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Not Another War! Why Attacking Iran Would Be Untold Disaster
Do the people of the United States really want perpetual warfare? Just as we are struggling to extricate ourselves from cruel, expensive, and unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our country is hurtling towards another even more disastrous conflagration, this time with Iran. Iran is not a small, backward, or feeble country. It has over 78 million people (ranking 18th among nations), is 71 percent urban, and enjoys a life expectancy of over 70 years. Iranians are 84 percent literate, 1.8 million attend universities (60 percent are women), and they have a GDP per capita of over $12,000.
Although Iran (formerly called Persia) has not made a serious attack on another country for at least 200 years, it does possess a formidable military with over half a million regular armed forces and some three million combat capable reserves. It also deploys short and medium range missiles, and has developed "swarming tactics" by which numerous small fast boats neutralize technologically superior naval forces. After suffering a surprise attack by Iraq in 1980, Iran showed it could recover quickly from initial defeat and repulse a better-armed enemy. Although large numbers of Iranians despise the current government, a gratuitous attack on the motherland would surely provoke a unified and determined nationalist response. It would also guarantee Iran the sympathy and support of Islamic and Third World people everywhere.
All this indicates that an attack upon Iran would be anything but a cakewalk. A recent historian of modern Iran (Professor Ervand Abrahamian) concludes that such aggression "could easily escalate into a catastrophe on the magnitude of Europe's Thirty Years War."
Why is there danger of war with Iran? The basic reasons are two-fold. The United States has never accepted the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which ousted Shah Mohammad Pahlavi. The Shah was a repressive dictator, but a close American ally installed in 1953 by a CIA organized military coup. Ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, US administrations have preferred punishing Iran in various ways rather than engaging in honest diplomacy to resolve conflicts. The American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have, entirely unintentionally, strengthened the position of Iran by devastating its regional rivals. Washington now fears that enhanced Iranian power (combined with the Arab Spring) will eventually undermine U.S. control of energy resources in the Middle East and, in particular, will destabilize the reactionary, but utterly faithful, U.S. client regime in oil rich Saudi Arabia.
The second reason for the danger of war with Iran is Israel. The state of Israel, engorged by bountiful U.S. military aid, is currently the pint-sized bully of the Middle East. It has dispossessed the indigenous population of Palestinian and it selectively assassinates their leaders. It periodically attacks neighboring countries and maintains a large but unacknowledged nuclear arsenal. Israel dearly wants to continue as the dominant power of the Middle East and fears that Iranian ascendance will challenge this coveted status. Tel Aviv argues that Iran's nuclear program constitutes an "existential threat" but this claim is surely bogus. Iran is not producing nuclear weapons and Israel is entirely able to deter any conceivable Iranian nuclear attack. Netanyahu's belligerent war rhetoric could be a bluff intended to make the United States even more aggressive towards Iran.
A war with Iran would be an economic and political disaster and, unfortunately, this is no hyperbolism. Such a war would escalate the price of oil and sabotage our tepid economic recovery from the recent recession. It would enormously elevate our perilously high national debt, and it could terminate the role of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Even more fundamentally, if human society has any chance of surviving the combined dangers of nuclear warfare and climatic catastrophe, it must be through the rule of robust international law. A preemptive attack upon Iran utterly shreds international law and grossly violates elementary concepts of justice. It thereby endangers not only the Middle East, but also the long-term survival of the human community.
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71 Comments so far
Show AllWe can only hope that North Korea's upcoming satellite launch contains an EMP device targeted over the geographic center of the US...
Cogent, reasonable article. Just two problems: 1) There is no international law: the US, NATO, Israel, China, Russia do what they can get away with--might makes right among the Big Swinging Dicks. 2) Israel hopes that by swinging theirs, it will get bigger, and that anyway, they are invulnerable (Just how totally safe are they, though, once they kick the hornet's nest??)
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ACTUALLY, it's a "DISASTER"
to even talk about going to WAR
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What is so obfuscatingly obscured, and so contrary to USA exceptionalism,
to mostly escape most people's only seemingly RIVETED attention ?
