Truth and Lies in the Middle East
The politicians and media in the United States are creating the conditions that will inevitably lead to a major new war in the Middle East. While it is difficult to imagine that any U.S. Administration would want to rush into another armed conflict, the deliberate shaping of the debate over Middle East policy and the response to terrorism has increasingly narrowed the options to make it appear that there are only two choices: capitulation to a threatening "axis of evil" or war. Given the experience of Iraq, it is reasonable to argue that this White House and Congress would almost certainly try to avoid having to make a decision to actually choose war, but there is a significant danger that a conflict might be triggered by a minor incident that, either by accident or by design, escalates into something much greater.
As in the lead-up to Iraq, the mainstream media and pandering politicians in both parties have shown themselves keen to display their "tough on Iran" credentials. All of the leading Republican presidential aspirants have indicated their willingness to use nuclear weapons against Tehran while the Democrats have averred that "all options" remain on the table. And the media, far from challenging such insanity, is stoking the fire. In 2002, Saddam Hussein was described as a new Hitler. Now it is the turn of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been called Hitler, "evil," and even a "foul-smelling fruit bat." The typecasting should sound familiar because anyone the United States is preparing to attack must be likened to Hitler to generate the proper level of public revulsion and to silence any voices calling for a more measured response. The Iranian president is not Hitler, however, not even close. Last week's disgraceful demonization and humiliation of Ahmadinejad by the media and the head of Columbia University Lee C. Bollinger accomplished nothing and only helped strengthen the unpopular politician's standing at home. Ahmadinejad looked positively statesmanlike when he responded to the overwrought Bollinger's string of insults by saying "In Iran, when you invite a guest, you respect him."
Waging a media war against Ahmadinejad is in reality little more than waging war against Iran by proxy, which is precisely what hawks in the Administration, at the American Enterprise Institute, and in AIPAC intend. Ahmadinejad is clearly a master of maladroit one-liners and no effort should be made to legitimize his posturing, but he poses no threat to the international order and he has frequently been deliberately misquoted to make a political case against him. Ahmadinejad has called for "regime change" in Israel but he has never threatened to wipe it off the map. He has never denied that the Holocaust took place and has only questioned the imprisoning in Europe of people who have challenged the orthodox account of that event. Concerning the Holocaust, he has also asked why the Palestinians should be paying the price for something that happened in Europe sixty years ago.
Even if Ahmadinejad had made the statements attributed to him, his actual authority as Iranian President should be relevant. Ahmadinejad is no "petty and cruel dictator," contrary to the assertions of the learned Professor Bollinger. He is an elected president who has very little power and who is frequently at odds with the country's religious leadership and its parliament. Even if Iran had a nuclear arsenal, which it does not, his finger would not be on the trigger. He does not command the Iranian armed forces and he does not determine Iranian foreign policy. Far from being a belligerent expansionistic power, the last time Iran attacked a neighbor was in the seventeenth century.
Ahmadeinejad won the presidency in 2005 after promising to help the poor, a pledge that he has singularly failed to carry out. He is extremely unpopular, witness the gasoline riots in June. Demonstrators battled police, burned gas stations, and blamed the price rises and rationing on the president's failure to address serious economic problems. If Ahmadinejad runs for president again in 2009, he will almost certainly be defeated.
All of the above is not to say that the United States does not have genuine issues with Iran. They include containing Iran's nuclear ambitions, determination of its legitimate and possibly illegitimate roles in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq, its involvement with groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and improvement of its generally unsatisfactory human rights record. All of those bones of contention should be on the negotiating table with the ultimate objective of encouraging a peaceful and democratic Iran that has full and normal relations with all other countries, including the United States. But the Bush Administration has preferred the stick to the carrot, starting with consigning Iran to the "axis of evil" in January 2002.
