This week may be looked back on as the pivotal moment when war with Iran entered the mainstream of political thought in the Obama era. At a time when Iranians are standing up to an Iranian government that has been deprived of the Bush-era shadow of war, that shadow is again emerging.
"Bomb Bomb Iran" may be finally crossing over to the pop charts.
While Iran war rhetoric is nothing new in Washington, for the first time it has been given a vehicle. This week, a resolution in the House of Representatives is being circulated by Texas Republican Louie Gohmert that explicitly endorses an Israeli military strike on Iran if "no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time." The resolution does not specify what peaceful solution its supporters are willing to endorse, what timeframe they would consider "reasonable", or what kind of "support" the United States would provide to Israel if they bombed Iran. The resolution also does not specify what sort of Israeli military action the U.S. would support.
But in the National Review this week, neoconservative pundit Daniel Pipes raised the specter that, if Israel bombs Iran, it will be with nuclear weapons. Pipes offers this as yet another reason the President must be cajoled into bombing Iran first (he has previously urged that Obama attack Iran to win reelection).
This was also the week that AIPAC convened its annual conference in Washington, in which many of the speakers, including U.S. lawmakers, focused on the importance of imposing "crippling sanctions" on Iran and rallied AIPAC members to lobby Congress on this point. While it was the "crippling" gasoline sanctions that were on the marquee, the conference's subtext was clearly war.
"To our friends in Israel, to AIPAC," Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina proclaimed to the conference on Monday, "Congress has your back!"
"All options must be on the table. And you know what option I'm talking about," Graham declared.
"When you talk about war you should never talk about it with a smile on your face. But sometimes it's better to go to war than it is to allow the Holocaust to develop a second time," asserted Graham, thus reducing the debate on Iran policy to a false choice between all-out war or a second Holocaust.
And then, having committed himself to the former option, Graham laid the groundwork for his vision for war.
If military options go forward, Graham said, "The Iranian government's ability to wage conventional warfare against its neighbors and our troops in the region should not exist; they should not have one plane that can fly or ship that can float."
Whether this message was intended for Israeli generals or for American war planners, Graham's message was clear--a military option must be "decisive" and the U.S. and Israel need to act soon because "we do not have time on our side".
"I hope and pray that other options will work," Graham insisted. "I hope and pray that is not the option we have to seek." But if figures like Graham are so hopeful that other options will work, it is odd that they have worked so effectively to systematically undercut and eliminate those other options every step of the way.
Already, multilateral sanctions the Obama Administration is attempting to construct with partners and at the U.N. have been declared dead before arrival. Prior to that, it was the engagement track that was prematurely eulogized after a mere twelve weeks. And once "crippling sanctions" are circumscribed to an artificial timeline and fail to miraculously fix everything, we will soon have exhausted our entire diplomatic playbook with remarkable swiftness. The path will be cleared for war.
This is not keeping all options on the table, this is clearing the table for only one option.
On Sunday, Michael Makovsky, foreign policy director of the Bipartisan Research Center, revealed the true pathway upon which "crippling sanctions" will place the U.S. In a column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Makovsky clearly connected the dots between a "crippling" gasoline embargo and war with Iran.
The President, Makovsky said, should "beef up" the U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf so that "the U.S. Navy could then blockade Iran to enforce sanctions on gasoline imports passed by both houses of Congress."
In order to enforce "crippling sanctions", then, a naval blockade will be necessary. And while Makovsky does not call this blockade "war", a naval blockade is an act of war by accepted international legal standards. Hence, while one can call it "the naval blockade option", as Lindsey Graham would say "you know what option I'm talking about."
Thus, we have policymakers and pundits claiming an aversion to war, talking about not talking about war with a smile on their face, and yet their solution is merely to call the pathway to war by a different name.
In committing only to pushing forward the most draconian sanctions available, they avoid a true assessment of what will be the cost--derailing diplomatic options, burning bridges with our allies, and helping snuff out Iran's opposition movement.
The abysmal effort that has been invested in avoiding a war scenario makes it challenging to accept the premise that these policymakers are actually committed to war as only a last option. Hoping and praying is not sufficient. If we know "bomb bomb Iran" is next on the playlist, it is time to get serious and figure out how to change the station.
Follow Jamal Abdi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/niacouncil
http://shadowrag.blogspot.com/2010/03/maintain-fiction-in-1950s-us-paid-brits.html
I have traveled to 56 countries and all seven continents and I can say without reservation that the people of Iran were friendlier and more accommodating to us than any other country to which we've traveled, including the good old US of A (we're Americans).
