As always, Seymour Hersh explains the labyrinthine intricacies of American power and influence better than anyone. And his latest piece is a fucking doozy, and not just because it boasts research deeper than Wikipedia. No, it's because Hersh has uncovered how the Bush
administration's strategic shifting in Iraq has betrayed both its motivations for invading the country, and how dependent they are on the economic influence of Saudi Arabia. If you remember (do you?), 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were fundamentalist Saudi wack jobs, not
Iraqis or Iranians at all, but that hasn't stopped Bush and Cheney from sticking to them like white on rice. One would imagine that a country which maintains jihadist training schools whose only purpose is to engender a programmatic hatred of Israel and the United States
wouldn't have a place in our foreign policy. But one would be wrong.
Dead wrong.
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"In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has
deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy
and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East
strategy. The 'redirection,' as some inside the White House have
called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an
open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it
into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush
Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities
in the Middle East...One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is
that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American
military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from
the Administration's perspective, the most profound --- and unintended
--- strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran."
Now, one could argue that Cheney and Bush invaded Iraq to style="font-style:italic;">deliberately empower Iran, in order
to pull them into a widening conflict to rewrite the map of the Middle
East. After all, Bush stated as much in his Axis of Evil speech, by
singling them out together. Whether or not he was too stupid to
realize that Iraq's Shiite majority would be emboldened by the defeat
of Sunni titan Saddam Hussein is irrelevant, and naive to boot. Cheney
has been in this business too long to be that dumb. No, it's much more
likely that the Iraq oil grab was just the appetizer for the Iranian
entree, which would also explain why the drumbeat of war with Iran
keeps going even though everyone, including American generals who have
threated to resign if it comes to pass, doesn't want anything to do
with it. Well, except the Saudis, that is, who are salivating at the
chance to put down a possible Shiite takeover of the Middle East, one
that was nothing but a pipe dream until America invaded Iraq and threw
the whole region into chaos. Here's Hersh:
"The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick
Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the
departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations
Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi
national-security adviser...The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia
and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both
countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved
in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in
Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have
become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations."
First off, let's get one thing out of the way right now: Cheney,
Abrams and Khalizad were all signatories to the href="http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm"
target="blank">infamous PNAC memorandum to Bill Clinton advising,
what else, an invasion of Iraq and a subjugation of the Middle East
via American military might. Also included on that letter are
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby and Jeb Bush, among other neocon nutjobs.
Secondly, the idea of Saudi Arabia and Israel working together ought
to make one choke on the coffee they are trying to wake up and smell.
And now that Israel has more or less come right out and asked for
permission -- from the Pentagon, of all places! -- to use Iraq's
airspace to target="blank">launch nuclear
strikes on Iran, that bizarre collusion is coming into
sharp relief:
"The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when
the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The
Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of
the Hiroshima bomb. Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs
would open 'tunnels' into the targets. 'Mini-nukes' would then
immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep
underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout. 'As soon as the
green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the
Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,' said one of the sources."
Sure, the nuclear project will be demolished, but what about the
Project for the New American Century, a wanker's utopia in which
America enforces its democratic (laugh with me) will at the barrel of
a gun across the Middle East? Will that succeed? Only an idiot would
think so. The move will spark a massive regional conflagration whose
main target would be none other than the United States. And those
dolts in Israel. Talk about keeping it hyperreal. But more
importantly, such a widening conflict would give Cheney and Bush the
clearance they are looking for to go medieval on their enemies in the
Middle East, which is more or less anyone who stands in the way of
what little fossil fuels are left in the area. That is, literally, the
only reason we are there. If the Middle East only had poppies and
heroin to offer, we'd be bombing the shit out of Venezuela as I write
this.
But what about that American military might, which is fracturing by
the second fighting too many warring factions to count? Soldiers from
America and the UK got into this war thinking they were in Iraq to
disarm Saddam's nukes, and then to export democracy to the Sunnis and
Shiites in the region. And then...well, that's not really the point is
it? To be totally frank, our soldiers are there killing and dying on a
daily basis to keep alive the Cheney plan to reorganize the Middle
East, all of it. And if that means that American soldiers have to die
at the hands of the same people their superiors are trying to court --
the Sunnis -- well, so be it. Because that is the way it is.
Let's go back to Hersh:
"Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security
Council official, told me that 'there is nothing coincidental or
ironic' about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. 'The
Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous
and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests
in Iraq, when --- if you look at the actual casualty numbers --- the
punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order
of magnitude,' Leverett said. 'This is all part of the campaign of
provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that
at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration
will have an open door to strike at them.'"
In other words, American and British soldiers have since been killed
extensively at the hands of the Sunnis they disempowered after taking
Saddam and his Baathists down, and these are the very punkass bitches
that the administration is cozying up to in hopes of drawing the
bullseye on Iran. Add that to the fact that it is the fundamentalist
Sunnis of Saudi Arabia -- including Osama bin Laden himself! -- who
killed more than 3,000 people on 9/11, and you have a hyperreal
clusterfuck of mammoth proportions.
And what are we going to do about it? Is this not sleeping with the
enemy? Is this not treason? Is this not an impeachable offense? I
implore every single one of you who even pretends to care about the
death of innocents -- American, Iraqi and otherwise -- to wake the
fuck up. Any alliance with Saudi Arabia is a deal with the devil, and
this is coming from a guy who realizes that not only are devils
invented, but that Satan himself used to be an angel. And don't even
begin to play the pragmatist with me: Sure, Saudi Arabia has billions
invested in the American economy, but blood money is blood money. They
killed citizens on our turf, on Iraq's turf, and now we are making
deals with them to kill Iranians via nuclear strikes. Iranians who did
nothing to us, who couldn't even begin to sniff dominance in the
Middle East until we marched to Baghdad and blew the whole thing wide
open.
Short version, we are sacrificing our troops and citizens for no good
reason. At all. Their blood, and the blood of those they kill in kind,
is being spilled for a paradigm shift invented by cowards who have
never picked up a gun of their own to fight for anything. Any further
support for this war, for this president, for this administration, is
an implicit rubber-stamp for the murder of our own. I simply cannot
make that any clearer. Neither can Hersh.
So the next time you hear anyone, Democrat or Republican, waffle on
the war, ditch them for good. And spread the word. Whether that is
Hillary, Obama, McCain, whoever: They have to feel the pain of their
hypocrisy, especially when they claim to support their troops who are
being massacred by the very figures they are trying to make deals with
in the dark, where truth and justice have no place and no pull. This
is the only issue at stake. Everything else is just smoke, mirrors and
murder.
The title of this piece is liberally riffed off an excellent
article written by Morphizm's
own Ross Levine, which is href="http://www.morphizm.com/politix/levine/levine_smoke.html">viewable
here. Note the date, if you will. We've been calling bullshit on
this escapade since before it started. It was that easy, yet not easy
enough for Clinton, Biden and the rest to figure out. Why? Good
question. You should target="blank">ask them.