long run [italics added] than the character of the government that comes after Saddam's fall." (June 19, 2002) "If U.S. action in coming months leads to Saddam Hussein's overthrow, there will be jubilation in Iraq [italics added] that the monster who murdered and tortured so many people and ruined the life of entire generations is finally gone." (Oct. 21, 2002) "Nothing could mean more to the reputation of America in the world [italics added] than for Bush to keep his promise to support a democratic future for Iraqis after the long nightmare of Saddam's regime." (Mar. 18, 2003)
Who has "American blood" on their hands? The dominant uncritical daily widespread advance billing of many mainstream media was "Showdown with Iraq." A media image was presented of Saddam Hussein waiting in the desert at high noon with weapons of mass destruction hidden in the sand, ready to take on the deadliest "dead-or-alive" gun-fighting superpower in the West-and that superpower's British sidekick to boot. Coming soon to your living room television screen: the Mother of all reality shows. A predominantly pro-Bush administration American media then presented a "sanitized" war for our patriotic viewing, reading and listening pleasure. Nightly "shock and awe" bombs bursting in air, as entertaining "fireworks over Baghdad," on our television screens. With the blood-spattered lives of dead Iraqi men, women and children hidden under media-glamorized "precision" and "smart" bombs. The war-marketing slogan: "We aim to please!"
Who has "American blood" on their hands? In a pre-war Action Alert called "Do Media Know That War Kills?," Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) reveals the culpability of mainstream media: "Despite daily reports about the 'showdown' with Iraq, Americans heard very little from mainstream media about the most basic fact of war: People will be killed and civilian infrastructure will be destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops." FAIR found, "Since the beginning of the year, according to a search of the Nexis database (1/1/03 3/12/03), none of the three major television networks' nightly national newscasts ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, or NBC Nightly News have examined in detail what long-term impact war will have on humanitarian conditions in Iraq. They've also downplayed the immediate civilian deaths that will be caused by a U.S. attack." (Mar. 14, 2003)
The reality of "Showdown with Iraq": "people [continue being] killed and civilian infrastructure . . . destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops." Over a million Iraqi civilians dead, the country's life-sustaining infrastructure decimated; some four million citizens forced to flee as refugees inside and outside their country; a deadly massive civil war raging, triggered by the US-led invasion and occupation; over 3800 U.S. deaths confirmed and tens of thousands wounded in body, mind and spirit; ("Casualties in Iraq-2007, antiwar.com); the terrible waste of our nation's resources; and a Bush-administration-bred mercenary "Blackwater" mentality's indiscriminate killing of Iraqi people, further inflaming Iraqi and world opinion against America. A horrible, blood-soaked international American-made criminal war and occupation, seeking to be denied and hidden by a defensive foreign reporter of a bloodstained news outlet telling Iraq's neighboring president, "Many American believe that you have American blood on your hands."
"The Case Against Saddam." "Showdown with Iraq." "The Battle for Iraq." "The Struggle for Iraq" "America in Iraq" These and other mainstream media's palatable-for-public-consumption captions change. But they cannot make culpability for the criminal sacrifice of "American [and Iraqi] blood" disappear. Smoke and mirror captions of advocacy rather than investigative American mainstream press.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? As recently as a news conference in Chicago on July 7, 2006, President Bush repeated an outright lie in front of uncritical national and local reporters: "I have always said that it's important for an American president to exhaust all diplomatic avenues before the use of force. . . . All diplomatic avenues were exhausted, as far as I was concerned, with Saddam Hussein [italics added]. (Transcript, 'President Bush Holds a News Conference in Chicago," CQ Transcripts Wire washingtonpost.com, July 7, 2006)
Reporters could have had a field day with President Bush's falsehoods. He repeatedly justified his administration's pre-emptive war against Iraq by saying, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof-and the smoking gun-that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." ("President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat," Cincinnati, Ohio, The White House, Oct. 7, 2002). And three days before invading Iraq, he warned, "The danger is clear. Using chemical, biological or one day nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambition to kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other." ("President Bush Presents 48 Hour Ultimatum," Address to the Nation, The White House, Mar. 17, 2003)
"All diplomatic options were exhausted," President Bush could even get away with repeating to reporters over three years later. Over two months before Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, an Associated Press story quoted chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix as saying, 'We have now been there [in Iraq] for some two months and been covering the country in ever widening sweeps and we haven't found any smoking guns. ("Blix Says No Smoking Guns Found in Iraq," by Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, Jan. 9, 2003). Later Blix was reported to have "lamented" the aborting of the UN inspections by Bush's invasion of Iraq. A Boston Globe story quoted Blix as saying, "I don't think it is reasonable to close the door to inspections after three-and-a-half months." He "would have welcomed some months more. . . . While inspectors followed up leads from US intelligence," the story continued, "Blix said, 'I must regret we have not found the results in so many cases.' We certainly have not found any smoking guns." (Mar. 19, 2003)
"We cannot wait for the final proof-and the smoking gun." President Bush repeatedly charged to a receptive mainstream media that Saddam Hussein was playing "a game of deception" with the UN inspectors. Bush was playing a game of deception and not Hussein. The only weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq are America's.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? A glaring example of "news" that's "print to fit" was President Bush's orchestrated March 6, 2003 news conference shortly before his administration launched its war of choice. Typical of the controlled "give-and-take" was a question from a black woman reporter: "As the nation is at odds over war, with many organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus pushing for continued diplomacy through the UN, how is your faith guiding you?" Bush replied, "I appreciate that question a lot." He then said, "My faith sustains me. Because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength . . . I pray for peace. I pray for peace." (The New York Times, Mar. 7, 2003) Two weeks later the Bush administration unleashed its long-planned pre-emptive war against Iraq-with few in mainstream media asking to whom does President Bush pray. Bush then repeatedly used his god to justify and hide his administration's blood-drenched aggression against the Iraqi people: "Freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to every man and woman in the world." ("Acceptance speech to Republican Convention Delegates," The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2004) Tell that to the millions of Iraqi mothers and fathers and children being ground under by such "freedom." The idolatry of ideology and theology used to justify high crimes. It should be painfully obvious by now: President Bush's god has "American blood" on his hands-and so much Iraqi and other Muslim blood as well.
