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The Next War
"I'm going to be killing people. I'm actually joining the Marines and will be doing this in real life."
War springs eternal. Compare the words of the 18-year-old boy quoted above by Philadelphia radio station WRTI, as he was wielding a pretend machinegun at a video-game parlor/Army recruiting center at a Philly shopping mall, with those of two neocons, Charles Robb and Charles Wald (retired senator and general, respectively), writing last month in the Washington Post:
"We cannot afford to wait indefinitely to determine the effectiveness of diplomacy and sanctions. . . . Instead, the administration needs to expand its approach and make clear to the Iranian regime and the American people: If diplomatic and economic pressures do not compel Iran to terminate its nuclear program, the U.S. military has the capability and is prepared to launch an effective, targeted strike on Tehran's nuclear and supporting military facilities."
We're running out of time to act, they add, turning the fear crank, ratcheting up the pressure like good used car salesmen. Iran could have a nuclear bomb by the end of the year, they warn, citing no evidence for this assertion. Evidence? They all but cried: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
With Adm. Mike Mullen's ambivalent acknowledgment several days ago on "Meet the Press" that the military indeed has a plan for invading Iran, to be used if necessary, "the next war" has begun, suddenly, to take shape in the media. No public input needed! We're the spectators here. Stay tuned. We'll bring it to you live.
Missing, of course -- of course! -- in any discussion of a no-nonsense military solution to Iran's nuclear intransigence is: A) the least reflection on the disastrous quagmire of the current wars, which were sold as quick-strike operations to eliminate immediate threats (which, in the case of Iraq, turned out not to exist); B) any assessment of the damage we have done, to the Afghans, the Iraqis or ourselves, or of the multi-trillion-dollar cost of these debacles; C) any reflection on our own hypocrisy (we have 5,113 nuclear warheads; our allies, including Israel, have as much as a thousand more), or a consideration of the logic of Iran's own self-protective instincts, i.e., that if they actually possess a bomb the U.S. is far less likely to invade their country.
Instead what we get is the grown-up, Ph.D.-level equivalent of the naïve 18-year-old Marine wannabe playing war at the Army's entrapment, I mean recruitment, center in Philadelphia. Effective, targeted strikes! This'll be awesome!
But more worrisome to me than neocon op-eds is the sense of inevitability -- indeed, reverence -- that accompanies "impartial" mainstream reportage of war, especially the war that hasn't been fought yet. The unspoken understanding is that war is a high-level, classified decision made in the public's interest but utterly divorced from its input or wishes.
In an essay published on AlterNet in March, Frank Joyce wrote: "Thanks to the superseding power of the transnational corporation, democracy ‘peaked' in the United States some time ago."
I fear he's right. The military-industrial consensus has no interest in democratic input. Consider the helplessness even of Dwight Eisenhower, whose famous warning about the military-industrial complex came in his farewell address, as he was surrendering the reins of power. He made his point as a private citizen, not as an elected official with a plan to curb it.
A little-discussed adjunct to the military-industrial complex is the entertainment industry, which, in the 50 years since Eisenhower issued his plea for awareness, has burrowed deep into the American and global psyche, turning violence into an ever more exhilarating abstraction. Thus the announcement of each virgin war generates a wave not of horror but excitement.
"A culture of killing and violence has become embedded in human consciousness," writes Michel Chossudovsky. This means that World War III, perhaps set off by a U.S. invasion of Iran, is possible.
But there is a latent counterforce to all of the above. The industrial wars of the last century have created an extraordinary blowback problem for the global war profiteers. In the United States, we don't dare reinstitute the draft. Not only was the draft the focal point of the antiwar movement, but the draftee Army eventually rebelled against the war and brought it to a halt. There is a huge antiwar movement in the U.S. and around the globe, awaiting a single spark of ignition to manifest in the 21st century.
My fervent hope is that this happens sooner rather than later -- that the mere threat of an invasion of Iran is enough to shatter the corporate war consensus. Let's take geopolitics out of the hands of the profiteers. Let's reclaim our democracy before it's too late.
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132 Comments so far
Show AllWell said, Mr. Koehler. Well said.
Damn... can the world afford the US anymore?
The continuous rhetoric of killing and maiming wouldn't be so bad, if their actions did not more than match their words.
We're all dying a little each day that PyschoPath's maintain their blood-soaked hands on the levers of power and their fingers on "joysticks" of death.
Can the world afford the US anymore?
I don't see the military plan to strike Iran as any big deal. The military does this shit all the time. It is what they do. And the fact that our entertainment industry turns "violence into an ever more exhilarating abstraction," is simply a fact of life and something we humans have to deal with.
