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America's Itch to Brawl Has a New Target – But Bombs Can't Conquer Iran
A post-imperial virus has infected foreign policy. We've been here before, we know the human cost, and now we must stop
This time there will be no excuses. Plans for British support for an American assault on Iran, revealed in today's Guardian, are appalling. They would risk what even the "wars of 9/11" did not bring: a Christian-Muslim armageddon engulfing the region. This time no one should say they were not warned, that minds were elsewhere, that we were told it would be swift and surgical. Nobody should say that.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the inauguration of Iran's Karrar drone aircraft at Malek-e Ashtar University in 2010. (Photograph: Vahid Reza Alaei/AP)
To western strategists, Iran today is exactly where Iraq was in 2002. The country posed no threat to the west. Yet "weapons of mass destruction" were said to be primed and had to be urgently eliminated. The offending regime could be subjugated by air power or, if not, by regime change. The cause was noble, and the outcome sure.
There any comparison ends. Iran is not a one-man, two-bit dictatorship, but a nation of 70 million people, an ancient and proud civilisation with a developed civil society and a modicum of pluralist democracy. Certainly its insecure leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants a weapons-ready nuclear enrichment programme, as next week's United Nations report by the International Atomic Energy Authority is expected to repeat. But he leads a country which, like Pakistan, Britain or Israel, craves status, prestige and the vague security that these unusable weapons seem to convey.
Nuclear dissemination is deplorable, but massively overhyped. Warheads cost a fortune to develop and keep in service. Modern anti-western aggression finds it cheaper and more effective to plan terrorist outrages. Nuclear bombs have not made Israel more secure. They have been useless to Pakistan in confronting India, and to North Korea against the south. They did not save apartheid in South Africa, or the Soviet Union from itself.
The planned attack on Iran is familiar in form. It is declared exclusively aerial, with missiles and unmanned drones deployed against nuclear and military targets. The airmen will promise, as they did in Belgrade, Baghdad and Benghazi, that bombing can do the job unaided. The enemy then digs in and fights back, the tempo of attack has to mount, and ground forces are sucked in.
We read that there are, as yet, no plans for a ground attack on Iran, though "a small number of special forces" may be required, as was required eventually in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. The mission will creep from wrecking Iran's nuclear capability to ensuring it cannot be rebuilt, and then to securing regime change and "freedom". We have been there so often before. The logic of war tends towards totality, without which no victory can be declared.
Total war on Iran would be a catastrophe. Every politician involved in this business should be locked in a room and forced to read the cuttings on Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade. Ahmadinejad may delight audiences with his bloodthirsty language about the west. But the rest of the world would ask by what right are two nuclear powers using violence to stop someone else joining their weirdly exclusive club. We would have no UN support for such a venture. No one seriously supposes that Iran, under whatever ruler, would seek to wipe out Israel – and anyway that is Israel's business.
Stopping Iran from developing a nuclear capability is and always was a lost cause. It appears to be three years from deliverable warheads and is besieged by foreign agents launching cyber-attacks, selling fake components and assassinating scientists. But Iran would be no easy target, like Libya or Iraq. The more isolated and threatened Iran is by the west, the more nuclear assertiveness attracts its leadership, and the more allies would rally to its cause.
Every expert report on Iran warns that bombing is the one thing likely to bond the unpopular Ahmadinejad to his people. The idea that they would rise up against him after the Pentagon's reported "shock and awe" three-day blitz of 1,200 targets is demented. Ahmadinejad's recent antics in New York were designed to provoke just such belligerence, to bolster his position and that of the hardliners. For rightwingers to play the enemy's game in this way used to be called treason. American presidential candidates now call it patriotism.
The wars of choice that followed 9/11 have acquired a rhythm of their own. They have yielded 10 years of rolling thunder across the Muslim world, variously proclaiming retaliation, humanity, regime change and democracy. There have been pluses – the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and (temporarily) the Taliban. But the minuses have been tens of thousands killed, millions displaced, societies upheaved, billions of dollars of destruction, and a region destabilised. The wars have been a gigantic, historic tragedy. They have not advanced western security one jot.
