All The Perfumes of Arabia
In last week’s column I wrote about the very real possibility that George Bush and Dick Cheney will make a preemptive bombing strike on Iran before they skedaddle out of office - you know, because all their other ideas have worked out so well. In case you don’t remember the column, it ended with this: Bomb Iran? No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!
Although Bush has been making speeches demonizing Iran - an almost certain sign that we’re going to attack - we hear very little about it in the American press.
The New York Times on Sunday, for example, politely reported “an intense and continuing struggle between factions within (Bush’s) administration over how aggressively to confront Iran.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is pushing for diplomacy, the Times said, while Cheney “advocates a much tougher view.”
In Europe, however, people are screaming. Last month, according to the Associated Press, French president Nicolas Sarkozy sparked debate in Paris by saying the world had “a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.” This week the French foreign minister tamped down the rhetoric and emphasized the need to “negotiate, negotiate, negotiate without respite.”
Meanwhile, in what UN officials described as an attempt to halt an “out of control” drift to war, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei said, “There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons.”
According to former U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith, who has strong connections and much experience in the Middle East, the U.S. cannot possibly effect Iranian regime change by bombing, while the risks are enormous. “Many of the potential targets are in populated places, endangering civilians both from errant bombs and the possible dispersal of radioactive material,” he wrote recently in The New York Review of Books. “The rest of the world would condemn the attacks and there would likely be a virulent anti-U.S. reaction in the Islamic world. In retaliation, Iran could wreak havoc on the world economy (and its own) by withholding oil from the global market and by military action to close the Persian Gulf shipping lanes.’
Meanwhile, I have started getting e-mails from people all over the world who share my fears that the U.S. will drop a few bombs just because it might make Bush and Cheney momentarily feel good.
“Hello Joyce,” wrote Dave Bawden from South Africa. “I can only sympathise with you all in that I would put money on it that Dubya will bomb Iran just for spite and then it will really be Armageddon for us all, I’m afraid! The warning lights are flashing like a Saturday Night Fever disco. Sad Regards…”
Many terrified Muslims wrote to me. I even heard from Tehran, from television news producer Shohelia Ghodsi.
“Joyce I read your article and I must say it is very scary,” Ghodsi wrote. “We all knew that something like this could happen , and that U.S. after attacking Iraq, Iran will be next… Bush wants to attack, so he will. I guess no one can stop him now, right? At this moment I don’t even know how to end this e-mail!”
A man describing himself as a “Swiss resident of the island of Cyprus” wrote: “As a European who knows the USA quite well, I find it utterly incredible - and I mean simply beyond belief, that at least several hundred full-time professionals of both parties could serenely pursue their party’s goals for the after BushCheney, when there may not even ever be a real after BushCheney.”
A man in Canada wrote, “Heard today that the gorilla is near to extinction. We are emptying the oceans of fish. And yet the majority of citizens just go about their mindless pursuits while the rest of us twist in the wind. What kind of species are we ?… Let’s just hope that we can come out of this nightmare one day. Let’s hope that after this we will have the luxury of being able to live in a world where the US participates rather than annihilates. Let’s hope the end of it all is not as near as it now appears.”
From Arctic Norway, a man wrote: “Somehow, the Bush administration almost seems suicidal, not in the sense of killing themselves actually, but in the sense of making sure that they destroy the USA economically, militarily, constitutionally, and any other way they can. It is stunning that so many people just go about shopping and watching TV as though this has nothing to do with them.”
Iran, South Africa, Norway, Canada, Cyprus - it’s astonishing how widespread the fear of Bush/Cheney has become. Yet nothing seems to be able to stop this next dreadful war. In fact, the best I’ve heard is that American won’t bomb Iran - we’ll have Israel do it for us. Then Iran will bomb Israel, and we’ll go around the merry-go-round once again.
In times like this, Leonard Cohen’s song “Everybody Knows” runs through my head: “Everybody knows the dice are loaded/Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed/Everybody knows that the war is over/Everybody knows the good guys lost…. Everybody knows that the deal is rotten/Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton/For your ribbons and bows/And everybody knows.”
But the final word about a possible strike against Iran - and the potential start of World War III - comes from Shakespeare. It’s when Lady MacBeth, sleepwalking, says: “Out damn spot! Out… What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? …Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”
Joyce Marcel is a journalist and columnist based in Vermont. A collection of her columns, “A Thousand Words or Less,” is available through joycemarcel.com. And write her at joycemarcel@yahoo.com.
I am afraid Joyce is dead on. …. And it won’t be just a few bombs.
Joyce Arabia implies Arabs and Iranians are Persian. Maybe you should have checked that fact before coming up with your article’s title. All the Perfumes of Persia would have been a better title. Other than that it was a good article.
For many years I wondered ” what am I?” I looked high and low for the answer. Then one day someone said to me “you’re confused because you are human!” I thought about this and realized it was true. “I am a human being!” so, I went directly home and killed myself.
The psychotic monkey and his deranged owners and family don’t give a damn about turning the world into a radioactive wasteland. They all are from someplace else. They are going to get raptured off to la-la land and sit at God’s picnic table eating Jesus pie as they watch the rest of us fry and die squirming. You believe that too, don’t you?
Peter Galbraith’s article in yesterday’s Common Dreams list was a good one and worth reading for anyone interested in the subject of Iran. The US is complicit (once again) in creating the situation our Fearless Leaders now wish to “fix” through violence and aggression.