The vast majority of the populace hate Ahmadinejad.
Most of the people we talked to were excited about the election of Obama the defeat of Ahmadinejad in their upcoming elections. I'm sure their hopes are dashed on both counts.
Most of the people were afraid of Israel and supported whatever means necessary to keep their country safe from an Israeli attack.
Most believe there can be no lasting peace in the Middle East until the Israeli/Palestinian issues are resolved. While there is no love love lost between Iranians and Arabs, their shared hatred and fear of Israel unites them (on the street).
I think it's imperative to come back to the bottom line of this political nonsense from time to time and remember that it's the people that all of their machinations affect.
“Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
Mark Twain
I
Husein used it when occupying Kuwait.
Iranian messianic miltary junta, who savagely repress their own population, are trying to cast the Iran vs. the world dispute in the same nonsensical cast. With much applause from the usual Judeophobes multitudes.
Small problem-- Even Arabs are no longer buying this nonsense
Examples from Arab media:
"The repeated hints made by the Iranian president with regards to the membership of his country to the nuclear club has shaken the Arab world despite the attempts to cover this up with diplomatic language.
Sayyed Wild Abah::
"Some Arab political analysts went as far as describing U.S military intervention against Iranian nuclear development as wise, as this development threatens the Gulf and the entire Arab region. "
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak:
“A nuclear armed Iran with hegemonic ambitions is the greatest threat to Arab nations today.”
(March 2009)
Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, Dean of Islamic Law at the Qatar University:
"No one believes Iran's clam [that its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes only] - not even Russia, its greatest ally, which is funding [Iran's] nuclear [program]..."
Here is the reality!
Iran has broken no international law.
Iran has an absolute right to develop nuclear energy, including the right to refine uranium to just under 20% purity.
Iran has complied with IAEA inspection protocols.
Iran has an absolute right to withdraw from the IAEA and produce nuclear weapons if their government so desires. No authority exists that can prevent a nation from doing so, as ISRAEL well knows, because that is EXACTLY what Israel has done.
U.S. sanctions are now seen around the world as prelude to war. The idea is to weaken a nation economically for ten years or so prior to attacking it militarily, so as to make the conquest of the resulting basket-case nation that much easier.
Sanctions are however, under international law, an act of war, and can be legitimately resisted militarily without being branded an agressive belligerant.
Iran has stated that it views sanctions as an act of war.
That's the reality, and all the posturing and finger-wagging, and "everything-on-the-table" threats of Hillary Clinton don't change a thing.
My personal opinion is that the Iranians would have to be crazy if they're not already developing Nukes, given the hostility of the United States & Israel to them. As far as Israel complaining about Iran, - they're a bunch of hypocrites, and so are the Hasbara-types who post here about Iran with their crocodile tears and chutzpah!
Is Obama on the war path?
http://shadowrag.blogspot.com/2010/03/maintain-fiction-in-1950s-us-paid-brits.html
But the Arabs whose direct quotes I posted do represent a consensus-- Iranian despotic junta is a danger to the region.
You don't like it-- learn to deal with it.
The propaganda machine in Israel has been predicting that Iran will have a nuclear weapon in the next 6 months for the last 10 years.
Let Israel do their own dirtywork without America's support.
Or the US can suffer horrendous casualties and fatalities that the US public don't have the stomach for.
And as for a draft - Vietnam is the first word that springs to mind.
No win situation all round.
AIPAC and it's stooges need a long jail term.
The issue that I a pointed out here is not whether IRI, Iran's government is a dictatorship or a democarcy, or if it is popular or not, or anything else. Please don't try to divert & change the subject, stick to the topic, being, all the propoganda for the necessity for more sanctions & more tensions, and setting the stage for another war is a terrible judgment call, and most certainly, against the interests of USA, and of course another human tragedy in the making.
AIPAC is not proposing the war with Iran. Israel is not proposing a war with Iran.U.S. is not interested in a war with Iran.
It's just the same old fear mongering coming out of various Ahmadinejad admirer's camps for ten years now!
What IS happening, ( and will continue to happen) is a regime of sanctions and containment.
Because most of the Iran neighbors are opposed to the rule of Iranian clerical-military junta.
And that includes most of Arab states, U.S. Canadan, Australia and the European Union.
Anyone who is copying Ahmadinejad's talking points trying to cast this into some of Jewish conspiracy is seriously disingenuous .
The problem with promoting propaganda for decades is that you begin to forget that it isn't real, right Oleg.
Is it America's future to be at perpetual war. The end is comming and I'm afraid America is pushing us all towards that end.
A good question that needs to be asked and contemplated is WHY!