If ever there were a country that was once ripe for soft-power diplomacy, it was modern Iran. Yet the west misread Ahmadinejad and then misread such dissenters as Mohammad Khatami and parliament's speaker, Mehdi Karroubi. It defied pleas from moderates not to impose sanctions, rejecting the argument that Iran needed a strengthened professional, commercial and academic class as counterweight to the military and the mullahs. As with the sanctions imposed on Saddam's Iraq, Gaddafi's Libya and Mugabe's Zimbabwe, they have driven Iran's rulers into a siege economy. Sanctions weaken the forces of pluralism and opposition. They are plainly counterproductive.
Revolutionary Iran should have been flooded with aid, trade and cultural attention. That is what happened in Pakistan and Indonesia. Neither is a model state, but they have a developed middle class and are not regarded as regional menaces. The US is not declaring war on Pakistan, though it and its nuclear weapons pose a far greater threat to America's interests in the region than Iran.
Western bombs cannot conquer Tehran. America and Britain might be able to invade in sufficient strength to knock out nuclear bunkers, but they could not stop rebuilding, especially after a war that would radicalise the nation and make it far more antagonistic. The outcome might make Israel feel temporarily a little safer, but it would render both Israel and the west more vulnerable to terrorist and other retaliation.
A virus seems to be running through the upper echelons of Washington and London, that of a moral duty to wage war against perceived evil wherever it offers a bombing target. Anyone watching last month's Republican primary debate in Las Vegas will have been shocked at the belligerence shown by the six candidates towards the outside world. It was a display of what the historian Robert D Kaplan called "the warrior politics … of an imperial reality that dominates our foreign policy", a fidgety search for reasons to go brawling round the globe, at any cost in resulting anarchy. The spectacle was frightening and depressing.
British friends of America can see all the signs of another country in the throes of "losing an empire and not finding a role", of a paranoid nervous breakdown. Britain has been there before. It should never go back. It has been warned.
- Posted in
65 Comments so far
Show AllThere's no reason to have to search for what is motivating this. We all know. Israel is the provacuteur. And we are it's "simple minded" henchmen.
I still want to know why we assume Iran is building nuclear bombs. They've said repeatedly they are developing nuclear power for energy purposes. They signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which is more than Israel has done. They have not attacked us, but the majority of hijackers on 09/11 were Saudis and Bush cut them a deal to help them develop nuclear power. Maybe you'll say with all the oil they have they don't need nuclear. But then what excuse do the Saudis have for developing it?
No. Make no mistake this would be a "religious" war, brought to the world by Israel. They're still pissed Abraham had a child by a slave (even though his wife arranged it), and worried his offspring might have some claim to what they consider their's alone.
This is a family dispute, and the rest of should not take sides or get involved.
I personally think that ancient aliens were involved and the sooner we see it the better! And it beats the heck out of thousands year old mythological stories.
It's my view that the real reason for the constant state of warfare is that it justifies the ever escalating and enormous military expenditures made by our government.
As obvious as it sounds..............it seems lost on some here.
Not at all. But that doesn't give AIPAC a free pass.
Who said anything about free passes? You don't think they are all components of the larger global empire game.........................
WE are components of Israel's empire. Much, much to our detriment.
I don't see it that way. Different strokes for different folks, to quote sly stone. (sorry, i just heard it on the radio and its a great song).
I think the u.s. could take israel out without too much trouble, to be honest. Shock and awe and all that. Personally, i have also thought that israel is now a military contract site posing as a country. Or a black ops site.
Without the u.s. they would be dead in the water. And my prediction is that they will cease to exist within the forseeable future.
Wow. Just wow.
We also need distraction from Occupy Wall Street, whose people are saying far too much truth. A major war is just the ticket!
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is looking more and more like a total joke.