Yeah, right, we'll "deal with it" by making this planet unliveable for humans or anything else.
Maybe you don't, but there are one hell of A bunch of innocent Iranian citizens who will witness it as "any big deal" and to them it will be A "fact of death"...
Yes, but to publicly announce the plan to attack Iran, as Mullen did, is not only an obvious intimidation tactic, it is a violation of the U.N. Charter, which, according to Article 6, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the "Supremacy Clause", makes it part of our law as well as international law. The Charter expressly forbids not only acts of war (except in self-defense), but also the THREAT of war against another state.
Iran, of course, already knows the U.S. has a plan of attack, as does Israel. So Mullen's public announcement merely serves the purposes of instilling more fear, ratcheting up more tension, and again, as U.S. administrations have consistently done since (and in violation of) the Nuremberg Trials and the founding of the U.N., displaying the contempt the U.S. Empire has for international laws which impede its endless quest for global hegemony.
Mullen's announcement was also a way to gauge U.S. public reaction to an intended attack on Iran, cleverly announced NOT by Obama or Gates, which would have drawn more attention, but by Mullen. And so far, U.S. public reaction, outside of web sites such as this, has been non-existent, which could be interpreted by the neo-conservatives still running U.S. foreign/military policy, as widespread acceptance of (or at least indifference to) a war on Iran.
This is both very insane and very dangerous.
Exactly. And it's worth remembering that there are about a thousand ways he could have dodged that question, or at least couched his answer in reassuring words that would de-emphasize the military "option" ... no, it's clear that he uttered those words consciously as a direct threat to Iran, and since his comments were not reprimanded by Obama, it's clear that this is official US policy. The writing is on the wall: war on Iran is coming.
ED: Accurate, stream-lined analysis. Thank you for sharing it.
This same intimidation/violation of Article 6, Section 2 was employed against Iraq. The St. Patrick's 4, who were found guilty in federal court of pouring blood in a military recruiting office, cited Article 6, Section 2 in their defense. They reasoned that their action was legal because both the threat of invasion and the invasion itself were illegal violations of international law.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq one neocon stated that everyone wants to go to Baghdad, but real men want to go to Tehran. Of course, these "real men" would never be the ones actually going to Baghdad or Tehran.
It's clear that the madness will continue until some as-yet-unknown countervailing force stops these monsters.
Decades ago there was a serial killer who, at the site of one of his horrific murders, wrote on the bathroom mirror in lipstick..."please stop me before I kill more..."
If only our "leaders" had a similar moral compass.
Until 98% of the US electorate stops voting for Democrats and Republicans thereby demonstrating that they have a moral compass, no moral compass will ever show up on our "leaders'" radar.
If one steps back and tries to assess the US militarist state from afar, one sees one of the most decadent and evil regimes to ever exist on the planet. The attitude towards the weak, impoverished, and vulnerable, particularly those in distant lands but also to some extent those at home, is so incredibly depraved and without any redeeming value that it shocks the conscience of anyone with the slightest bit of awareness and sense of morality.
Kivals: No truer words can be said.........and the boot of fascism is on our necks with no where to turn. Wherever you turn, no one seems to give a sh-t. And we wondered where the "good Germans" were in WWII
generalcommentator:
A very appropriate comment...
"If only our "leaders" had a similar moral compass"
Instead of "son of sam", they are Sons of "Uncle" Sam...
"Instead what we get is the grown-up, Ph.D.-level equivalent of the naïve 18-year-old Marine wannabe playing war at the Army's entrapment, I mean recruitment, center in Philadelphia. Effective, targeted strikes! This'll be awesome!"
...the Army's entrapment center... It was worth reading the article just for that line. I hope the author doesn't mind if I borrow it from time to time. ;-)
When you have a nation that extorts money from the workers, hands the money over to the banksters who destroy the economy to the point that the only employment opportunity available for most young people is the military, you have a defacto draft aided and abetted by an education system that advances the entrapment process that started when kids first watch TV.
The miltary's entrapment centers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere are just one link in the miltary industrial media complex's revenue chain.
You summed things up quite well Ray.
"It takes a long time to starve to death", Viggo Mortensen tells his son in "The Road". And it will take a long time for the American Empire to die but die it shall.
Very true, Ray. Well-said.
From Oct 2001 - Feb 2003, I spent very little time in the USA. Upon returning, I could not believe how fired-up America was to attack Iraq, but America was fired-up and Iraq was attacked.
Now, for the past year, I have spent a good bit of time outside of the USA. I plan to return in Dec of this year. Does this mean that when I return, America will be on the verge of war with Iran?