I saw Giulianni - that great statesman and one of the top most famous Americans according to his own evaluation - on CNN this morning. (Disclaimer: I don’t intentionally turn on CNN or any other TV news except the Daily Show and Democracy Now. It was an accident.) He is really hot to bomb Iran. This guy is a danger to himself and others, but he is such a nutjob maybe even the MSM will wake up and begin to notice. Hope springs eternal.
“There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons.”
What is it called if you falsly claim that someone has a gun, and they claim that they are not armed, and you shoot them anyways in ” pre-emptive self defense”, and it later turns out that they actually were unarmed as they had claimed all along???
MURDER. MURDER . MURDER. MURDER. MURDER. MURDER. MURDER
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the World’s Boxing Arena. Today’s championship fight is between two of the worlds well known heavy weights:
On the right corner wearing a turbine and a long beard is the challenger Osama Ben Ladin, Beeen Laaadin. In his last bout he was able to knock down the World Trade Center and kill a few thousand. He is very fundamentalist with his left jab, and says if he wins the fight, he’ll turn all the secular Muslim countries into fundamentalists.
In the left corner wearing a smirk and a cheap perfume is world heavy weight champion, George W Bush, known as the Mission Accomplisher, the Accommmplisher. He’s knocked down a few democratic governments. In his last fight he knock down Afghanistan and Iraq, killing more than a million in the process. His fundamentalist left hook is a powerhouse, and says if he wins the fight tonight, he’ll bring about Armageddon to please his Evangelical crackpots.
The referee is Koon Chun Tank, and the ringside doctor is Condominium Rice.
OK, gentlemen, watch your punches, and when I say stop, don’t stop, keep fighting until one or both of you dies so that the people in the world can live in peace.
There is no military value to bombing Iraq… but there are many benefits to talking like they’re going to:
1. Keep the fear level up among the voters.
So they’ll tolerate having their son’s tours extended, their elderly mother’s benefits cut, and their phones tapped by DHS.
2. Keep the fear level up among the members of Congress.
So they’ll be sure to fund the purchase of lots more cruise missles from Raytheon.
3. Keep the fear level up among the Democratic presidential candidates.
So they’ll know that if they actually try to interfere with the conquest of Iraq, Bush will leave a much worse situation waiting for them in the Oval Office.
Politics is a chess game… your move.
dcbeltway ..The title of the article refers to the quote from Lady Macbeth and the blood on the hands of the empire. In no way, does Joyce say the Iranians are Arabs.
i dont think bush is suicidal when it comes to america…it is very deliberate premeditated murder….he wants to insure that if and when.. no one will shed a tear.prescot bush moved his criminalmoneybusiness here,from germany…bushes have always made their livings off of burning bodies..this is nothing new…they have no love for america,only mammon.
I wouldn’t have read the article if it did not have the Shakespeare-ref title from Lady Macbeth’s line about her bloodied hands: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
My point is the MacBeth quote was not the best reference to talk about Iranians with. There are so many people who do mix up Iranians and Afghans with Arabs and its important that people know the difference about these cultures. Might have been better to use that quote in an article referencing Iraq.
CANUCKCHUCK___Now I am really getting concerned, as it looks like you have lost your sense of humour and sarcasm!! Come on, get back to normal or we will all be shot out. Remember, “all we have to fear is fear itself” FDR
the ‘devil’ is entity that is void of life it is anti-life.so what did you expect from a crimefamily that has always made their living off of death ?to whom burning bodies and scorched earth are, cologne.these devils thrive on chaos death and destruction .. they go orgasmic over horror and gore and sleep like babies on the blood and broken bodies of ‘others’that is the bush family, their associates and their legions of goons.what the fuck is wrong with congress, judicial, senate are they just all in on it ?mass hypnosis?something in their water ?are they being threatened ?what the fuck is wrong with them that they are allowing this homegrown monster carte blanche ????????????
Go with the ‘threatened’ and add a smidge of ‘filthy lucre’ for extra odor holding capacity.
I don’t think you can find the light by analysis of the dark. You have to see the light, envision how you would like thing to be and then work to that end.
Name evil and it chooses a weapon.
Reply to Arctic Norway:
“It is stunning that so many people just go about shopping and watching TV as though this has nothing to do with them.”
We’re not just shopping and watching TV. We are working our butts off trying to compete in the “global economy” that benefits the whole world, while we don’t get month-long vacations, free medical care, and guaranteed pensions. We hate war but those who protest are branded “traitors” and some have been jailed, their lives ruined. Elections are rigged and our Bill of Rights is burning. Our government is busy establishing democracy in the Middle East while corporatism reigns here. Our news media lies to us and blocks out news from the rest of the world. We want to be free from the Bush-Cheney cabal as much as you do. Any aid you can give us would be very much appreciated.
I love it. These guys can’t even keep their war message straight
1. Bush accuses Quds - Iranian Guard - of providing material support and doing IED training.
2. Pentagon and State Department issue statement that Quds is not involved because Iran pulled them out years ago to prevent being accused of such involvement.
3. We arrest an Iranian in Kurdih Iraq and accuse him of being Quds and smuggling IEDs.
4. Kurds demand his release arrest illegal, that he is helping them. And the Iraqi Kurds are our only friends there.
5. ?????