The White House currently insists that it is exercising the diplomatic option with Iran even though it is not. Bilateral sessions in Baghdad have consisted of little more than staking out adversarial positions. The United States is demanding that Iran suspend its nuclear enrichment program as a precondition for serious negotiations, but Iran is legally entitled to carry out enrichment for peaceful means and both the Iranian public and the government are strongly supportive of that right. The US insistence on Iranian capitulation in advance of any talks means that the negotiations are intended to be a non-starter, leaving only a military solution to the Iran problem.
The American public should be aware that most of the claims of Iranian interference in Iraq and Afghanistan are based on unverifiable assertions by the Defense Department. Many of the allegations have even been contradicted by the Iraqi and Afghan governments, both of which insist that they have positive working relationships with Tehran. Even where Iranian military equipment has shown up in Afghanistan and Iraq there is no real evidence of Iranian government involvement as there is a large gray and black arms market in central Asia and the region is awash with weapons. Nor is there any solid intelligence suggesting that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Yet, the impression given by the US media, political class, and the ubiquitous talking heads is that Tehran has been actively targeting American soldiers and is hell bent on becoming a nuclear armed power, two contentions that are at best dubious.
And Congress will do nothing to stop the march to war. The passage of a more punitive Iran Sanctions Act in July coupled with last week's approval by a 77 to 22 Senate vote of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the Defense Procurement bill have provided a virtual carte blanche for the White House to attack Iran at will. Kyl-Lieberman called for the naming of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group and provided the White House with language to justify the use of military force to oppose alleged Iranian provocations. The unwillingness of the Senate and House to insist on a bill forbidding a new war without Congressional approval demonstrates that when it comes to Iran the Democrats are as bloodthirsty as any red state Republican.
Iran is not the only country in the cross hairs in what is evidently a concerted campaign to lump all of the bad guys in the Middle East into one convenient group for eventual "regime change." Bashar al-Assad's Syria was attacked by Israeli planes on September 6th. Subsequent media accounts indicated that the target was a nuclear facility located in northern Syria that was being set up with the assistance of the North Koreans. The only problem with the story about the nuclear weapons is that it was untrue and ultimately derived from Israeli sources that had an interest in justifying the incursion and portraying the Syrians as proliferators. U.S. intelligence states flatly that Syria has no nuclear weapons program and that no radioactive materials were released into the atmosphere as the result of the attack. The end result is that the American public has again been conned and those who followed the stories now believe that Syria is trying to obtain a nuclear device.
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India won its independence from UK by means of (mostly) peaceful resistance. It takes time patience and wise leadership.
Iraqis are well known through out ME as dour people who resort to violence as means of first resort.
There are other ways to influence events in their own country that do not involve RPGs and AK 47s.
Some of them may even involve reconstructing their own neighborhoods and stopping the civil war... but that takes wise local leaders...maybe one day.....maybe, not....
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already stated his “Mein Kampf” to the world; he is an enemy of the state to all non-Muslims nations. Does history have to repeat it self? http://tinyurl.com/2znnvl
Muntaba writes:
"No one is 'murdering' our troops. We started a war in Iraq.
When we carpet bombed, invaded, and then occupied Iraq, dismantling their entire governent and civil institions, people who don't want us there will kill the people we send.
That's what happens in wars. It's not 'murder' when the people being killed are an armed (illegal) occupying force.
We invaded and occupied a country. Whether or not that meets the classical definition of 'war', we are there to kill people, destroy infrastructure (then pay our friends exorbitantly to rebuild poorly), and impose our will. Anyone who stands up to us is simply fighting a war that we started, not 'murdering'."
I could hardly have expressed it better. Thanks, Muntaba.
Excellent little piece . . ., weren't it for this fatal flaw: "All of the above is not to say that the United States does not have genuine issues with Iran. They include containing Iran's nuclear ambitions . . . "
The United States has no business telling Tehran (or anyone else for that matter) that it may not develop a nuclear deterrent, particularly in light of the fact that The Zionist Entity In Palestine long ago built, with Washington's tacit approval, the hitherto sole nuclear arsenal in the Middle East.