Today Obamabots are pretending everything is groovy and Dubyabots are pushing to keep expanding the Ir-Af-Pak occupation without mentioning Iran any more than they need to.
We are always on the verge of war with someone. We will be until we have our own Stalingrad and realize that it isn't always the other guy who dies.
"It's clear that the madness will continue until some as-yet-unknown countervailing force stops these monsters."
Anyone else have the feeling that this force will be a nuclear winter???
Ah well, look on the bright side. A nuclear Winter will slow global warming! (Please note: satirical comment)
Taking one 18 year old's statement and extrapolating it into the supporting truth for the conclusions of this article are theater of the absurd.
Never met an 18 year old before I guess.
"With Adm. Mike Mullen's ambivalent acknowledgment several days ago on "Meet the Press" that the military indeed has a plan for invading Iran"
And if they pressed him further, we also have plans to invade any country that might cause us trouble. Standard military practice in every army in the world.
I do have to agree on the "recruitment" centers like this. What an embarrassment for our country.
It provides great sadness to me that our country and people is/are even speaking these evils. Our military is well suited for war, this would be the first "war" against a Nation State that we will have become involved in since WWII. If it is fully fought, the stains will be upon us all. The day of it's joining, I will move to the country, as far from civilization as possible. For a year now, I have felt the call of the desert. It will be then that I find what I am made of, no more American Dreaming but plenty of Human Dreaming, if it is in His will... I will try to act as I thought Americans were supposed to act, with honor, integrity and compassion, all the while trying to understand who the majority of "Americans" truly are.
I would posit that half of the domestic american population would perish in the first year after the joining of this travesty.
It's starting to feel as if much of what has happened in the past 10 years was a perfectly choreographed set of events with the intention of not only the reduction of the population of those in the middle east, but also of those here, something like a quin-fecta, now how often do those come in?
May God Forgive the Americans that have believed and acted as they were supposed to have believed and acted... Who are these others?
"US ships' vulnerability to anti-ship cruise missiles and Iran's ability to strike back at any attack in the region, including Lebanon, Gaza, and above all the narrow Strait of Hormuz, are also considerations leading to the conclusion that an aggressive response would likely instigate a regional conflagration. Amid estimates that oil prices could nearly double with the onset of any military flare-ups between Iran and the US or Israel, an attack leading to an aggressive response would be detrimental to the world economic recovery."
-Asia Times
There is no anti-war movement with enough power to overcome the MIC or stop the schemes of the Neo-clowns from the Israel lobby.
The countervailing force is economic collapse. Prepare for it.
You cannot stop war by 'fighting' against it.
You can however discover calm, which then makes it quite difficult to locate conflict.
Yes, the more attention to pay to peace and harmony, the more central to your being they become. You exist on a more peaceful frequency, which means that you attract peace and transmit peace. It only takes the square root of 1% of the population to consciously "be peace," and crime rates begin to go down.
If the USA makes war against Iran this is what you will hear from the uninformed American public:
"Whoop, whoop, we are number one, whoop, whoop."
Good Grief.
It would seem logical that U.S. military commanders have a plan to invade everyone from Iran to Canada and Norway. It's what military planners do. A corpocracy looks at every 'strategic interest' around the globe and asks their military planners about the costs, timeframes and feasibility of seizing those assets. Having said that, I don't think that war with Iran is imminent or inevitable. Though an invasion of Iran will benefit a handful of multinationals (who ultimately design American foreign policy), the majority of defence contractors, Big Oil and other war related industries are already experiencing record profits, record contracts and unlimited access to the public treasury. Another war won't add much to this smorgasbord of corporate welfare.
The media will continue to abide by its corporate mantra to reinforce the perception of perpetual war and fear to the general populace regardless of the reality on the ground. It is what the MSM is paid to do while distracting the masses from real issues like domestic poverty, universal healthcare, job creation, inner city violence, over crowded prisons, the private war against public education, social security and Medicare, etc. As long as Americans are preoccupied with manufactured 'infotainment' (and nothing beats potential war rhetoric), the less the corporate party incumbents have to worry about losing their jobs.
If you spend half the budget on the military, you must use it to justify it.. I think we were
warned about this years ago by Mr. Eisenhower!!!
God bless the Amerikan empire!!
You overlook ISRAEL. "Bibi" Netanyahu has taken the measure of Obama and found him to be a wimp and a coward.
Next, Israel will instigate a conflict with Iran and drag Obama right along into it.
Since the president and congress have their lips permanently affixed to Bibi's butt-crack, Israel is in control of US policy in the mid-east. The next war of choice will be one of Israel's choosing.
