| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 10:08 am Post subject: TIME: Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran? |
| TIME: Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran?
January 23, 2008 11:39 http://time-blog.com/middle_east/2008/01/bombbombbomb_bombbomb_iran_1.html
Posted by Scott MacLeod / TIME
Leading neoconservative thinker Norman Podhoretz is back, and so is the campaign to bomb Iran.
Podhoretz has a followup to his 2007 Commentary article, The Case for Bombing Iran, in a lengthy new piece arguing that his case is still valid despite the recent adjustment in U.S. intelligence's assessment of the threat posed by Iran. Podhoretz remains thoroughly convinced of the need to bomb Iran to prevent the Islamic Republic from gaining a nuclear weapon. He seems to maintain his faith in President Bush's determination to do the right thing. But he now believes that it may be up to Bush's successor to have the "clarity and courage" to discharge the "responsibility" for bombing Iran. If somebody doesn't do it, he believes, the outbreak of a future nuclear war will become "inescapable."
No doubt about it, this guy--a Giuliani campaign advisor, by the way-- is talking scary stuff. Podhoretz is accustomed to being labeled, as he puts it, "as a warmonger for contending that bombing was the only way to stop the mullahs from getting the bomb." He wears like a badge of honor the fact that he has been "excoriated by more than one member of the foreign policy elites" for rejecting a carrot-and-stick approach to Iran. It goes to his credit that Podhoretz does not pretend that bombing Iran would be free of dire consequences. "Iran would retaliate by increasing the trouble it is already making for us in Iraq and by attacking Israel with missiles armed with non-nuclear warheads but possibly containing biological and/or chemical weapons," he writes. "There would also be a vast increase in the price of oil, with catastrophic consequences for every economy in the world, very much including our own. And there would be a deafening outcry from one end of the earth to the other against the inescapable civilian casualties."
The reason for Podhoretz's WSJ update is his concern that the recent National Intelligence Estimate downplaying the Iran threat has now placed formidable political obstacles in the way of Bush's military option. The NIE, the consensus view of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies released in December, stated that Iran had shelved its nuclear weapons plans in 2003. The NIE said Iran probably acted due to international pressure, using a cost-benefit approach, and seemed to be less determined to acquire nukes "than we have been judging since 2005."
Podhoretz recounts the familiar litany of concerns about Iran's nuclear program. Tehran refuses to suspend its uranium-enrichment activities, which can be diverted from civil to military use. Iran is a state-sponsor of terrorism. Iran's quest for the bomb will trigger a cataclysmic nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
In trying to discredit the NIE, Podhoretz chronicles the history of CIA foul-ups, like failing to anticipate crises from the Korean War to 9/11, and cites the inability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to detect all of Iran's enrichment activities prior to 2003. Podhoretz then takes direct aim, disparaging the NIE's authors as "bureaucrats" out to "blow up the near-universal consensus" about the threat Iran posed. Moreover, Podhoretz insists, the halting of the weapons program in 2003 "was much less significant than a layman would inevitably be led to think." That's mainly because the civilian uranium enrichment that continues can easily be diverted to a re-started weapons program someday. Podhoretz is concerned that the NIE's conclusions also undermine the argument for tighter sanctions against Iran, given that Bush had been arguing that compelling Iran to stop enrichment through sanctions was the only alternative to doing it through force. The most disastrous development, in Podhoretz's view, is the forming of a "new consensus within the American foreign-policy establishment... that the only thing worse than letting Iran get the bomb was bombing Iran." Podhoretz is worried that the foreign policy establishment is ready to adopt "the complacent idea that we could learn to live with an Iranian bomb."
Podhoretz's reasoning until this point is not altogether unreasonable. Iran's behavior and ambitions do pose serious strategic challenges; U.S. intelligence does have an uneven record of assessing threats; the NIE does change the calculus in dealings with Iran. The problem as before is that Podhoretz's case for bombing Iran rests on something more: a simplistic, vastly overblown depiction of the Iranian regime and the threat that it poses--as if the long, troubled history of the Middle East were a Marvel comic book story of super-heroes and super-villains.
In Podhoretz's assessment, Iran is "ruled by Islamo-fascist revolutionaries who not only [are] ready to die for their beliefs but [care less] about protecting their people than about the spread of their ideology and their power." He equates the Islamic regime with Hitler's Nazi empire, arguing that failing to "stop" Iran is equivalent to European appeasement of Hitler in 1938. Quoting the work of Bernard Lewis, Podhoretz argues that "Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement. We know already that [the mullahs ruling Iran] do not give a damn about killing their own people in great numbers. We have seen it again and again. In the final scenario, and this applies all the more strongly if they kill large numbers of their own people, they are doing them a favor. They are giving them a quick free pass to heaven and all its delights."