Yup. I have been wondering when the next "9/11" will occur. Surely the U.S. government cannot abide the growing numbers and growing rage of the OWS movement, which is spreading like wildfire across the nation. A very real threat to the power of the controlling Plutocracy here in the U.S.. Best way to make it go away: get all those ticked off angry Amereichans united behind the government again in a surge of patriotic, foaming-at-the-mouth nationalism. How better to do that than another "terrorist attack" against the Homeland (tm)? Plus maybe kill a few thousand of the peasant-folk in the process - bonus.
Couldn't happen here? Oh, please.....already did.
Demonstorm, you say, "Surely the U.S. government cannot abide the growing numbers and growing rage of the OWS movement".
But there is no "U.S. government" --- but only the global corporate/financial/militarist Empire that hides behind the illegitimate facade of 'government'. The Empire rules, but it can in no way be accepted as any form of government.
The majority of Americans will not confront and accede to confronting what they talk of as a U.S. government. But when they understand the there is no real government, only an Empire, then, and only then will the full 99% immediately grasp the need to excise the Empire.
It's fundamental to all Americans to be "Against Empire" [Parenti]. After all, the First American Revolution was against Empire, as will be the Second American Revolution.
Liberty, democracy, justice by the "Multitude"
over
violent/Vichy
empire,
Alan
Alan, well stated and I agree. I use the term "government" in the case of Amereicha as a useful word to describe the fascist state we live in, using Mussolini's definition of fascism as "corporatism." What you say is true, but for simplicity's sake "government" works, i.e., the elite corporatist fascist powers that run Amereicha and the global capitalist empire that snakes through all the industrial nations' leading bodies like so many tentacled cancer cells, for the same all-encompassing Purpose.
Caffeinated, Occupy movement could do itself a lot of good, attract a majority of the real 99% "at home", and stop any insane expansion of imperialist wars "abroad" in Iran, by simply and clearly declaring that it's primary goal is to "Occupy Empire" --- meaning the disguised global corporate/financial/militarist Empire that has taken over our former country (as well as U.K. Israel, France, Italy etc etc.) by hiding behind the Empire's 'bought and owned' modernized TWO-Party "Vichy" sham of faux-democratic and illegitimate government --- just as the previous wannabe global empire, the Nazi Empire, attacked, captured, and occupied France under the disguise of the first "Vichy" government c. 1940.
Best luck and love to Occupy
Liberty, democracy, equality, and justice
over
violent/Vichy
empire,
Alan MacDonald
"Occupy Empire" before this global Empire starts our death-spiral.
The U.S. War Industry will propagate itself at all cost to humanity. Eisenhower warned us in his farewell speech. No matter who attacks Iran, the war profiteers will win. Re:Israel, Eckhart Tolle would probably say it is Israel's collective pain-body reacting after being everyone's scapegoats for a few thousand years, but we in the US and UK can't claim that excuse.(Unless it is the pathological denial of collective guilt for genocide/slavery,etc.) SPOILER ALERT: Comments below this one will devolve into a back and forth on whether Israel is the Great Satan that is controlling us all!
Isn't threatening a country a crime under international law? As for bombing and/or invading Iran, all I'd say is you ain't seen nothing yet. To say the entire Muslim world would be pissed would be an understatement, and that's putting it mildly.