OFFICIALS EVEN TALKING ABOUT
GOING TO WAR AGAINST IRAN
------- I S _ I T S E L F -------
-- A _ W A R _ C R I M E _ --
--- AGAINST THE PEACE ---
I wish more people read this, from Dave Lindorff: :
"President Barack Obama and His Key Advisors are a Gang of War Criminals"
See http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/28-11
Read his penetrating analogy, of violent street thugs set loose on the world:
<<" If a bunch of street toughs decided to gang up and beat the crap out of some guy in the neighborhood because they feared he might be planning to buy a gun to protect his family, I think we’d all agree that the police would be right to bust that crew and charge them with conspiracy to commit the crime of assault and battery. If they went forward with their plan and actually did attack the guy, injuring or killing him in the process, we’d also all agree they should all be charged with assault and battery, attempted murder, or even first-degree murder if he died.
In international relations and international law, the same applies. Under the Nuremberg Principles, later incorporated into the United Nations Charter, to which the United States is a signatory, the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, which is defined as a war started against another nation that does not pose an imminent threat of attack on the aggressor nation or nations, is the highest of war crimes, for which the perpetrators are liable for the death penalty. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of those above acts is an equally serious capital crime.
…
That alleged threat, even if it were real, doesn’t even come close to constituting an “imminent” threat of attack of the kind which might justify a pre-emptive strike on Iran, as is being publicly contemplated and threatened by the US and Israel.">>
_ W A R _ C R I M I N A L _ I N _ C H I E F _
<<" The simple fact is that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, and his top generals and cabinet officers, are committing a war crime every time they threaten Iran with attack.
The president is also committing a crime of conspiracy when he sends his generals to Israel, which is also committing the crime of threatening to attack Iran and planning to attack Iran.
This is because by discussing options for an attack, or by providing Israel with the weapons and delivery systems it would need for such an attack, as the US is doing by sending Israel super large bunker-buster bombs and bomb-capable aircraft, they are furthering that conspiracy.">>
In theory it would be nice to have a functioning democracy in the USA, but 15% of Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth, and few elections have a 15% margin, and this 15% votes Republican (I'm betting)
A functioning Democracy could work our rulers would let it; and maybe only if you prevented really stuipid and really irrational people from voting. Don't hold your breath.
Democracy almost happened in the 60's and 70's they'll never let it get that far out of control again.
More people in the US believe in angels and UFO's than in the facts of Anthropocene Climate Change. So, yeah, you're pretty much screwed.
The only way to unseat these wars is to stop voting Republican/Democrat. EXPOSE people like Henry Kissinger who famously said "Military men are stupid animals to be used as pawn for foreign policy". Tell that to our soldiers who believe they are fighting and dying for this country. They are dying, but not for Democracy. It is to kill poor folks in other countries, for their OIL, GOLD, HEROIN, and other resources.
The revolution is now people. We need to bail on the rich now. Stop paying your taxes.
http://www.nwtrcc.org/ The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
Stop paying your taxes that are funding these wars! Take your money out of these "too big to exist" banks (our family did) and stock up on basic foods for at least a year. There isn't much time left folks.
'Militarism is the only constant now guiding US policy. The military-industrial-entertainment-technological-scientific-media-corporate-banking complex is pretty much the entirety of the US economy. If we aren't attacking, invading, drone bombing, ramping up the slaughter, covering up the incessant crimes, torturing, illegally detaining and torturing more, and basically acting the role of World Psycho-Killer every single day, then the American leadership mafia in Washington will have a nervous breakdown because there won't be any meaning to their insane lives.'
- Ephraim gets it right, as do most of the other people (as opposed to 'individuals') commenting here. Of course, Ephraim and Mr Mayer have left out a swift discussion of another root cause of the trouble, a precursor to the militarism, and one of the principal reasons that the U.S. is destroying itself as fast as it can: hypermasculinism. Study this carefully before dismissing it, since most people, especially men, are allergic to any discussion of the toxically over-gendered nature of American society, national identity and raison d'etre.
Of course, the answer to Mr Mayer's opening question is: 'Yes! No! Maybe! Duh, what war? Yeah, you betcha! Kick ass! Any and every war is another chance to show the world how big our cocks are! What's an Eye-ran? Fuckin' towel-heads - kill 'em all. My god's better than your god. God bless America. Support our troops, even while we fuck 'em up the ass on their return. Hell, let's fuck 'em up the ass while they're in solitary in Afghanistan, like Bowe Bergdahl (www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/) Couldja just pass the Doritos and Coors and get outta the way of the tv so I can see the football game/Oprah/American Idol/American Housewives/Jersey Shore (or whatever that display of imbecility is called)?'
