Why attack Iran? War hawks in Washington are having trouble answering that question. Even their dire warnings about Iran's nuclear program have not been enough to alarm Americans already weary of Middle East conflicts.
Now the war drums have taken on a different tone. The Bush administration is testing a new rationale for attacking Iran: We must strike because Iranians are killing our soldiers in Iraq.
This is not simply a charge made by one state against another in the hope that a misguided policy will be changed. It is also part of a calculated effort to find an argument for bombing Iran that Americans will accept.
The politically ambidextrous Senator Joseph Lieberman, a vigorous supporter of Israel and the Iraq war, floated the new gambit a couple of weeks ago. He calculated that Iran-trained units fighting in Iraq, and weapons from Iran or manufactured with Iranian help, have been responsible for the death of 200 American soldiers.
If Iran does not change course, he said, the United States should "take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq."
Soon afterward, American press officers in Iraq began asserting that Iran is shipping weapons to Iraqi Shiite militias, specifically "penetrators" that can make roadside bombs more potent. Then last week a senior American commander in Iraq, General Kevin Bergner, charged that Iranians had helped plan a January attack in Karbala that left five American soldiers dead.
"The reality of this is that they're killing American forces," the general said.
Are Iranians really involved in the Iraq conflict, even arming and training militia units fighting US troops? Probably. Might factions within the diffuse, multi-polar Iranian government be encouraging such aid? Possibly. Iran has deep strategic interests in Iraq, its large, predominantly Shiite neighbor and longtime rival. It would be unthinkable for Iran to adopt a "hands-off" policy while Iraq's future is being decided.
By invading Iraq, the United States deposed an old order and arrogated to itself the right to design a new one. Others - Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, Saudis, Kurds, Turks and a host of radical Jihadis - had different ideas. They have insisted on their right to influence the course of events in a suddenly chaotic Iraq. Americans threw Iraq up for grabs, and cannot now complain that many are grabbing for it.
The larger question is whether Iran's involvement in Iraq - even if Iran could be found directly responsible for the death of Americans - is so outrageously provocative that it justifies an American attack. History argues that it is not.
Most American soldiers killed in the Korean War fell victim to mines, bombs or bullets made in China. General Douglas MacArthur - sounding much like some in Washington today - wanted to carry the war into China itself. President Harry Truman wisely refused and, when MacArthur persisted, relieved him of his command.
During the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union supplied North Vietnam with weapons and ammunition that killed thousands of American soldiers. Yet no one in the Johnson or Nixon administrations ever considered attacking Moscow in retaliation.
Nor did the Sandinista government in Nicaragua try to attack the United States during the 1980s, when American weapons and American-trained fighters were killing Nicaraguan soldiers and civilians. Helping friends during wartime is a tactic as old as proxy war itself.
Accusing Iran of deep involvement in the Iraq war is more than a way to lay the groundwork for a US attack. It also provides a scapegoat for America's looming defeat. By this rationale, the American occupation would have succeeded, and Iraq would now be blooming and tranquil, if only Iran had not interfered and ruined everything.
Not even Americans are likely to swallow that one. Most reject the various rationales the Bush administration has so far offered to justify a possible attack on Iran. If they remain hostile to the idea, President Bush will eventually have to ask himself a fateful question: Should I attack anyway?
Attacking Iran would accomplish at least one thing Bush must be seeking. It will assure that future historians will not remember the invasion of Iraq as his biggest blunder.
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`We have come to such a pass, that it is the first duty of intelligent men to restate the obvious' - George Orwell
Adam26banzGhaznavi's Response:The old predator Zbigniew Brzezinski warned the senate in Feb 2007 of the threat of strategy of tension terror ops of a Gulf of Tonkin II to create the pretext/ psycho political conditions conducive to the launch of the USA war against Iran.
Eg the entire USA political economic position is based on the Petrodollar.
You know that secret agreement brokered by Kissinger (when the USA fell off the gold standard in 1971) in 1973 with the Saudis (as swing producer able to flood the market & destroy any state defying their policy) that ALL oil be sold in $. THIS preserved the $ status s global reserve currency & gave the USA an unlimited credit card, enabling it to pass off the costs of its institutionalised hyperinflation ($9Trillion nat debt, $60Trillion accumalated other liabilities as per brookings institute estimates & the $370Trillion derivatives pyrmaid) onto other states just by PRINTING $ & fund the army required to protect the petrodollar (costing more than the rest of the planet's put together) via the same printing press. THIS is how the cold war was �won�, by bankrupting the USSR, by bankrupting the world.
THIS is why old soviet central Asia, Iraq & Eastern Europe are ringed with an arc of USA bases. To keep the oil/ gas sold in $ & help subvert any govt (eg Putin's who sells his oil in Roubles) not complying.
THIS is why Saddam Hussein was deposed, because he sold his oil in Euros, making 17% more on his deals than his neighbours. This is why the Iranians are being targeted by USA naval nuclear build up, because they are opening up a non $ oil bourse. This is why even Chavez was subject to coup attempt in 2002, because he switched to Euros.