War carries its own reward. There are millions to be made in the weapons trade, careers that will be advanced. Western aggression also uses terrorism, but there is not as much money to be made that way. And while it is true that "nuclear bombs have not made Israel more secure. They have been useless to Pakistan in confronting India, and to North Korea against the south. They did not save apartheid in South Africa, or the Soviet Union from itself," .they do provide a defense against Western aggression, and if for no other reason, Iran would be stupid not to pursue them. Appeals to reason or logic when it comes to US/Anglo policy choices are quite beside the point. There are many in the US that are as religiously fundamentalist as that which is alleged to exist in Iran. They welcome the prospect of Armageddon. Further, the author of this naive piece apparently does not remember what the US did in 1953 to a secular Iran, and shows a myopically Western bias in referring to Ahmadinejad as "insecure" (when he's got the world's most powerful, dangerous, and lawless State making threats), "unpopular" (to whom? The West? There's a shocker!), and to characterize what he said in New York, "designed to provoke just such belligerence" as "antics", how does one characterize the US politicians who display even greater belligerence? And then there's this gem: "The US is not declaring war on Pakistan...", but the US is waging war there all the same. The author also doesn't mention the Straits of Hormuz, and Iran's ability to shut down roughly a third of the oil exports, but there seems to be much Jenkins leaves out. Apparently, that is a job description for politically correct reporters these days..............................................................
"Throughout the twentieth century and into the beginning of the twenty-first, the United States repeatedly used its military power, and that of its clandestine services, to overthrow governments that refused to protect American interests. Each time, it cloaked its intervention in the rhetoric of national security and liberation. In most cases, however, it acted mainly for economic reasons-specifically to establish, promote and defend the right of Americans to do business around the world without interference."
(Stephen Kinzer).............................................................
"There is nothing puzzling ... about America's gratuitously aggressive foreign policy or about the oligarchs' successful efforts to drag the Republic into five wars. What an aggressive foreign policy accomplishes by slow degrees, a state of war accomplishes in a trice. Overnight [war] kills reform, overnight it transforms insurgents into traitors and the Republic into an imperiled realm. Overnight it strangles free politics, distracts and overawes the citizenry. Overnight it blasts public hope."
(Walter Karp)
They're rolling out the guns again, but they'll never take my sons again; no they'll never take my sons again; Obama I,m swearin' to ya.
Jenkins says: "They would risk what even the "wars of 9/11" did not bring: a Christian-Muslim armageddon engulfing the region." Why is he afraid to say 'Judeo-Christian' as it is Israel behind the push for this insane war? Why is Jenkins so concerned with Israeli 'security'? He mentions it 3 times. Is he as concerned with the security of San Marino, the Vatican, Malta, Singapore? The result of a war on Iran would not only 'engulf the region', but Europe and North America as well. Make no mistake about it. As Gardenernorcal so aptly put it: 'This is a family dispute, and the rest of us should not take sides or get involved.'
wrong reply press.
When one's major 'product' is military, surveillence and disaster 'reconstruction', then one needs markets. Bottom line.
Not to mention, the owners of the slave planet want no plausible opposition. None that they can see, anyway.
Of course, one never knows what the Washington sociopathic murderers are capable of, but historically, after World War II the U.S. has pretty much limited itself to invading feeble countries. Iran is not a feeble country.
Iran is not a feeble country? Really? Militarily they sure are.
Today Iran fields about 600 US and UK tanks that were obsolete in 1979 when their deliveries were halted. They also have about 500 home built tanks which are knock offfs of the M60 US tank, vintage 1975. They have lots of artillery, but only a few modern anti-tank weapons. They have vintage 1970s Surface to Air missiles, which are imminently jamable and 4 (four) S300 modern SAMs.
They have about 550,000 soldiers under arms, mostly in the ground forces.
Their airforce is composed of 25 F14A Tomcats with antiquated electronics, 24 Mirage F1 that were captured in 1991 that have not been maintained or upgraded. 40 Mig29s which are their only credible air to air fighter and 65 F4 Phantoms from the 1960's which belong in museums or the scrapyard. Their airforce is MUCH smaller and poorer equiped than was the Iraqi airforce which was totally annihilated by allied forces in 1991.
Israel's airforce for comparison has 325+ F16s and 83 F15s in the latest configurations with modern electronics and weapons.
While in invasion of the country would be very very very unwise, Israel and certainly Israel when complemented by one, maybe two carrier groups would have more than enough equipment to deal with Iran's military handily, not to mention the higher quality of US and Israeli aircrews which have a lot of relevant experience which the Iranians do not.