Nine tenths of Americans are BONE-IGNORANT of what the hell is going on past their own prejudices and appetites, they want to keep it that way, and they are the singularly most unenlightened society on Earth, knuckle-dragging their way through 'dangerously limited ways of codifying masculinity'. Most think the whole purpose of their shithole country is to be top dog NO MATTER HOW MUCH DESTRUCTION THAT ENTAILS.
So while I know for a fact that every last syllable of Mr Mayer's piece is dead-on accurate and, if you like, prophetic, it is also a known fact that most Americans are too goddamn apathetic, ignorant, stupid and cowardly to stop their fascist government from attacking Iran, and do not give a fiddler's fuck that:
'A preemptive attack upon Iran utterly shreds international law and grossly violates elementary concepts of justice. It thereby endangers not only the Middle East, but also the long-term survival of the human community.'
'Most people would rather die than think. In fact, they do.' -Bertrand Russell
ANDRO: Thanks for pointing out the link between hyper-masculinity and violence R' U.S. My term for the same phenomenon is Mars rules, and I've spoken about it often in this forum.
The Iranians are wrong about the U.S. being the "Great Satan". In actuality, the U.S. is the "Great Sadist"!
I don't think this article, or many of the others I read about the Israelis trying to get to OK to attack Iran, highlights the human cost quite enough.
Sure there will be high oil prices and economies will crumble, but what about the hundreds of thousands of decent, civilian Iranians and thousands of US and Israeli troops and civilians. Perhaps some more humn stories about people actially dying and suffering from wars would bring back the rabid mob from the distortion of war as anything other than the abomination it is. All this talk of brinkmanship, economies and struggles diverts from the immediate human cost.
These articles help Israel and the US dehumanise the Iranians to simply the lifeforms sitting above their oil. They are living, breathing, loving humans at least for the time being.
You Americans, the public, need to send a message to your elected representatives that they might have the financial backing from the MIC now, but the people should not take peaceful revolution 'off the table' if they continue along this war-mongering path. That starts with boycotting consumer goods of the MIC. Start with one big one, (perhaps G.E or News/Fox) as a symbol, and move from there. It doesn't take much to picket a cinema.
There is no fruitful discussion of morality here--the American people will unreservedly support war and will continue to do so until they incur a big enough punishment to really suffer themselves and by that I mean real physical harm not just high gas prices. Will this attack bring the war home? Don't be surprised if it does.
What if there was a war and no one showed up ? But no the people of America are happy to send their kids to die
Jsmith:
" The people of America are happy to send their kids to die :
Yeah, all the flag waver parents that have decals, ribbons, stickers flag lapel pins and bumper stickers that say we support our troops are really supporting the right to have their kids murdered and have them maimed physically, mentally and spiritually!
WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS TO BE KILLED AND SUPPORT THEM TO KILL OTHERS. That is the bumper sticker and ribbons that would tell the truth!
URGENT-URGENT-URGENT!!!!!!
This year it seems like the elite doesn’t have so much time to loose in organizing a new conference. The secretive Bilderberg Conference taking place in Haifa, Israel.
A list of participants does not yet exist, however it can be assumed that well-known figures like David Rockefeller, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Henry Kissinger will surely attend. -These are the people that will decide when-not if-we go to war in Iran and Syria.
It comes as no surprise that the Bilderberg members are meeting earlier than usual this year, since the year 2012 is definitely going to be an important year on their agenda: we are on the verge of war with Syria or Iran, the EU’s failing EURO currency and the U.S. dollar are further disintegrating anode one thing is sure, they will push for a further global government or rather the new world order. Since the FEMA concentration camps in the United States celebrated its official activation a month ago, there is good reason to believe that we could face a genocide which would be totally according to the Bilderberg agenda pushing for population reduction. Don't forget that our current President signed the NDAA into law-and the US Government Has Ordered Over 750 Million Rounds of .40 Caliber Hollow Point Ammunition in the Last Three Years.
