Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
Back to Main

September 18, 2007
Voices Against War on Iran

Some sane people speaking out against War on Iran:

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

[…]
"War, in the state-to-state sense, in that part of the region would be devastating for everybody, and we should avoid it _ in my mind _ to every extent that we can," he said. link

more important:

"We need always to remember that the use of force could only be resorted to when … every other option has been exhausted. I don’t think we are at all there," el Baradei told reporters on the sidelines of the ongoing 51st annual regular session of the IAEA General Conference.
[…]
He said the IAEA has found no evidence of "weaponization" from Iranian nuclear enrichment work, although during his speech at the conference he regretted Iran’s refusal to fall in line with UN resolutions. link

another voice:

Iran’s nuclear issue could be settled through negotiation, Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said here Monday.

"I am convinced that the solution through negotiation could be achieved," she told the media during the ongoing 51st annual regular session of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
[…]
As for the possibility of launching military action against Iran predicted recently by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Plassnik said that Kouchner was the only one who could answer this question with his own opinion, noting she could not understand why Kouchner used such warlike words.
link

Who can? Kouchner and Sarkozy have cought some foot in mouth disease. The sensivity of their public statements on Iran is even below the level of Ahmedinejad’s speeches.

The above quotes leave a stall taste though. Why do these people feel a need to start this campaign now? What do they know?

Posted by b on September 18, 2007 at 08:38 UTC | Permalink
Comments

China Opposes Threats of Force on Iran
Not that that is any surprise, but just another voice added to the chorus.

Posted by: Bea | Sep 18 2007 11:11 utc | 1

There are also ways to live with a nuclear USA, Russia, France, Pakistan, India, Israel, UK…why don’t we pursue them?

Posted by: ralphieboy | Sep 18 2007 11:14 utc | 2

Pepe Escobar: French-kissing the war on Iran

The Sarkozy-sponsored, Europe-wide demonization-of-Iran campaign has now begun.
…
Meanwhile, it seems clear that Sarkozy’s game is playing messenger to big (energy) business. He is well known in Paris as the man of the CAC 40 – the French equivalent of the Dow Jones index.
The French rapprochement with the Bush administration – in both Iraq and Iran – could not but revolve around oil, what has been called “the entry of France into Mesopotamia and Persia”. …

Posted by: b | Sep 18 2007 15:37 utc | 3

Slightly off topic but, as usual, worth reading is Badger’s latest blog , which,
in its final comments, does indeed entangle with this thread.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Sep 18 2007 15:56 utc | 4

Look for Kouchner in wikipedia.in google, His life. his works.his ideas . He want to tell us “something” he knows.

Posted by: curious | Sep 18 2007 15:59 utc | 5

B
Abizaid’s comments fall within a continuum of statements from senior serving US military officials that began with the JCS director of planning, Lt-Gen Renuart, asserting back in April 2005 that there was no military solution to Iran and that diplomacy had to be made to work.
Abizaid made similar comments last year, prior to his retirement, as did Zinni.
Again, last year Pace asserted in testimony to Congress that the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan would impact the US’s ability to “close-out” other conflicts that it got involved in – the sub-text being that whilst the US could start a war with Iran, it could give no guarantees that military operations would be short-lived and that the second and third-order consequences ( in Zinni’s phrase ) would not come inot play.
Fallon’s position on initiating conflict with Iran is well-known – “not on my watch”.
During his Capitol Hill performance last week, Petraeus very specifically responded to a question regarding “hot pursuit” into Iran that his remit was confined to within the borders of Iraq, and that such questions were for his immediate superior at Centcom – ie Fallon – to deal with.

Posted by: dan | Sep 18 2007 16:01 utc | 6

What I don’t understand is why there are ANY UN resolutions against Iran since there is no evidence whatsoever it has broken the NPT. It has every right under the treaty it voluntarily signed to enrich uranium to civilian levels — which it hasn’t even reached yet. As far as I can see, no other signatory country who is enriching uranium has resolutions against it. Why just Iran?

Posted by: Ensley | Sep 18 2007 18:52 utc | 7

“You’d think that General Petraeus’ civilian casualties data and the Defense Department’s civilian casualties data would at least show the same trend lines. You’d be wrong.”
link
Pentagon has compiled the casualty stats collected at the level below Petraus. They don’t match. That must be one heated debate leaking out of the five-sided fortress.
(In this thread?)