War with Iran would be a disaster on many levels, but the actual ability of Israel and the US to get on target and destroy them and the inability of Iranians to do the same with conventional weapons is hardly an issue. A war would be a military disaster for Iran without question.
John Shade, quite a list of obsolete Iranian weapon systems that you discount when faced with a few "carrier groups" as you suggest.
I would suggest that you be a bit more cautious yourself about being an armchair Admiral, John, and perhaps find some Shade yourself, since you don't seem to be aware that the Sunburns in the Hormuz Strait can be surprisingly dangerous.
SPF 30 may not be enough, perhaps you need level SS-N-22 protection.
Alan
AIPAC calls the shots, and if we haven't invaded Iran, it means we don't have the capability to do it at the moment.
Let's be honest - we will continue to impale ourselves in service to Zionism. The only path to peace is the dissolution of Israel, and forced reparations by Zionists for the harm they have done worldwide.
No Justice... No Peace.
And then the u.s shall pound their swords into plowshares and it shall be morning in america. The u.s. will even recognize cuba and apologize to all of our neighbors south of the texas border through 'south america' for propping up dictators and disappearing so many for so long. And the rainforests shall thrive once more....oh wait.....i am channeling obama's 2008 campaign speech. Never mind........
Green Gone:
Yeah, those Zionists were there when Amerika was founded, and responsible for the slaughter of all the Indigenous.
And they were there, when then U.S. elites seized California, Texas, and much of the Southwest.
Leave it those Zionists to have engineered the war in Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia.
And then, it was those Zionists that got the US involved in Bosnia.
While everyone in this forum understands that AIPAC wields influence, and that the U.S. shares certain geo-political goals with Israel, it is blatantly prejudicial AND unfair to leave out the OTHER causative elements that contribute to the bombastic scenario now aimed at Iran.
It's U.S. oil interests in every country surrounding Iran.
It's the U.S MIC that delivers war profits to its most committed insiders (and weapons contractors).
It's conservatives inside the U.S. who want (and/or require) probable cause to keep the domestic population under control. "War abroad leads to tyranny at home" style.
And there are no doubt OTHER factors, including appeasing the 55 million + fundamentalist Christians who've been deceptively taught that what happens in Israel/the holy land constitutes prophecy, or God's will.
I find it very curious that the military's M.A.D. concept dovetails so fittingly with the Christian premise of End Times, and both groups support martial "adventures," inclusive of the current M.E. Debacle.
So, making it ONLY about Israel suggests the mentality of a child who messed up his room and blames it on the baby in the crib.
It seems more logical that Israel does Americas bidding than the opposite. Whose blood will be spilled if they attack Iran? Whose country will be destroyed?
The Zio-bloggers are paying us a visit. What is amazing to me is how brazen they are - denying what we can see in front of our very eyes! There is no distortion or lie Zionists won't try - and even after disproved, try and try again.
Who's blood will be spilled? Doubtless our troops' blood, as they have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our economy. Our world standing. Our societal structures.
The only way to extricate ourselves is the dissolution of Israel and forced reparations by Zionists for the worldwide harm they have done.
Clean up your own room, you one-trick pony boy.
Your hatred of Jews is so strong I can smell it emanating from the Internet. Anything else you want to exclusively blame on Israel, Zionists or "the Jews"?
You show no similar mortification for what's going on in portions of Africa, or how dissent is being treated in Fiji. Where's your outrage for the human rights violatiions in China, or the way women are treated in Afghanistan? Where is it for the citizens being tossed out of Amerika having come here in search of jobs thanks to what NAFTA wrought of their own domestic agriculture? No... so much easier to make every problem revolve around those Zionists. I am not defending them, but pointing out the lack of proportion to your commentary.
I think you are in the military, or X-military and you can't deal with the blood on your own hands, and what you may have contributed to in the way of violence... so all this hatred is being projected at the Zionists. As if they made YOU do it.
Get therapy!
You really aren't refuting him. At all.