This is not for "target practice" folks-it is for us, as the globalists plan to tank our monetary system, kill many, and then instill a new and improved global currency, as their further plans to control us.
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RTNews link:
DHS won't explain its order of 450 million hollow point bullets
Published: 04 April, 2012, 01:48
http://rt.com/usa/news/dhs-million-point-government-179/
As Betty Davis once said " Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night".
THIS IS EXTREMELY ALARMING FOLKS!!
Another good reason to alter the current US leanings towards war is that war is a form of pornography. It is a dirty, smutty little sin that distorts and inhibits sexual and therefore human normality. Sadism is a sexual sickness.
Rather have the warmongers in front of the screen masturbating to the rythmic images of loveless sexual coupling than deny them their lust and channel their frustrations into killing. They could be recruited and registered and still be called soldiers. They could compare their dicks and ability to delay orgasm and be given commissions and medals and a heroes burial when they finally dry up in the awful face of their cynicism and corrosive self love.
At least they would not kill anyone.
They won't agree to this of course. They have more fun killing than wanking and it is clear that a cruise missile is bigger and better than their dick will ever be: its end more explosive than any orgasm; its effect more permanent; the blood more thrilling than semen; its ejaculation infinitely more far reaching. Then, lover, wait for it!! We have an ICBM!!!! Go nuclear!!!! New inventions daily! Now see them die from the comfort of your airconditioned desk! Superlatives abound!!!
A soldier is both the lowest and the most unfortunate being in humanity. In true sadistic form the USA boosts them abuses them, dehumanises them and then callously discards them with a grand mock show of respect in an ultimate spasm of pleasure that even the family of the deceased indulges in.
They and their families readily oblige in victory and death showing that sadomasochism is the most popular religion in the USA.
The US citizenry has shown they cannot survive without a regular fix of this inhuman pornography.
The USA is on a low seldom before plumbed.
You're definitely on to something. I believe that the militarism in the U.S. is directly related to, perhaps even partially caused by, our weird American stable of stated and unstated taboos against the expression of our natural human sexuality. The main religions in this country seem to be hostile to or embarrassed about sexuality, and tend to reject it, and call it sin.
I've read more than one account written by combat soldiers which say that killing is a bigger high than any sex or drug. And William Manchester, in his great memoir of WW2 experience as a Marine, writes about a powerful vision he had during combat,of an enticing woman who he called "the whore of death", that had been watching over every battle since the beginning of time. This vision was intensely sexual, according to Manchester.
I've noticed that people I've known who have gun collections or are attracted to guns tend to be people who have a lot of difficulty with the opposite sex. I know this isn't universal, but in my opinion it's not uncommon.
Also, what goes along with a macho, weapon-loving subculture is usually a contempt for women, who are seen only as sexual objects to be used, and in some cases used and then murdered, as has happened in the wars more times than we will ever know.
As a part of documentary, I challenged Americans at Ground Zero.
http://youtu.be/l3mt6A0rAtU
Edip Yüksel Challenges Fellow Americans at Ground Zero
For an upcoming documentary film on Islamic Reform, Edip Yuksel, an American-Turkish-Kurdish author and professor, challenged fellow Americans at Ground Zero on 25 June 2011:
Peacefully engage in an intellectual/philosophical debate with me. Criticize my assertions regarding the politics and religion for three minutes. Randomly pick three Americans from the street as referees. If after three minutes they decide that you are right, you will get a $100 with no further questions asked. If the three referees decide that you lost the debate, then you may choose any of the following two options for free:
1. A copy of the QURAN: a Reformist Translation;
If you are scared of the Quran or if you are illiterate, then:
2. A can of soda and a bag of potato chips!
You have nothing to lose. You may learn something, or you may win 100 dollars or gain a little weight.
In four sessions (about 30 minutes), Edip asserted that:
• the USA government is no more the government of the people, by the people, for the people; it is an oligarchy. It has become the USA-Inc: the government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.
• that the filthy rich has declared war against working class, condemning the bottom fifth to prisons, the next fifth to military service so that with the wave of a flag could use the children of the poor people to kill the children of poor in other countries to make bloody profits for corporations.
• that capitalism or consumerism is neither fair nor sustainable. Greed and materialism is destroying and poisoning the land, the sea, the air, while exploiting the working people.