In practice, Podhoretz contends, Iran would transfer nuclear technology to terrorists, who would use it to attack the U.S. They would seek "to realize their evil dream of (in the words of Mr. Ahmadinejad) 'wiping Israel off the map.'" Iran would use nuclear "intimidation and blackmail" to transform Europe "into a continent where Muslim law and practice would more and more prevail." He goes so far as to state that "nuclear weapons would even serve the purposes of a far more ambitious aim: the creation of what Mr. Ahmadinejad called 'a world without America.'" Stopping Iran, Podhoretz concludes, is necessary so "millions of lives can be saved."
Islamic revolutionaries do indeed play a role in Iran's regime. But as anyone who has spent an hour in Tehran knows, this is a complex regime and political system that can hardly be described so glibly. As the powerful reformist forces that elected moderate President Khatami in 1997 demonstrated, there are strongly competing influences within the Iranian system. Iranian experts estimate Supreme Leader Khamenei's popular following at little more than 15% of 65 million people, hardly the profile of an unstoppable "Islamo-fascist." President Ahmadinejad is bitterly opposed by many, including some of his fellow hard-liners and conservatives. Compared to people throughout much of the Arab world, citizens in Iran are largely tired of Islamic rule. There's little appetite for goose-stepping military parades in Tehran. The regime's die-hards are ready to sacrifice for their beliefs, but so are America's fine soldiers in Iraq--that doesn't make them evil. Khomeini did seek to spread Iran's revolutionary ideology throughout the Islamic world. It didn't succeed very well, and for a decade Iran has been busy working to improve relations with rather than overthrow autocratic Arab regimes. Podhoretz-Lewis's claim that Iranian rulers actually seek the deaths of millions of their countrymen as a religious experience is at best a bizarre and at worst an Islamophobic assertion. Iran did send hundreds of thousands to die at the war front with Iraq--after Saddam invaded Iran and proceeded to use weapons of mass destruction on the battlefield. Comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler suggests an intolerable if unintended trivialization of the Nazi Holocaust; in the three decades since the '79 revolution, no Iranian army has invaded another country. Iranian Jews may not be living in paradise, but they are represented in the Iranian parliament and have managed to emigrate safely to Israel.
Regarding Iran's potential behavior, there is little evidence to justify Podhoretz's sweeping claims that Iran seeks to destroy the U.S., turn Europe into a province of a Shi'ite Muslim empire and kill all the Jews living in Israel--perhaps by providing terrorists with nuclear weapons, and with an overall global death toll reaching into the millions. To the contrary, rhetoric aside, Iran has proved to be a pragmatic actor in international affairs, and increasingly so since the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 and the death of Ayatullah Khomeini a year later. Iran has made a major effort to develop better relations with every part of the world, except for the U.S. and Israel. In the crisis over Iran's nuclear program, it is often overlooked that unlike some countries, Israel for example, Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Despite the international focus on Iran's foreign policy, the Iranian regime itself is mostly preoccupied with domestic issues like political struggles, including crackdowns on dissent, and economic welfare.
Iran clearly does seek to become a regional superpower. That may be very worrying but it is not very surprising. No other country in the Gulf has even half the size of Iran's population. But having strategic ambitions is hardly the same as having genocidal ones. Podhoretz's characterization of Iran and its motivations completely ignores various factors that Political Science 101 would tell you about some of Iran's behavior. Might Iran's aggressive posture toward the U.S. be related to certain U.S. policies toward Iran, such as the CIA overthrow of Iran's prime minister in 1953, support for the Shah's repressive regime for a quarter century, backing for Saddam Hussein's war against Iran from 1980-88 and efforts to undermine the current government? Could Iran's support for Hizballah be related at all to Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and military occupation of the Shi'ite third of the country until 2000?
It's easy to demonize Iran, and Podhoretz's selective description lays out an extreme problem to justify his extreme solution--if Iran is threatening the lives of millions of people, it seems reasonable to prevent that by bombing Iran. But Podhoretz's concern may be less over Iran's theoretical nuclear threat than its actual political threat. A struggle for hearts and minds is underway in the Middle East, and Iran's outlook is winning more of them than America's is. Iran's real threat--with or without a nuclear weapon--is how it gives Islamic and political sustenance to those who oppose the policies of America and its allies in the region. If Iran poses the massive threat to humanity that Podhoretz claims it does, it seems like it would be a good idea to do something that the U.S. has not done and Podhoretz has not bothered to recommend: send a U.S. Secretary of State to Tehran to get a first-hand look, not to appease but to judge whether diplomacy has a chance to avert Bush's feared World War III (Podhoretz feels we are already fighting WW IV). If Podhoretz is worried about a nuclear arms race, perhaps its time to invite all the countries in the region, including Israel and Iran, to sign a pact destroying nuclear arsenals or pledging not to acquire them.