Reporters like Scott Pelley would find instructive certain comments of Iranian President Ahmadinejad. When Pelley asked Ahmadinejad, "What do you admire in President Bush?," the Iranian president hesitated, which led Pelley to say, "Well, Mr. Bush is, without question, a very religious man [italics added] for example, as you are. I wonder if there's anything that you've seen in President Bush that you admire." A disingenuous question by a reporter who knows Bush has condemned Ahmadinejad as a tyrant, called Iran part of an "axis of evil," and has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear power facilities-which he sees as hiding a nuclear weapon-"mushroom cloud" like he did Iraq. Ahmadinejad replied, "Well, is Mr. Bush a religious man?" "Very much so. As you are," Pelley responded. Ahmadinejad then asked the question American reporters should have been asking from the moment Bush said, "I pray daily . . . for peace," and two weeks later launched his administration's criminal war. Ahmadinejad responded:
What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people? Please tell me. Does Christianity tell its followers to do that? Judaism, for that matter? Islam, for that matter? What prophet tells you to send 160,000 troops to another country, kill men, women and children? You just can't wear your religion on your sleeve or just go to church. You should be truthfully religious. Religion tells us all that you should respect the property, the life of different people. Respect human rights. Love your fellow man.
Pelley avoided Ahmadinejad's response to his assertion that "Mr. Bush is without question, a very religious man," by saying "I take it you can't think of anything you like about President Bush."
Scott Pelley's assertion that "Mr. Bush is without question, a very religious man," reveals an incredible lack of investigative skepticism and inquisitiveness.
In the face of the falsehoods underlying "The Case Against Saddam," and the bloodbath of "Showdown with Iraq," a needfully defensive Scott Pelley says to President Ahmadinejad, "But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world . . . You have American blood on your hands." And "want[ing] to be very direct and very clear," Pelley repeated, "Many Americans believe that you have American blood on your hands . . . Sir, forgive me, you're smiling," Pelley observed, "but this is a very serious matter to America." Ahmadinejad's reponse clearly indicates which one is in touch with reality and which is defending against it. "Well, it's serious for us as well. I daresay it's serious to everyone." Ahmadinejad then said,
I'm just amazed as the representative of the media, why do you insist on the untrue accusation leveled by your government? This doesn't solve anything. It seems to me it's laughable for someone to turn a blind eye to the truth and accuse others. It doesn't help. And the reason that I'm smiling again, it's because the picture's so clear. But American officials refuse to see it. And I think that as a member of the media, your responsibility here is to talk about the truth and back home to force your officials to appreciate the truth and to take the correct decision. . . . Many thousands of American soldiers have been killed. They need to answer for their action. Instead of answering those questions, they are accusing others."
Scott Pelley accused Ahmadinejad of "dodging the questions" and repeated, "Will you pledge tonight to do everything in your power to prevent Iranian arms from entering Iraq?," The Iranian President replied, "Well, I think you have been charged with a mission to repeat a sentence over and over again. My comments are very clear. I think you should go back and take American officials to task. Use the same force you are using right now so that they take the troops out."
The New York Times reports that "the Bush administration has been considering whether to classify the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group." (Oct. 8, 2007) The Bush administration is a terrorist group.
The "American officials" who need to hear the truth include the leading Democratic presidential candidates. In a September 26 debate in Hanover, New Hampshire, they refused to pledge to end the occupation of Iraq and bring the US forces home by 2013, the end of their presidential term, if elected. When asked if they could make such a commitment, Illinois Senator Barack Obama replied, "I think it is hard to project four years from now, and I think it would be irresponsible. We don't know what contingency will be out there." Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards responded. "I cannot make that commitment." And Senator Hillary Clinton of New York answered, " . . . I agree with Barack. It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting." ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC," Transcript, The New York Times, Sept. 26, 2007) Obama, Edwards and Clinton are willing to have "American blood" on their hands through their presidency.
Senator Clinton also appears to be willing to have "American blood" on her hands in Iran. She voted for the recent Senate resolution calling on the Bush administration to classify Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. ("Obama launches attack on Clinton over Iran," By Marcella Bombardieri, The Boston Globe, Oct. 12, 2007) And in a policy statement on "Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-first Century," appearing in the Nov./Dec. 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, she wrote, "Iran . . . must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table" (italics added). In the face of her support for the Bush administration's falsely-based, criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq, she also wrote, "Iran . . . is the country that most practices state-sponsored terrorism." She even stated, "Our quarrel is not with {the Iranian people} but with their government." Echoes of President Bush's words before US state-sponsored terrorism was unleashed on Iraq.
The commitment of the leading presidential candidates is about dodging reality. Whoever is elected president in 2008 will have "inherited" a blatant, globally condemned, international war crime against humanity that needs to be ended now. Accompanied by American-led reparations and works of restitution beginning immediately. And the glaring perpetrators of this horrific crime brought to justice before they trigger a war against Iran to further cover up their imperialistic blood for oil policies against the people of Iraq and America. Instead of a planned presidential library for George W. Bush at accommodating Southern Methodist University, there should be a jail cell in his future-and that of his vice president and other war-mongering imperialistic advisors.
Everyone bleeds human. And the lifeblood of every human being is sacred.
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