Posted by: small coke | Sep 19 2007 1:01 utc | 8

Kouchner is an lunatic warmonger, to put it kindly; a sadist cloaked in his Doctor stripes, a prime strategist, a liar and faker, to be more pointed. (And worse, but that I cannot go into.)
So many times I have posted watch out for this man, and most Americans and others have reacted in horror, the humanitarian French Dokctorr, so good looking, so morally right. I once once even banned for posting negatively about him. (Then the mod took pity on me because on all other issues I was sensible, yikes.)
It was predicted that Sarko would nominate him to a Ministry. Bloggers bet on it, TV watchers saw the wink winks. One thought, oh, the Min. of health, as he is a medico. Others moaned because Sarko would poach the ‘best’ Socialists. (Which he did. K is nominally a socialist.)
All beside the point, as Kouchner’s profile or his value (to Sarko or the PTB) has nothing to do with health or disease, socialism, or good looks, he is an Atlantist, a closet Zionist, a war monger (humanitarian intervention) with cover for the public, a neo-liberal of rare cruelty, a pearl!
What most foreignors don’t realise is that he has never been elected to any post (merci les Francais, they still have their heads screwed on), with one trivial exception, wiki will provide.
Kofi Annan fired him from the Governorship of Kosovo, for reasons never disclosed – probably one of the strongest actions Kofi ever took, but the facts were covered up, the parties agreed to that.
Also, the history of the various French medical ‘humanitarian’ associations is complex and dark – it is misguided to assume that all these do-good medical associations are above board and only concerned with poor kids who have aids or polio. K has not belonged to just one.
Kouchner has waited 40 years or more to come into his own. He planned his career that long ago (imho.) He is married to a very high up, famous, TV personality in France. Media-Gov links are even stronger in France than in the US. (The ties are different and all that could be debated.)

Posted by: Tangerine | Sep 19 2007 20:24 utc | 9

Shoring it up, this looong, academic paper, PDF, by an American, Kristin Ross, title:
Ethics and the Rearmament of Imperialism: The French Case
makes some good points weeding through the wordiness…
first sentence, not bad at all:
Waving the banner of human rights in France was the obligatory gesture that accompanied the reconciliation, in the late 1970s, of some self-proclaimed spokesmen for the French left with capitalism and the market.
first sentence of second parag:
To understand, then, the abrupt emergence in France of a discourse of human rights, along with the moralizing underpinnings necessary to justify any number of humanitarian interventions in the course of the 1980s and 1990s, we must return to the mid-1970s and to a now faded page in the history of French intellectual life.
Not faded imho, but the snippets give the flavor.
Ross PDF

Posted by: Tangerine | Sep 19 2007 20:58 utc | 10

The so called liberation of Kuwait (Gulf war I, or Persian Gulf war, 91) was a common effort and largely paid for by the Internationals, Japan, I believe, in first place. (Not the US.) and it passed over quietly. Iraq, we all know about.
None of that facing Iran. Now, diplomacy, and hush agreements are past… It is go it alone or nothing. No more futzing around. Military power must show its face, its power, prevail.
The sanctions (security council at the UN) on Iran are more or less ignored, partly because the US itself doesn’t pay too much attention, as it did not in the oil for food set up in Iraq. At that time (sorry no links) the UN made an exception: the US would control the seas and be responsible for catching oil smugglers by sea, implied, Saddam trickery..
The first indictments and accusations in the oil for food scandal, are pointed to US companies …going through the courts now…not reported in the US press.
Everyone is signing deals with Iran, the sanctions are a joke.
Switz. (tiny, no power) felt safe enough to sign up for a gas deal with Iran (the TAP, trans Adriatic pipeline, enormous investments…) to deliver some x amount of natural gas. Signed and sealed, the future will tell.
The Swiss president, Micheline Calmy Rey, met with Q. Nozari (interim minister of petrol of Iran), and he also met with our Minister of Energy, Moritz, it is all shipshape.. Stempel! (stamped.)
Cheese fondue by candlelight! Cosy visits to melting glaciers! Hugs in stately halls….with the execrable white ‘state’ wine gulped down or eyed suspiciously, or summarily refused, bring on the orange juice. (from Florida, always.)
The Iranians have said this is a milestone accord that can inspire other European countries…
The popular press in CH says it is better to face US impotent rage and skirmish with US fakealorum sanctions rather than deal with Russia, the Red Devil, Putin! eg. headline: Import from Iran to not depend on Moscow (Le Temps, 15 sept. 2007, right wing moderate paper.)

Posted by: Tangerine | Sep 19 2007 21:38 utc | 11

Another drip of acrylic onto the carapace. Ahmadinejad wanted to drop a wreath at ground zero while in NY. “Merde!” outrage from the amerikan empires bosses who understand how that would complicate the insinuations about Iranian involvement in 911. Of course that is precisely why Ahmadinejad wants to do it. Ever the populist Ahmadinejad wants to reach past the elite and talk to amerikan people. He’s got no chance in NY, why doesn’t he pick somewhere less . . .well. . . zionist?
I suspect he gets an entry permit for NY only, and that because of the UN and I betcha that would be withdrawn if’n it could be.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 20 2007 21:20 utc | 12

Back to Main