Iran's nuclear ambitions do not pose a clear and imminent danger, according to the NIE. But perhaps bombing Iran would mainly deal a good blow to a center of Islamic power in the Middle East, just as the toppling of Saddam Hussein dealt a setback for Arab power in the region. In both cases, false or trumped up fears about nuclear threats would have provided the convenient excuse to act.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
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White House intensifying to attack Iran (Hillary Clinton taking Jewish money to support coming attack on Iran as mentioned by Sy Hersh and Norman Podhoretz and Eliott Abrams mentioned as well):
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/10/2/seymour_hersh_white_house_intensifying_plans
Last edited by Alpha on Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:52 am; edited 1 time in total | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 10:30 am Post subject: |
| January 17, 2008
Bringing Death and Destruction to Muslims
by Paul Craig Roberts
After pandering to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's right-wing government last week, US president George W. Bush carried the Israeli/neoconservative campaign against Iran to Arab countries. Sounding as authentic as the "Filipino Monkey," Bush told the Arab countries that "Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terror," and that "Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere."
To no effect. Every country in the world, except America, knows by now that the US is the world's leading state sponsor of terror and that the neoconservative drive for US hegemony over the world threatens the security of nations everywhere. But before we get into this, let's first see what Bush means by "terrorist" and Iran's sponsorship of terrorism.
Bush considers Iran to be the leading state sponsor of terror, because Iran is believed to fund Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian ghetto. Hezbollah and Hamas are two organizations that exist because of Israeli aggression against Palestine and Lebanon. The two organizations are branded "terrorist" because they resist Israel's theft of Palestine and Israel's designs on southern Lebanon. Both organizations are resistance organizations. They resist Israel's territorial expansion and this makes them "terrorist."
They are terrorists because they don't receive billions in US military aid and cannot put armies in the field with tanks, fighter jets and helicopter gunships, backed up by US spy satellites and Israel's nuclear weapons – although Hezbollah, a small militia, has twice defeated the Israeli army. However, Palestine is so thoroughly under the Israeli heel that Hamas can resist only with suicide bombers and obsolete rockets. It is dishonest to damn the terrorist response but not the policies that provoke the response.
The US is at war in Iraq, because the neoconservatives want to rid Israel of the Muslim governments – Iraq, Iran and Syria – that are not American surrogates and, therefore, are willing to fund Palestinian and Lebanese resistance to Israeli aggression. Israel, protected by the US, has disobeyed UN resolutions for four decades and has been methodically squeezing Palestinians out of Palestine.
Americans do not think of themselves or of Israel as terrorist states, but the evidence is complete and overwhelming. Thanks to the power of the Israel Lobby, Americans only know the Israeli side of the story, which is that evil anti-semite Palestinians will not let blameless Israelis live in peace and persist in their unjustified terror attacks on an innocent Israeli state.
The facts differ remarkably from Israel Lobby propaganda. Israel illegally occupies Palestine. Israel sends bulldozers into Palestinian villages and knocks down Palestinian houses, occasionally killing an American protester in the process, and uproots Palestinian olive groves. Israel cuts Palestinian villages off from water, hospitals, farmlands, employment and schools. Israel builds special roads through Palestine on which only Israelis can travel. Israel establishes checkpoints everywhere to hinder Palestinian movement to hospitals, schools and from one enclave or ghetto to another. Many Palestinians die from the inability to get through checkpoints to medical care. Israel builds illegal settlements on Palestinian lands. Israeli Zionist "settlers" take it upon themselves to evict Palestinians from their villages and towns in order to convert them into Israeli settlements. A huge wall has been built to wall off the stolen Palestinian lands from the remaining isolated ghettoes. Israeli soldiers shoot down Palestinian children in the streets. So do Israeli Zionist "settlers."
All of this has been documented so many times by so many organizations that it is pathetic that Americans are so ignorant. For example, Israeli peace groups such as Gush Shalom or Jeff Halper's Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions provide abundant documentation of Israel's theft of Palestine and persecution of Palestinians. Every time the UN passes a resolution condemning Israel for its crimes, the US vetoes it.
The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees' film, The Iron Wall, reveals the enormity of Israel's crimes against Palestine.
