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bandow:
"Many of the people who helped dump America into Iraq think the U.S. must attack Iran. Joshua Muravchik, a cheerful member of the dwindling band of neocon warriors, writes, "We must bomb Iran." Other observers – Joseph Cirincione of the Center for American Progress and John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, for instance – believe an attack on Iran is likely if not inevitable."
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ynet:
"US President George Bush does not have sufficient credit to initiate a military strike on Iran , Giora Romm, senior researcher for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (jinsa), told a forum attended by members of the Foreign Ministry and delegates from the American Jewish community in Jerusalem Tuesday.
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Quoting a senior American official, Romm told the forum, "If Bush does something physical to Iran, he will be impeached."
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Speaking to Ynetnews, Romm said he "could see a situation where we (israel) would attack Iran and the United States won't, but I can't estimate that now."
Romm added that the American-Israeli alliance has not been endangered following the Democratic upswing in the US elections."
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DemocracyNow had Howard Zinn on The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism for an hour.
7 comments:
Xymphora assures us that the U.S. won't attack or invade or bomb Iran. I think he means that some such attack would be too damaging to the world economy. He thinks the Bush team wouldn't do anything that would create as much disruption that such an attack would likely cause.
I wonder if there's anything the Bush people would not do. Let's say they decided to attack Russia and China at the same time. With 10,000 directable ICBM's we'd be able to take out enough of their combined forces that whatever retaliation they could mount wouldn't be able to kill a very high percentage of Americans, say 20,000,000.
They might think that by this they wouldn't have to invade any more Iraq's for demonstration projects.
Although there would be a big disruption of the world's economy, they might figure that by removing their main competitors, they would come out on top again when the dust, so to speak, settles.
What or who would stop them? Surely Impeaching Bush would come too late to do any good.
Surely the argument that this would be mass murder wouldn't stop them. They are already committing mass murder and that hasn't slowed them up much.
The point here is that our showing they are irrational, illegal, and immoral in what they're doing hasn't stopped them when they're killing hundreds of thousands. I doubt it would work any better if they'd be killing hundreds of millions.
The point here is that our showing they are irrational, illegal, and immoral in what they're doing hasn't stopped them when they're killing hundreds of thousands. I doubt it would work any better if they'd be killing hundreds of millions.
agreed.
i can't actually remember what xymph's argument is about them not attacking iran. if i'm not mistaken, he simply thinks that it's a sideshow, to distract from the attack against syria. is that right? i don't remember him making the argument that an attack on iran would hurt the economy 'too much' (seriously, i simply can't remember what his argument is)
I went over to Xymphora's archives. Here are a few of his arguments. He talks about,
"...Reasons why Israel won't attack:
Iran isn't built on Greater Israel.
Shi'ite Iran will serve a major Israeli ally against its main problem, the Sunni world.
Iran, even with a nuclear program, poses absolutely no real threat to Israel.
It's Syria and not Iran that is the target in the 'Clean Break' document, a document that has been followed by Israel almost down to the word (well, except for the big part about reducing dependency on American taxpayer largesse).
Israel's safety depends on the mythology that it cannot be defeated, an idea achieved through much Israeli sacrifice. It has been pointed out that Israel's problem is that it has to win every time, and its enemies only have to win once. If Israel sends bombers against Iran, bombers which fail in their mission and are shot down, the Israeli mythology is shot down at the same time, and Israel's despondent enemies have a new reason for hope. Attacking Iran isn't worth the risk."
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/12/iran-talk.html
He argues that the U.S. won't attack Iran, saying,
"...there is absolutely no chance that the United States will attack Iran, for the same reasons as always. Iran is geographically located such that it can block much of the world’s oil, causing a catastrophic rise in prices, and a massive world recession. Iran can also cause huge amounts of retaliatory mischief, in Iraq, the Middle East, and around the world. There is no prospect of removing the current Iranian leadership, which will only be strengthened by an attempt to do so. Any attack on Iran is simply not possible."
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2006/09/golden-age-of-anti-semitism.html
I thought we have not had a civilization ending thermonuclear war because everyone supposed MAD was true. Beyond the prospect of massive destruction of buildings, infrastructure, agricultural development, and people, the economy (the elite's main concern) would suffer irreparable damage.
Xymphora argues that the U.S. won't go into Iran because the people in charge here still believe in major parts of this theory. According to Xymph, there are limits to the things the powerful will do in order to steal the world's valuables.
However, I'm not sure that MAD is now true. I'm not sure that attacking Iran, or anyone else, assures unacceptable consequences.