There is a legitimate argument against his points,* but you aren't making it. Pointing out that there is stuff happening in other parts of the world, also known as "whataboutery" does not negate the attempt to start a war with Iran. Not unless those situations are somehow relevant. Especially since GoingGreen certainly did not "make every problem revolve around those Zionists".
The attempt to equate criticism of Israel, or Zionism, with attacking Jews, is also pathetic. Tired and overused.
*The legitimate counterargument against GoingGreen's arguments is that the leaks about the Israeli and American plans to start war, appear to have been made / were allegedly made by the ex-chiefs of Mossad and / or Shin Bet. One of whom called an attack the stupidest idea he has ever heard. See this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/03/israeli-pm-investigation-iran-leak
This is one of the most cogent analyses to be voiced in ANY press about the over reach of US empire and the suffering being inflicted because none of us citizens have the balls to confront our leaders over the pain, suffering and chaos we are inflicting on the world...intentionally to maintain the rights and privileges our our 'Corporatocracy'.
Combine this thought with Bill Moyer's recent speech and you see how morally corrupt we as an empire are and came to be.
http://www.truth-out.org/bill-moyers-keynote-public-citizens-40th-anniversary-gala/1320327833
Bill Moyers: "Our Politicians Are Money Launderers in the Trafficking of Power and Policy"
Thursday 3 November 2011
by: Bill Moyers, Public Citizen | Speech
Comments Prepared for Delivery
Public Citizen 40th Gala
Washington, DC
October20, 2011
I am honored to share this occasion with you. No one beyond your collegial inner circle appreciates more than I do what you have stood for over these 40 years, or is more aware of the battles you have fought, the victories you have won, and the passion for democracy that still courses through your veins. The great progressive of a century ago, Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin – a Republican, by the way – believed that “Democracy is a life; and involves constant struggle.” Democracy has been your life for four decades now, and would have been even more imperiled today if you had not stayed the course.
I began my public journalism the same year you began your public advocacy, in 1971. Our paths often paralleled and sometimes crossed. Over these 40 years journalism for me has been a continuing course in adult education, and I came early on to consider the work you do as part of the curriculum – an open seminar on how government works – and for whom. Your muckraking investigations – into money and politics, corporate behavior, lobbying, regulatory oversight, public health and safety, openness in government, and consumer protection, among others – are models of accuracy and integrity. They drive home to journalists that while it is important to cover the news, it is more important to uncover the news. As one of my mentors said, “News is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity.” And when a student asked the journalist and historian Richard Reeves for his definition of “real news”, he answered: “The news you and I need to keep our freedoms.” You keep reminding us how crucial that news is to democracy. And when the watchdogs of the press have fallen silent, your vigilant growls have told us something’s up.
So I’m here as both citizen and journalist to thank you for all you have done, to salute you for keeping the faith, and to implore you to fight on during the crisis of hope that now grips our country. The great American experience in creating a different future together – this “voluntary union for the common good” – has been flummoxed by a growing sense of political impotence – what the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has described as a mass resignation of people who believe “the dogma of democracy” on a superficial public level but who no longer believe it privately. There has been, he says, a decline in what people think they have a political right to aspire to – a decline of individual self-respect on the part of millions of Americans......
Keep reading!
http://www.truth-out.org/bill-moyers-keynote-public-citizens-40th-anniversary-gala/1320327833
The author says Billons wasted and tens of thousands of iraqi lives lost -
The guy has his decimal points off - that is At Least hundreds of thousands Dead and at least a Trillion for the Iraqi WR Cost. Joe Stigletz puts it at closer to 3 trillion for the Iraqi War.
And as for PROOF that Iran is still building Nuke weaponry - Many reports say that is false.
As for Iran - if they had really wanted Peace they wouldn't have hidden our OIL under their sand.
Lets not forget that Massive Money can be made just by Threatening Iran - the price of a barrel of oil may shoot thru the roof while the Cost for producing said Oil has not changed - wa la Profits Galore and Rising Stock Prices just in time for Year End Accounting - leading to Massive Bonuses.