President Jimmy Carter, Israel's friend, tried to bring peace to the Middle East but was frustrated by Israel. Carter was demonized by the Israel Lobby for calling, truthfully, the situation that Israel has created "apartheid."
Historians, including Israel's finest, such as Ilan Pappe, have documented The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, the title of Pappe's book published in 2006.
Israelis, such as Uri Avnery, a former member of Israel's Knesset, are stronger critics of Israel's policies toward Palestine than can be found in America. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is more outspoken in its criticism of Israeli policies than any newspaper would dare to be in North America or Europe.
But it is all to no avail in brainwashed America where Israelis wear white hats and Arabs wear black hats.
The ignorance of Americans commits US foreign policy to the service of Israel. As Uri Avnery wrote recently, a visitor from another planet, attending the recent press conference in Jerusalem, would conclude that Olmert is the leader of the superpower and that Bush is his vassal.
Americans don't know what terror is. To know terror, you have to be a Palestinian, an Iraqi, or an Afghan.
Layla Anwar, an Iraqi Internet blogger, describes what terror is like. Terror is families attending a wedding being blown to pieces by an American missile or bomb and the survivors being blown to pieces at the funeral of the newlyweds. Terror is troops breaking down your door in the middle of the night, putting guns to your heads, and carrying off brothers, sons, and husbands with bags over their heads and returning to rape the unprotected women. Terror is being waterboarded in one of America's torture dungeons. Terror is "when you run from hospital ward to hospital ward, from prison to prison, from militia to militia looking for your loved one only to recognize them from their teeth fillings in some morgue."
For people targeted by American hegemony, terror is realizing that Americans have no moral conscience. Terror is the lack of medicines from American embargoes that led to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked by Lesley Stahl if the American policy was worth the children's deaths, Madeleine Albright, President Bill Clinton's secretary of state, said "we think the price is worth it."
In the feeble minds of the White House Moron and his immoral supporters, the massive deaths for which America is responsible, including those inflicted by Israel, have nothing to do with Muslim enmity toward America. Instead, Muslims hate us for our "freedom and democracy," the real threat to which comes from Bush's police state measures and stolen elections.
There is dispute over the number of Iraqis killed or murdered by Bush's illegal invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard, but everyone agrees the number is very large. Many deaths result from American bombing of civilian populations as the Israelis did in Lebanon and do in Gaza. There is nothing new about these bombings. President Clinton bombed civilians in Serbia in order to dictate policy to Serbia. But when Americans and Israelis bomb other peoples, it is not terror. It is only terror when the US or Israel is attacked in retaliation.
The Israeli assault from the air on Beirut apartment houses is not terror. But when a Palestinian puts on a suicide belt and blows himself up in an Israeli cafe, that's terror. When Clinton bombs a Serbian passenger train, that's not terror, but when a buried explosive takes out an American tank somewhere in Iraq, that's terror.
Aggressors always have excuses for their aggression. Hitler was an expert at this. So are the US and Israel.
Unfortunately for the world, there's little chance for change in America or Israel. The presidential candidates (Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) who would bring change in Washington, without which there will be no change in Israel, are not in the running for their party's nomination. As John J. Mearsheimer noted on January 12, the candidates in the running are as much under the thumb of the Israel Lobby as Bush. The candidates are Bush clones as strongly committed as Bush to hegemony, war, Israel and executive power.
The possible exception is Obama. If he is an exception, that makes him a threat to the powers that be, and, as we might have witnessed in the NH primary, the Republican-supplied, Republican-programmed Diebold electronic voting machines can easily be rigged to deny him the Democratic nomination. Hillary will not resist Israel's wishes, and her husband's presidency bombed at will his demonized victims.
There is no essential difference between the candidates or between the candidates and George W. Bush. Alabama Governor George Wallace, a surprisingly successful third party candidate for the presidency, said as long ago as 1968, "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties." Today, four decades later, there's not a penny's worth of difference, not an ounce of difference. Both parties have revealed themselves to be warmonger police state parties. The US Constitution has few friends in the capital city.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=12224 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 10:02 pm Post subject: |
| Internal Memo Takes On Obama’s Mideast Approach.
A confidential memo questioning Senator Barack Obama’s potential approach to Middle East policy was distributed earlier this month among staffers at a major American Jewish organization.
Obama’s approach to dealing with Iran “raises questions,” said the document, which circulated within the American Jewish Committee. It also suggested that Obama placed the burden of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict primarily on the Jewish state. …
… Obama has found himself at the center of several public exchanges concerning his personal associations, his background and his commitment to Israel. …
http://www.forward.com/articles/12543/
--------------------------------
THE HIDDEN COST OF FREE CONGRESSIONAL TRIPS TO ISRAEL.