I know others have pointed this out but, apparently not often enough.
"Obama and found him to be a wimp and a coward."
Obama is no more a wimp and a coward than "Bibi." They work together, Israel is as useful a tool to the US as the US is to Israel. Mutual back scratching.
Let me clue you in. These guys are not wimps, they are doing the job they were hired to do and I would guess they "love their job!" as much as any gung ho soldier.
Let me clue you in. If Obama is just following orders and doing the job he was hired to do, how does that not make him a wimp and a coward? Is he bravely sucking-up?
People used to claim that Bush was not stupid for the same reason.
Thanks RichM for setting the Israel thing straight. Sorry I misjudged you earlier. Israel by itself is not so bad. It's the rulers who are playing divide and kill to keep their economy dependent on the military alive. We could listen to Israel for solutions to global warming. I hear they're going solar on everything. Why won't progressives give Israel credit on?
I used to believe this but it's obvious this is no longer the case, if it ever was. Obombya can't even get Israel to stop building settlements, then Netanyahu embarrasses Biden on his big diplomatic visit. I don't know if the tail is wagging the dog here but Israel clearly wears the pants in this relationship.
-Wrong. The US attack Iraq was not only a grab for oil, but a big favor for Israel. The US kept Israel out of it because Israel's participation would have made the favor too obvious. The US needs to promote the fiction that it is some kind of honest broker between Arab and Israeli interests.
It is idiotic not to see that AIPAC and the Israeli government have a huge impact on US foreign policy. Do you really imagine that the greedy pigs who run the US are not also supportive of AIPAC? They gladly allow Israel to "control" events in which they have immense stakes when their goals are identical to the goals of the Likud party.
The Israeli leaders are bastards, just like their patrons in Washington. They work together. Why would Israel need to "dictate" to neo-cons who have dual US/Israeli citizenship and are enthusiastic supporters of Israel's right wing?
Maybe Israel offered its enthusiastic support for the 1991 invasion and the US politely declined its offer.
Maybe the US was able to explain to Israel why it should distance itself from the 1991 invasion and Israel agreed.
That indeed would illustrate the real power relationship between two Bastards who share a common goal.
They didn't 'tell' Israel, they bribed them to stay out of the war by giving them armaments, including AGM-65 missiles - one of which they later used (technically 'illegally' according to their agreement) to kill wounded civilians in an ambulance (and fragments of which - fragments of the missile that is - Bob Fisk found and took to General Dynamics [I think] to ask what they thought about it being used to kill innocent civilians. Of course they had no answer.
A subtle difference? Perhaps, but a difference anyway.
RichM is pwned again.
I don't dispute that the US has tradtionally given (and will continue to give) arms to Israel. The US gave the weapons to Israel as the quid pro quo that the US offered for Isreal to not 'complicate' the US invasion. I notice you didn't touch what Israel did with the AGM-65s they got.
I never suggested that Israel 'calls the shots' - that's your confabulation. All I suggested is that Israel got weapons to keep out of the Gulf War. If you don't thinks so, that's your business.
As for Pollard - who cares?
SPACE CADET: Excellent post. I guess the view is lucid from your "orbital trajectory."
Uncle Sugar doesn't have any more credit card room for the next war. Maybe we can march the troops off to mineral-rich Kyrgistan armed with sticks and rocks, but that's about it for the payroll. I'd like to see a sticks and rocks video game.
What are you talking about? They haven't raided Social Security yet. That's coming next.
What are YOU talking about? Washington spent my Social Security money a long time ago. Remember all that talk about a "Lock Box" in 1999 so SS couldn't be spent on other projects? Never happened.
All that lock box talk (and I remember Gore was part of that crap) was the stupidest bs. What the hell? Should the government have built some gigantic vault and trucked money in and out everyday just for SS? Should they have used some kind of flim-flam accounting gimmicks to pretend they were doing this on paper? Of course our media could have done more to alert everyone that the government was overspending (or under taxing), but few really wanted to hear.
When it comes to protecting Israel, there's always room on the credit card.
De-Countrify Israel Now.
Tell me - which of those countries is sucking us dry?
impaling us in wars that destroy our economy, our military, our standing?
Which of those countries tried to sink one of our naval ships?
Which of those countries' Prime Ministers boasts about how easily they manipulate the US?
Which one of those countries spit in our Vice President's face when he visited.
You Zionists are abominations.
De-Countrify Israel Now. For a better world.
What a dodge.
Biden's a Zionist! What a shock! And which politician hasn't been bought out or corrupted by Zionists?
De-Countrify Israel Now and cast off the yoke of you Zionists.