The balance of terror will work there as well, just as it did between the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, even if Saudi Arabia and Egypt should follow Tehran's lead and build their own nuclear deterrents. Even Abizaid, no intellectual, recently said so.
Anyone who talk about "Zionist Entity" because they're incapable of uttering "ISrael" should immediately be bounced to Aljazera website.
I think a war with Iran is unnecessary at this point.
OK, now...
One of the only positive effects of misguided Iraqi war is that now when US admin. starts their sabre rattling people take it very seriously.
This may have a positive role in negotiation with Iran re. their nuclear weapons program.
Witness: Iran shaking in their boots.
Witness: Desperate Ahmadinajads' world tour with its pathetic pandering to Western opinion and half-lies about "peaceful" Iranian intentions.
There's a great degree of desperation in Iranian moves. This is a great accomplishment.
If U.S. can put such heavy pressure on an enemy state just by a bit of aggressive talk, all the more power to them.
Now, obviously there will be no war with Iran. This is a given for anyone who is capable of strategic analysis.
And on the question why shouldn't Iran have a nuke?
Because the West decided Iran cannot be trusted with it. Simple as that. Anyone got a problem with that: tough.
Magisterludi,
Who attacked us on 9/11? was it a nation with a government and everything to lose if they incur the wrath of the US? no, it was a bunch of crazy, disillusioned people who hated the US and Israel for their respective foreign policy mistakes, Mistakes that occured in their nations at their expense.
So when you say that we accomplished something here, your are DEAD wrong.
Iran has not attacked another nation for about 250 years. scarign them accomplishes nothing other than making nutjobs at AIPAC happy.
On the contrary, we are creating vast numbers of the types of people who attacked us in the first place. People whose lives, futures and self esteem have been destroyed by utterly failed US and Israeli policy.
We are greatly increasing the probability that we we will attacked in a 9/11 like manner.
As to your last statement about Iranian nukes, well I suppose the West got together, had a meeting and decided the great and admirable guys in Paksistan, you know, the nation that harbors Osama bin laden, Mullah Omar, huge throngs of al qeada and Taliban followers (quite a few in high military positions) AQ khan ( the guy who gave Nuke tech to Iran and North Korea) really DESERVED to have the bomb, so thats why we let them build it and keep it?
I think you give a GREAT deal more credit to us than we deserve on all matters regarding Foreign policy.
For Christs sake, Pakistan is 50 times more dangerous than Iran, and we let them continue to build nukes, and call them our allys!
The whole thing is a pathetic, neocon inspired ruse cooked up to continue the preemptive, totally avoidable wars in the M.E. that they so desperately want at any cost.
"This is a given for anyone who is capable of strategic analysis."
So we aren't talking about the Bush administration here, huh?
YOu're right. Cheney is not capable of strategic thought, Bush is not capable of thought.
And the people capable of strategic analysis within Cheney administration have been long ago fired or else scared into submission.
I still stand behind my assertion that Iraq war causes US enemies countless sleepless nights, which is a good thing. This at times ( not often) enables better bargaining position in negotiations. For instance, while franticly trying to build a nuke, Iran may bend over backwards to prevent any perception of interference in Iraq and Afghan.
Iran may even be willing to negotiate withdrawing all military and training support from their allies in Iraq just to be on the safe side. This all may come from being scared shitless and swallowing the US bluff.
Of course their public pronouncements would be blustery but we know and they know how really scared they are. This fact may help the West to get concessions out of them and avoid any military engagement.
The play's the thing, and this play is intent on narrowing the attention of the US public and the US Congress to Iran.
The "lunatics of the US Admin" feel they need to start a war with Iran. You pick the reason: the near full control of Middle Eastern oil, a distraction from consummate Republican ineptitude, an obsequious need to assist the Likudniks, excuse for imposition of marshal law in the US, a combination of these and more.
A war with Iran, besides being unwarranted at this time or any time in the near future, if initiated by the US or its Israeli proxy (and let's not hear any hogwash about coalitions of the willing) would be an unfathomable catastrophe for the US and the world. Only lunatics would be charging, horns down into such an enterprise.