Branded as 'educational,' these trips offer Israeli propagandists an opportunity to expose members of Congress to only their side of the story. -- By Jim Abourezk, former Democratic senator from South Dakota.
… Money needed to run for office can come with great ease from supporters of Israel, provided that the candidate makes certain promises, in writing, to vote favorably on issues considered important to Israel. What drives much of congressional support for Israel is fear – fear that the pro-Israel lobby will either withhold campaign contributions or give money to one's opponent. …
What the pro-Israel lobby reaps for its investment in these tours is congressional support for Israeli desires. For years, Israel has relied on billions of dollars in US taxpayer money. Shutting off this government funding would seriously impair Israel's harsh occupation. …
… when it comes to flagrant human rights violations committed by Israel, the US sends more money and shields Israel from criticism. …
The US rattles its sabers at Iran for its nuclear energy ambitions – and alleged pursuit of nuclear arms – while remaining silent about Israel's nuclear-weapons arsenal. …
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0126/p09s01-coop.html
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/freetrips.html | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 9:14 am Post subject: |
| Neocon warmonger McCain warns that there will even more wars for Israel:
McCain Warns: "There Will Be Other Wars"
Sam Stein
The Huffington Post Link and VIDEOS
January 27, 2008 02:22 PM
The presidential candidate who sang "Bomb bomb Iran" is already looking towards the war after the war in Iraq.
Sen. John McCain told a crowd of supporters on Sunday, "It's a tough war we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be other wars." Offering more of his increasingly bleak "straight talk," he repeated the claim: "I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."
McCain did not elaborate who the United States would be fighting. But he did warn the crowd to be ready for the ramifications of current and future battles.
"And right now - we're gonna have a lot of PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] to treat, my friends," he said. "We're gonna have a lot of combat wounds that have to do with these terrible explosive IEDs that inflict such severe wounds. And my friends, it's gonna be tough, we're gonna have a lot to do."
Watch the video:
The remarks underscore a growing effort on McCain's behalf to keep the political discussion centered on foreign affairs (his strong suit) and not the economy (an admitted weakness). They also reflect a take of America's military policy that is heavily weighted towards combat. Earlier on the campaign trail, McCain posited that U.S. forces could be in Iraq for the next 100 years. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:55 pm Post subject: Bush: Don't show Iran US is paper tiger |
| Bush: Don't show Iran US is paper tiger http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Bush_Don_t_show_Iran_US_is_paper_ti_01312008.html
US President George W. Bush on Thursday warned that a hasty pull-out from Iraq would ruin fragile progress there and convince extremists and Iran that the United States is a "paper tiger."
"Failure in Iraq would embolden the extremists. Failure in Iraq would say to thugs and killers, the United States is a paper tiger," Bush said in a speech here. "Failure in Iraq would embolden Iran."
Bush also painted his most rosy picture in months of the situation in Iraq, but left open the possibility that he could leave office in January 2009 with more US troops there than before he "surged" 30,000 more soldiers last year.
"You know, a lot of folks say, well, what's next, Mister President? And my answer is, we have come too far in this important theater in this war on terror not to make sure that we succeed," he said.
Bush noted that roughly 20,000 more US troops were expected to come home by July, but emphasized that "any further troop reductions will be based upon commanders and conditions."
And the unpopular president left no doubt that the US public's lack of support for the war would not shape his decisions on troop levels -- despite the potential political peril for his party ahead of November elections.
"I will be making decisions based upon success in Iraq. The temptation, of course, is for people to say, well, 'make sure you do the politically right thing.' That's not my nature," he said.
"The surge is working," Bush said.
"Markets that were once shut down in dismal places as a result of attacks are beginning to come back and flourish, and life is improving dramatically. Baghdad, the capital, which was once subject to unbelievable sectarian violence, is improving, and life is returning -- and that's positive," he said.
Bush had promised the crackdown would quiet sectarian violence that he blamed for thwarting Iraqi national reconciliation and that Iraqi security forces would be in charge of the whole country by November.
But 2007 proved the deadliest year for US troops since the 2003 invasion, major political progress has been elusive, and Iraqi officials have suggested that it may not be until 2012 that they can assume full control of security.
Bush said that reconciliation was working at a local level, and that the Baghdad government was sharing oil revenues with the provinces -- downplaying elusive national reconciliation, and a law codifying oil revenue sharing.
White House officials say they expect to know more about troop levels after a progress report, expected in March or April, from the US ambassador in Baghdad and the commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