• that the USA Constitution needs amendments for the separation of corporations and state, for public financing of political campaigns, for reducing corporate control and monopoly over the media, and for protection of environment. Another amendment is needed to ban making profits from health care, manufacturing and sales of arms, and wars.
• that the USA Constitution needs an amendment to create another house to monitor the financial ties and transactions of the U.S. Congress through lottery elections (See the details at Peacemakers Constitution drafted by Edip Yuksel and his colleagues).
• that the USA-Inc is addicted with wars; fulfilling Eisenhower 's prophetic warning, the Military Industrial Complex, with its bloody appetite for wars, has grown monstrous.
• that those who live by sword die by sword.
• that the USA is cutting from education, health care, infrastructure to feed the military beast and the top one percent.
• that the USA-Inc has been supporting dictators and fascist regimes like Saudi Arabia and Israel.
• that the USA-Inc is now forced to replace its puppet dictators with puppet democratic (!) governments.
• that the Al-Qaida and similar terrorist organizations are the byproduct of the USA-Inc's imperialism, overt and covert operations, occupations, terror, tortures, rape and plunder of resources of poor countries.
• that the wrong-wing-warmongering Christians are hypocrites; they sing peace in their churches while they vote for bigger military, for more weapons, warmongers, the torturers, and the mass murderers.
• that the biggest terrorist organizations are states, the global arms producers and merchants
• that the USA terrorists just killed more than a million people in Iraq alone, a country that never attacked to the USA and never supported al-Qaida.
• that if Muslims are terrorists then, Christians are terrorists 666 times.
• that it is imperative for peacemakers of the world to stand as a united force against warmongers, big corporations, banks, Wall Street, and Zionist organizations.
"Descartes said 'I think therefore I am.' I say I think twice; therefore I do not believe."
discover the truth so that it will set you free
www.19.org
Thank you for writing this, Tom Mayer. Why is no one feeling the urgency about this upcoming war?
We're too scattered, I think. Certain Obama die-hards bombard and distract. us with all the injustices going on in this country, but those injustices pale when compared to an Iranian War.
We must get together and focus and discuss only one thing: how to stop this disastrous war from taking place. The streets should fill with people whose intent it is to forget everything else and protest this insane political war waged by insane political leaders.
War is the umbrella under which all the other injustices take place.
An attack on Iran could very easily lead to the involvement of Russia and China. It could very well lead to a nuclear world war 3. I think about this and it literally nauseates me, while it excites the psycopaths at the heads of the US and Israeli governments.
While Tom does a great job of describing the danger and insanity of attacking Iran, and a good job of citing two of the "reasons" (US and Israeli policy) driving such an attack, we need to also understand the underlying (and just plain lying) CAUSE of this insanity --- which is, an undiagnosed global Empire, which includes both our former country, and the former democracy stolen by the same Empire from the Israeli people.
Amy's interview with Seymour Hersh yesterday exposed a scale of deception that the corporate/financial/militarist (and media) Empire, which has taken over, captured, and now "Occupies" our former country, behind the facade of its two-party "Vichy" facade of faux-democratic government, carries on continually to foster wars behind the people's back.
With the fog-screen of plausible deniability falling away and the evidence of Obama allowing the known terrorist organization MEK to be connected with Mossad, CIA, and JSOC cross-training in Nevada, along with the Iraq-pre-war-like "Iranian Operations Division" and its hundreds of CIA alternate channel intelligence agents, the time seems close when the old Nixon indictment is going to stick to Obama like a burning tire, "what did he know and when did he know it".
This DGE (Disguised Global Empire) facade is falling apart as quickly as the Nazi Empire's "Vichy" facade regime as WWII progressed toward its revealing and undeniable conclusions about the truth of the underlying (and lying) Empire and its phony bit players.
Liberty, democracy, justice, & equality
Over
Violent/Vichy
Empire,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Occupy Empire signs:
“The faces of Empire”
Obama = Petain
Romney = Hitler
What gutlessly voting for
'least worst' leads to!
Don't choose either poison-pill candidate.
Neither the sugar-coated, nor faster-acting.
Our many 'symptom crimes' are varied,
but the casual cancer of Empire is the root.
It would be the first american war where to inter its territory would require dropping more bombs than all the wars until now - madness is not new to history