THIS is why Putin is being subject to assassination plots & attempts to overthrow him (with Berezovsky as focal point of the plot - encompassing petrodollar fiends, dispossessed oligarchs, neo cons & shadowy finance, think Jacob Rothschild, friend of Mikhail Khordokhovsky who also purchased this so called 'political prisoner's' shares in Yukos), becase Putin switched from $ to demanding payment in Roubles. THIS is WHY the $ is finally dying.
Even the notorious Council on Foreign Relations declared the $ to be an absurdity supported only by `faith' (direct quote). Which is a little unfair, given the PETRODOLLAR. ...for the FULL article. Indeed, the Dow itself, has actually been crashing since 2000, losing some 65% of its quoted value, its� only risen in inflated $$ terms. Here's what Dick Cheney's personal banker Jeremy Grantham says about `the asset bubble covering ALL classes'. "The Bank for International Settlements, has warned that years of loose monetary policy has fuelled a dangerous credit bubble, leaving the global economy more vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump than generally understood." Eg ONLY the oil/$$$ link has enabled this crash to be carried out, thus far, in a controlled fashion, enabling also a massive shift of wealth to the hyper-rich via inflation.
Correspondingly, if USA manufacturing did recover (to take advantage of the low $), a tsunami of USA treasury bonds/ $ would return, triggering instant visible (instead of INSTITUTIONALISED) hyperinflation. Therefore the imperium is trapped has to keep the exported fiat $$$ at bay, by offshoring USA jobs/ production.
Has no choice but to give away California for Anbar province to keep the psycho political focus of its own people divided to retain control of the geo strategic pol/econ agenda (hence the orthodox left in backing unrestrained migration functions as the tragic internal prop to hyperfascism).
As we have no choice but to effect a Controlled Demolition of the USA Petrodollar Imperium...
In order to make possible the Post Petrodollar settlement based on establishment of the Common Ownership of Information (every 3rd world peasant to have access to every book/ piece of technical info ever produced on a wind up wifi laptop from MIT) in exchange for the oil remaining on long enough to enable the switch to solar powered microgeneration (without the oil the info is lost, without the info the oil is worthless). The consequent substantive sovereignty of the individual can thence be pooled to effect control of our energy based (as gold is inherently deflationary & no one will trust fiat) currencies...
Meyer Rothschild: `Give me control over a nations� currency & I care not who writes its laws.�
...establishing a tough basic constitutional fabric able to martial locally & globally to repel in real time any cabal of banksters/ energy barons & secureaucrats bent on the plunder of private & public wealth.
As such leads ultimately to equality & (as Orwell understood) equality as an end in itself, is the most unviable of all systems (lacking the parochial social glue of the war/ finance nexus, leads inexorably to a nihilistic nitpicking), such needs a gigantic vision to gyrostabilise it. Based on the establishment of a written constitution designed to secure for humanity control over its own time, in order to comprehend/ gain mastery over the UNWRITTEN cosmological constitution of God�s time/ creation; become God/ our cosmic parents (a la Philip Larkin & visit the same crap on the next cosmic generation), in order to avoid being destroyed by our own creation, the 10,000 year war/ finance nexus.
If however, the USA Imperium is able to effect its nuclear war against Iran, then the conseqaunt desensitization of all humanity shall lead it to resign itself to the descent into oblivion without an intellectual or spiritual fight. Squandering 4 billion years of earth evolution & potential
...eg the critical division within the USA ruling class IS over immigration. They don�t know which way to jump. If they go for `amnesty� (unrestrained migration/ defacto liquidation of the USA in favor of the North American Union) they will COMPLETELY delegitimise themselves. If they do anything to block such/ promote USA internal industrial recovery, they will trigger immediate hyperinflation.
So (while this may seem an impertinence from a UK subject) if...
under cover of a Gulf of Tonkin II op in the Persian Gulf leading to the bombing of Iran, leading to Grand Strategy of Tension terror ops in the USA itself to provide the pretext for the nuking of Iran
..they push for the North American Union...
Which the elite cabals hope would supply them with ever more cannon fodder for their petrodollar or petro `Amero' wars to prop up their fiat currency with the blood & oil of other nations; they would ultiamtely be able to invoke the idea of `equality' to draft the white working/ middle classes (portrayed as not pulling their weight in the `war on terror') with the aid of Mexican Zeta forces to hail them off to military &/ or the internment camps (recently built by Haliburton)
...your historic option is that of: A Revolutionary General Strike AND General Tax Strike AGAINST the North American Union & FOR a new constitutional convention.
Though until the instruments of power themselves break up completely, under the logic of the econ crash, there shall be an accelerating shockwave dynamic vis the Iran war; leading to the targeting of not only Pakistan, but Russia & even China (as the military plutocratic system devours itself/ generates ever widening swathes of new enemies that in turn have to be pre-emptively eliminated). This of course conflicts with & supercedes the North American Union agenda...
MOST people are wholly unaware of the unconstitutionality of the Fed Reserve, so a tax strike in relation to such CAN backfire dramatically.
IF however, you concentrate ALL your operational forces against the North American Union, which is so OBVIOUSLY unconstitutional, you can get FAR more traction.
Eg YOU will have the psycho political intiative, NOT the enemy...
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