Genicon writes: 'It seems more logical that Israel does Americas bidding than the opposite. Whose blood will be spilled if they attack Iran? Whose country will be destroyed?' The answer: If Israel attacks Iran, Iranian blood will be spilled. Iran will be destroyed. Why make Israel out to be a victim? I repeat, if Israel attacks Iran, Iranian blood will be spilled. Iran will be destroyed. Is that not 'logical'?
Thank you Simon Jenkins, I only wish that you were a political advisor to the government, because you have succinctly summed up this crisis. There ahs been no attempt whatsoever by the West to approach Iran, to talk, to rely on diplomacy. On the contrary, the West has been belicose, constantly threatening, heaping sanction upon sanction, and what has the result of all this been? Well the moderate Iranian is totally fed up of it all, does not trust the West, and just sees us as a mad beast, blundering around, trying to satisfy its insatiable appetite for blood and destruction.
It is a very shocking thing to say (because of the situation within Iran), but I have more respect for Ahmadinejad, who regularly turns up in New York for UN meetings, than our own leaders, and then finds that nobody is talking to him, the US and the rest of the "clique" often dispersing like petulant schoolchildren when he is due to talk.
When was the last time a Western leader went to Iran? Are they afraid? Why would they be afraid? Are they afraid, that the Iranians would extend to them as guests, all the courtesy which you would afford a good friend?
Our politicians know nothing of Iran, nothing about the people, yet they seem ready to condemn 70 muillion people for the actions of a few, and an event which happened in 1979.
"It is a very shocking thing to say (because of the situation within Iran), but I have more respect for Ahmadinejad,"
Agreed. Like any leader, he wants security for his country and people. Despite the NPT, the spread of nuclear weapons continues globally. He has no choice but to pursue a course that gives his country the ability to construct nuclear weapons. Like the USA et al, however, he'd be stupid to deliberately use such weapons of he ever had them built in Iran.
WTFU or STFU.
Smashing Iran has nothing to do with anything except eliminating a commercial rival in the ME to the zionist regime occupying Tel Aviv.
Any columnist who does not preface his/her column with a stern and unequivocal denunciation of the US regime is a war crimes enabler.
One thing that Israel seems to be forgetting, is that Russia and China have invested heavily in Iran. They will not stand by and watch Iran being bombed. They are both nuclear countries ( yes Herman, China has had nukes for a long time ) and could easily wipe Israel off the map. If Israel attacks Iran they could be committing suicide.
Russia has invested in Libya, they watched that being bombed. They have invested in Syria and Israel attacked them in 2007 destroying their nuclear program and Russia watched. Neither Russia nor China has explicitly nor implicitly included Iran under their nuclear umbrellas.
It Israel were to attack Iran, China and Russia would do nothing but complain and possibly replace military equipment after the fact.
Wishful thinking John! Vladmir Putin has warned of " retaliation and WWIII " if the American axis bombs Iran.
AmurKan
The point I'm making is we call the shots not Israel. Do you think Israel would launch an attack on Iran without our say so? Of course Iran would pay the biggest penalty, in blood and destruction of their country. What I said was the U.S wouldn't bear the brunt of Irans counterattack, Israel would. was that so hard to decipher.
Going Green -- Your big concern for the Empires losses in an attack on Iran are a joke , considering the death and destruction we have caused and are causing all over the world."
It's the Zionists, the Zionists, the Zionists" that are wrecking the world There is a word for this kind of fanatical belief.
The United States Government, which has been causing death and destruction throughout the world for more than 50 years, is still at it. Don't kid yourself.
Genicon: I had a very similar response to this hate monger... and posted it before seeing your post. The sad thing is, to point out matters like context and proportion get one labeled as a Zionist apologist by those authoritarians posting on CD who ONLY see the world as black or white, "with us or against us." They only seek validation of their position, and will attack anyone who tries to broaden their field of cognition... or God forbid, anyone else's.