If neo con planning is about anything, it's about arranging things so their team comes out ahead in the long run. The economic bankruptcy of the United States and its elites is a function of the growing strength and aggresiveness of the rest of the world, particularly those folks we can't control in Russia, China, and the Islamic world, like Iran.
If you can't compete any more, and you can't figure out a way for your "enemies" to give you all their valuables, all I'm saying, there is always the idea of "eliminating" them. The consequences in that event, where there really are no powers left in the world to put up a challenge, would be much less problematic.
Xymphora's argument depends on the elites in this country, represented by the neo cons and others, to shrink back from doing anything like this that would benefit them in the long run.
He assumes that it's only Germans who can implement "final solutions."
Having laid out my apocalyptic vision, I wonder whether it is that unreasonable, and if it does present a possible if not likely scenario, what can anybody do about it.
This what we call "civilised" world is in fact a barbaric world. A civilised person does not do to others what he does not want to happen to him. The naZionists and those who back them are finally exposed on the Internet and there is a chance that they will start to behave a little better than they did the last 50 years. Wars on the ground are not winnable any more and the latest air defence systems and anti ship missiles are unstoppable. Lately we have seen wars waged by the mightiest armies ever against the poorest countries of the world without succes. Iran is not a poor counttry, that may keep it from being attacked. On the other hand naZion is now so idiologically and morally and financially bankrupt that it is considering suicide by attackin Iran. Only when USrael is half or more destroyed by retaliating Iran will the world have enough pity on the abused Jews again to keep the illegal racist apartheid state of the Zionists survive.
I read this by Gabriel Kolko, saying,
"...Above all, in Iraq the American government is facing the failure of its entire Middle East project, an illusion in which the Israelis have a profound interest. Bush and gang are in a state of denial, but the U.S. is going the way of its defeat in Korea and Vietnam, and its military is increasingly overstretched and demoralized. It has based its foreign policies on fantasies and non-existent dangers, neo-con dreams and desires, only partially to meet equally illusory Israeli objectives to transform the entire Middle East so that it accepts Israel in whatever form the fickle Israeli electorate presents it."
These considerations would support Xymphora's claim that Bush, et al, will not attack, bomb, or otherwise invade Iran. As it was claimed in the original post, he doesn't have the political capital.
I had pointed out that there were several options possible for Bush to take. I made the argument that, given the terrible situation our country is in, militarily and economically, there would be the idea that one could "eliminate" our economic and military competitors, so that when things settled down after the conflict, the United States would have a more secure prosperous position relative to whomever was left.
There are other, less drastic possibilities. The United States could stay in Iraq, unable to leave, and unable to bring peace to the countries it invaded. I see this as a sink hole sucking up lives and money for as long as we are there.
Given our basic economic weakness, I don't see we'd be able to buy off the Iranians, the Russians, or the Chinese so that American companies would be able to create a stable environment for business in the region. I'd expect the people who have been resisting our invasions will continue to get support, they will continue to mount a lot of violence against anything the U.S. does.
All of these possibilities, including "hail mary" attack on Russia and China, are based on the belief that the only effective way of assuring "our" survival, actually, the survival of American elites, is the use of force, including violence, (like bombings and assassinations,) stealth, (like the manipulation of appearences,) and deceit, (where, for example, the U.S. gets the Sunni's and Shia's to fight amongst themselves instead of both fighting against the U.S.).
Whereas I'd prefer the United States would have dealt with the crimes of 9-11 as one would deal with any crime, and promote the workings of international organizations to enforce the rule of law, sadly, we have not. I say this about all the Presidents I've seen. They make an appearence of promoting the rule of law, but then send in special ops teams, etc, instead...
I would agree that it would be unlikely and even crazy to think that Bush, or anyone else, would start a thermonuclear war just to regain one's economic position. However, if we've found that moral, legal, and psychological arguments are inneffective deterents for preventing the continued killing of Iraqis, what does prevent the President from "throwing the long bomb"?
thnx steven. fp'd
Remember a couple months ago when I stirred you guys up with that talk about RNEPs and fallout? Apparently our war plans have been altered a great deal since that material was written. I know leaders around the world have told the Bush administration in no uncertain terms not to attack Iran. Where's my money? I stand by my prediction from last January, I don't think Dubya will be able to resist, and I do think he'll use nuclear weapons, creating an even bigger mess than I hypothesized earlier. Unless intervention takes place, it's a done deal—and an intervention could happen. Democrats' winning Congress doesn't mean we aren't still on the threshold of a catastrophe.
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