If this comes to be, put your heads between your legs and pray.
Hysterical women afraid of marshal law in US, just when Democrats are about to sweep all legislative and executive branch...talking about lunatics...
Oh, for those on XANAX.. there will be no war with Iran... US is utterly incapable militarily financially and politically from conducting such a war. Bu shh..don't tell the Iranian that. Let's keep them off balance and guessing before the real negotiations start....
“Ahmadinejad is clearly a master of maladroit one-liners and no effort should be made to legitimize his posturing.”
Ahmadinejad is on world tour promoting Anti-Israeli, Anti-American and Anti-Western sentiment. And despite claim to the contrary, the statements in this blog do legitimize his posturing.
Example?
"Ahmadinejad... never denied that the Holocaust took place"
One can only believe this if one accept Mr.Ahmadinejad's hypocritical assurances served to gullible Western audiences or because one is sympathetic to the Iranian gola of assuming Nasser-like pan-Islamic goals.
The reality is quite different.
Here are some of Ahmadinejad quotes:
"Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces.... we don't accept this claim..."
(speaking to reporters at an Islamic summit in Mecca,November 27, 2005)
--------------
"We say that if the Holocaust happened, then the Europeans must accept the consequences... If it did not happen, then the Jews must return to where they came from."
(in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, May 11, 2006)
________________________________________________
"IF" it happened... "Some European countries claim."
This is not Holocaust denial?! What is then?!
This EXACTLY technique that American religious fanatics use. "IF" the theory of evolution is true? "SOME "scientist support the theory of evolution.
I was embarrassed to read this blog.
Shame on those who directly or indirectly support the legitimacy of such claims.
I agree with the writers that have a problem with the term "murdering our troops in Iraq". If a man enters my home, destroys it, rapes my wife and kills my children and I kill the bastard, would that qualify me as a murderer? I think not. The armed forces of the USA has done all of that and more. The people who fight back against these atrocities are murderers? A better term might be National Heroes.
Quick, act surprised...see what you get for
not supporting the impeachment effort?
If you change your mind...
http://www.impeachbush.org
Let's hope you are right Phil about Iran just wanting electric power and not nukes. Let's hope so.
If America leaves the region it is not wanted in, its terrorism problem will disappear. Simple.
Too bad they have something we need...oil. Frankly I am amzed we never did this after WW2 (invade a Middle East country with lots of oil), but who knew Texas would run dry. Then again in 1970 or at least when Reagan came in. There's a part of me that thinks alot of people in the country secretly wished that (the same ones who support Bush today).
"Frankly I am amazed we never did this after WW2"
Does this mean you are totaly unaware of the Dulles Brothers?One a Secretary State and the other a master spy,serving under Dwight Eisenhower!
You are unaware of their underhanded`removal of the Democraticlt elected prime minister of Iran,Mr.Mosedech,and their underhanded installation of the Murderous Shah as his replacement?
This is what lead to the capturing and holding of 50 memebers of the U.S.Diplomatic Corp for over a year,with the Iranians asking for the return of The Shah for trial and prosecution of his murderous regime.
To this day,Iranians don't hate,but actualy admire the American people,but they hate and despise our leadership!
That's sarcasm right?
America's presence and actions in the region only make a preexisting problem worse. They are not the basis of it.
You my friend, are either woefully uninformed or a propagandist of the most vapid kind.
Given the amount of Americans that get killed in the average large city in THIS country, should we leave them, too.
How about the Southwest? Mexico and most of the folks who've jumped the borders want us to leave there.
WFB - How casually you talk about "...murdering our troops in Iraq".
How about "...murdering our troops" that illegally invaded and have been occupying Iraq for over 4 years now. Longer than we fought in Europe during world War II.
How about "...murdering our troops in Iraq" that have been disarming, maiming, and murdering the men, women and children of Iraq who posed no threat to the United States.