“News is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity.” Beautiful quote from Bill Moyers. And keep in mind that propaganda is the form that publicity takes when those in power decide that all real news is subversive. It's like reliving the few months preceeding the attack on Iraq.
The name of the game in Iran isn't conquest--the name of the game is "regime change". It's the same in Syria. The other name of the game is the total destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah Granted that both Iran and Syria have looney-tunes leadership and that whoever replaces them will also be looney-tunes, but at least they will be our very own looney tunes. They will have been properly vetted and trained in obediance by the CIA, NED, State Department, and for all we know will also have brain implants for either reward or punishment depending on how they respond.
The quickest way to undo the tyranny of a tyrant is to give them what they want and then watch as they gag on their own incompetence to control it all.
Like Wall Street, Washington is infested with the best psychos American Academia could ever produce. They'll end up killing us all before its over.
Seems like a lot of 'voters' remorse' going on here. Just a gentle reminder - you all could have voted for non dem/repubs - not only for Prez, but also for the Congress. It is Congress that declares and finances war. Had enough yet? Maybe 1 or 2% of you will vote NADER next time... and if that trend continues, in 4 or 5 hundred years will will have real change - peace and justice for all. In the meantime, remember you could have voted for a non dem/repub.
Write in Jessie Ventura and Bradley Manning 4VP ; at least vote Green; send a message to the duopoly Parties. Obum is too slick, a real clown like Cain or Bachman would at least provide comic releif, but little policy changes. Voting may be obsolete anyway; machines with secret software and no Ballot paper trail? Best to WRITE IN ON ABSENTEE BALLOTS ONLY.
China and Russia know were spread too thin already even if we don't, but the psychos in DC never let facts or history sway their fanaticisim. They will take us down with them in the chaos to follow an attack on Iran.
Genicon,
Any Iranian 'counterattack' will not be capable of hitting Israel. Instead, the Iranians will attack the Saudi oilfields and be helped by Iraqi Shia to kill the remaining US troops there. Oil will rise to 300 dollars a barrel immediately and wreck the world economy. Iran will be able to shut down the Gulf's supply route for months, maybe years. The Israelis will be hurt only indirectly which is why they are pushing the US and Obama before the 2012 election to attack Iran. The US military has long realized the consequences of a Mutt and Jeff attack on Iran which is why they are not happy about it.
This article may be well-intentioned but it is without any real impact. Britain may have lost an empire but Britain found a role, as the USA's loyal lieutenant, and in that role continues to reap some of the 'benefits' of an imperial power. The Libya operation of NATO was very much an imperial adventure and Britain was on board for it before the USA. Only losing a war throws the imperialists off their game plans. The losing must also be obvious and cost the imperialist greatly at home via actual destruction on a grand scale so that the imperial class loses credibility. A rare event, perhaps, but such was the fate of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan in 1945 and thereafter. Even then, the forces of imperialism regroup and get back to work after a few decades. The German government has recently been roundly criticized in Germany for not getting a piece of the Libyan action, for example.
Who in the policy circles of D.C. has ever worried or stymied about increased vulnerability to terrorist attack? Terrorist attack, conducted or foiled, only disciplines the home front and strengthens the populations' desire for payback and justifies further restrictions on civil liberties (the eternal goal of the governing class).
The job of preventing the USA/NATO and or Israel from attacking Iran is Iran's. Peace lovers must hope that they are up to the job. Despite what Jenkins says above, North Korea has so far prevented attack in large part because of international uncertainty regarding their nuclear response capabilities.
Possession of nuclear missiles would have saved Iraq and Libya from all (or almost all of) the misery that they have been subjected to in the last 8 years. So long as the USA leadership foresees no great cost to aggressive war, aggressive war will be "on the table". Whenever Obama or Sec. Clinton talk about all options being on the table, they are threatening, in the final analysis, a nuclear attack on the recalcitrant nation in today's crosshairs.