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Not just the Right but the Duty
In an article for the Toronto Sun (thanks to Fran) Eric Margolis writes on Iran new U.S. whipping boy
This column has long predicted the Bush administration would orchestrate a pre-election crisis over Iran designed to whip up patriotic fervour in the U.S. and distract public and media attention from the Iraq fiasco.
The growing clamour over Iran’s nuclear intentions, with rumblings about air strikes against Iran’s reactors in the fall, may prove to be a part of just such a manufactured crisis.
Remember, these latest fevered claims about Iran come from the same “reliable intelligence sources” and neo-conservative hawks who insisted Iraq had a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that threatened the U.S., with intimate links to al-Qaida.
The bad thing is – it will work just as it did before. And the US public will support it – just as they did before.
Walter Mead of the Council of Foreign Relations in todays LA Times: A Darker Shadow Than Iraq
The U.S. may wind up facing in Iran the choice our intelligence agencies told us we faced in Iraq: between military action against a rogue regime or allowing that regime to assemble an arsenal of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
…
This choice is not yet inevitable, and the diplomats still have some tricks up their sleeves, but the U.S. is closer than many think to what could well be the biggest and most difficult crisis in the war on terror yet.
By setting a “choice” that is obliviously preframed, this article, as others, is also setting the answer. The American political class, media and electorate did answered to a similar “choice” before and will answer the same way now that the question is asked again (of course they will be promised, that everythings will work out better this time).
The real question, choice and answer is of course a different one.
Has the souvereign nation of Iran, within reach of nuclear weapons of at least Pakistan, Russia, Israel and the US and sitting on huge amounts of some very valuable commodities, the right to decide to aquire the (historically working) deterance of nuclear weapons?
Niki, a female Iranian blogger, has this answer:
i am against militarization of all kinds, especially the nuclear sort. and you wont be surprised to hear that i am not crazy about the idea that such weapons would be at the disposal of the highly volatile and contested iranian regime.
However, we do live in a time where certain countries not only brazenly invade sovereign nations in clear violation of international law, but also expect those formerly independent nations to become permanent military bases for the invaders, to ultimately pay for the invasion from their natural resources (not to mention with their blood), and to be grateful and humble to boot.
so given this, yes, you are right, from the point of view of the iranian government who witnessed what happened to iraq despite its cooperation with the teams of inspectors who were poking in every nook and cranny for years, it is in fact a rational act of self defense to end cooperation with inspectors and pursue nuclear weapons.
of course you wont hear me say that i think it is a good idea for them to do so.
but if for a moment i distance myself from my views on the current iranian regime and shift the focus to the iranian people–each time i think of the possibility of cluster bombs dropped on civilians, foreign soldiers protecting our oil fields while our ancient relics are looted and destroyed, an occupation army which gleefully rapes and humiliates teenage boys and young men raped and humiliated, or jerks emailing me lectures on “collateral damage” and the “costs of freedom”–i find myself closer to the idea that the iranian regime has not just the right but the duty to protect its citizens from the onslaught of invaders who have as much regards for international law and human rights as does the regime itself.
How would you answer the question?
c-span had a show with Gary Hart and John Lewis Gaddis speaking before some group in Brooklyn, I think it was, about the current situation vis a vis the U.S. and the nations of the Middle East.
Hart said that America needs to discuss, openly, this new stage of empire. He sounded a warning about the dangers to our democracy if we go farther down this road.
(Hart didn’t call it a stage, but I think that the way Yalta divided much of the world into two empires, with wars fought outside of either’s established client states would seem to make the U.S. qualify as an empire at that time, if not long before.)
Gaddis talked about Jefferson Federal Empire as the justification of expansion, along with John Adams’ response to the burning of Washington by the British and the response of taking Florida and Texas as examples of our long-standing behavior as an empire. In other words, what we are doing now is biz as usual, and there is nothing wrong with it, and this is what our govt is going to do to protect this nation, because its duty is to do so.
Gaddis was so coldly “real politik” –chilling, really. But he stated that even if Kerry were to win the presidency, U.S. foreign policy (as others have expressed concerns for here) would not change because the concensus among the power brokers in this country is that, as an empire, we must and will do what Napoleon did in Europe.
Of course, what Napoleon did, whatever the opinion of these actions, is to conquer much of Europe and overthrow long-standing hereditary rulers and establish govts that modernized education and introduced a form of “republican empire.”
And that’s where we are now. Because of the attacks on 9-11, the powers-that-be have decided that the middle east must be remade with rulers who will impose a rule that does not threaten America.
…and this is what Americans are responding to when they respond positively to Bush…the idea that we can export “democracy” to others at the point of a gun and make our own homes safe.
…and this is what any and every politician has to address, and why the Democrats also voted for the Iraqi war resolution, and why there will be no great opposition to further military actions, especially in Iran, considering the previous engagement in the 70s between the U.S. and Iran, and considering the fear Americans have of a nuclear attack.
Of course, our national interests, as viewed by these grand strategists, coincides with Israel’s, but I do not think it is driven by Israel at all…tho Israel provides a nice distraction to blame. And all the talk for the American religious right nutcases is only a way to whip up support in terms that the Talibornagains will accept when sending their children off to war.
Gaddis offered the example of America’s alliance with Russia/Stalin against Hitler as a history lesson about our alliance with Saudi Arabia (and no doubt Pakistan) at this time.
But the House of Saud surely knows what is coming their way, too, if they do not find a way to stablize the problems in their own country other than by exporting them to other countries.
Who knows how this moment in history will play out? Who could have imagined, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, that twenty-five years later the Soviet Union would implode?
It’s somewhat easier to imagine that the proxy wars of the eighties would become THE issue now, because of the industrialized world’s need for oil to fuel their economies.
So, the real issue for the U.S. seems to be what group would be better to continue this policy. Kerry offers more carrot than stick to Europe…as Hart said, rather than trying to rethink or reform the U.N., BushCo smacked it upside the head.
Bush offers the neocons and their fetish for war. Kerry offers multilateral pressure or war.
Bush offers John Ashcroft’s Justice Dept to prosecute the threat of terrorism in America…vs…who knows who, but the generally accepted wisdom is that anyone would be better than Ashcroft.
But those are the choices this nation has at this time, whether we like them or not.
I feel resigned to this sad fact.
None of our leaders are going to disengage from the middle east, though some might try to build alliances and use other nations’ soldiers to do some of the fighting, if other methods don’t achieve the demanded result.
However, there is a place for those who offer dissent, too. If for no other reason than to curb the excesses of empirical power. Yet I don’t think we will stop this power.
No doubt, the U.S. will also cease to be an empire, as all empires eventually do. What happens in the meantime will be what we all live with and through.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 26 2004 3:35 utc | 26
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