What gives us any right not to expect Iraqi citizens - no, call them "patriots" - to attack and/or kill the foreigners who are disarming, maiming or murdering their fellows citizens and tearing apart their country?
Instead, you blame the violence on Saudi Arabians?
Somehow you appear to believe the US had a innate right to invade Iraq, and do whatever it wanted to that country and its citizens. Yet I have no doubt you would feel it was wrong for any other country to do the same to the United States.
Your brainwashing is part of the problem.
There is certainly a more-and-more overt sense of lawlessness that is being expressed ... by members of all three Branches of this Government, all at the same time. This lawlessness is accompanied by a great many overt acts and actions that "aid and abet," and even blatantly approve, this "business of War" that has come to dominate our Government.
The predictions that "Ike" Eisenhower made in January of 1961 have come devastatingly true.
These criminals show less and less regard for any sense of law, and therefore express no fear that the law -- impeachment and subsequent conviction -- could ever possibly be used against them in any significant way. They are utterly confidence that the game has been properly "fixed."
But the criminals are outnumbered.
There are over 320 million of "us" in this country and only a few thousand of "them." Even though "they" consider that "the armed forces of the United States" should be their toy-soldiers and "the full faith and credit of the United States" should be their piggy bank, there are several hundred million of "us" who just happen to disagree...
Also... the hundreds of millions of people on the REST of the planet, who fully understand the impact of what is happening and who have never been fooled by American propaganda... know it too.
More than hundreds of millions, more like 5 or so billion other people
Absolutely correct, sir.
Sadly, your sane discourse will not be heard by those who most need to hear, understand and believe it.
You will no doubt suffer a chest-heaving sigh of incredulous disbelief when the Iran War comes to pass.
These are sad times in America. Land of the gullible, brainwashed sheep.
"Do not go quietly into that dark night."
My reading of history tells me that "pride goeth before the fall," and that it is often when a leader or a regime considers itself most invincible and unassailable that it is suddenly and thoroughly humbled.
These thugs operate, brazenly and belligerently, on the assumption that they have the House of Representatives so thoroughly "fixed" that Articles of Impeachment will never come, and that even if they did they could turn it into "another [Bill] Clinton show" in the Senate. (That is, I have no doubt, why that "show" was staged in the first place.)
I believe, and call me naiive but still I believe it, that there is in this country 303,020,903 men and women who probably love this country far, far more than any of the few thousand present-rulers who briefly have control of its government now.
Justice is blind, and sometimes a little bit naiive, but she bears a "terrible, swift sword." She is reluctant to bring it to bear -- maybe more than she should be -- but her weapon is unstoppable.
When this country, and the world which surrounds it, finally demands justice ... it will come, and it will not be denied.
"These are sad times in America. Land of the gullible, brainwashed sheep."
Simply make it the land of the brain-SCRUBBED, anacephalic sheep, dromedaddog.
It would be illuminating to keep in mind that in recent years some veterans of the CIA have emerged as some of the most extremist bashers of America as well as openly anti-Semitic, with deep ties not only to radical leftist groups but also to neonazi and Holocaust Denial organizations and web sites. Why should anyone buy into analysis from the same people who missed the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11?
What does anti-semitism and a lousy spy agency have to do with this essay? Califlefty, you come across as very muddled and very obsessive.
Can you please quote a source for that data?
Sundialsvc4 said
"Can you please quote a source for that data?"
Sure, thats from the AIPAC Weekly Gazzette, right by the cartoon section.
Also quoted in "Likudweek" and "Settlers Quarterly"
You see, the CIA was RIGHT and therefore GOOD to tell us to go to war with Iraq, ( even though MANY anaylsts disagreed) but wrong and therefore EVIL whenever they claim ( as many of their analysts do) that our policies regarding Israel have inflamed terrorism needlessly (IE the settlements help neither Israel or the US, yet we continue to pay for them) and also helped inspire 9/11.
Just keep reading the paragraph above over and over, and eventually your mind will just shut down and then you'll really start to get it.
Also, pick up some copies of the AIPAC Weekly Gazzette.
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