Nader begins: "The same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crew to, in Ron Paul's inimitable words, 'lie their way into invading Iraq' in 2003, are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It is remarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wanted other Americans to fight the war in Vietnam."
Ralph Nader doing an interview during his 2008 Presidential campaign, 08/01/08. (photo: Scrape TV)
Iran: The Neocons Are At It Again
12 January 12
he same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crew to, in Ron Paul's inimitable words, "lie their way into invading Iraq" in 2003, are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It is remarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wanted other Americans to fight the war in Vietnam.
With the exception of Ron Paul, who actually knows the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, the Republican presidential contenders have declared their belligerency toward Iranian officials who they accuse of moving toward nuclear weapons.
The Iranian regime disputes that charge, claiming they are developing the technology for nuclear power and nuclear medicine.
The inspection teams of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) that monitor compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran belongs, have entered Iran numerous times and, while remaining suspicious, have not been able to find that country on the direct road to the Bomb.
While many western and some Arab countries in the Gulf region have condemned Iran's alleged nuclear arms quest, Israel maintains some 200 ready nuclear weapons and has refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty, thereby avoiding the IAEA inspectors.
Israelis in the know have much to say. Defense minister, Ehud Barak, responded to PBS's Charlie Rose's question "If you were Iran wouldn't you want a nuclear weapon?" with these words:
"Probably, probably. I don't delude myself that they are doing it just because of Israel. They have their history of 4,000 years. They look around and they see the Indians are nuclear. The Chinese are nuclear, Pakistan is nuclear as well as North Korea, not to mention the Russians."
The Iranian regime, with a national GDP smaller than Massachusetts, is terrified. It is surrounded by powerful adversaries, including the U.S. military on three of its borders. President George W. Bush labeled Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, one of the three "axis of evil," and Teheran knows what happened to Iraq after that White House assertion. They also know that North Korea inoculated itself from invasion by testing nuclear bombs. And all Iranians remember that the U.S. overthrew their popular elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and installed the dictatorial Shah who ruled tyrannically for the next 27 years.
Recently, Iran has experienced mysterious cyber sabotage, drone violations of its air space, the slaying of its nuclear scientists and the blowing up of its military sites, including a major missile installation. Israeli and American officials are not trying too hard to conceal this low level warfare.
Israel military historian-strategist Martin van Creveld said in 2004, that Iranians "would be crazy not to build nuclear weapons considering the security threats they face." Three years later he stated that "the world must now learn to live with a nuclear Iran the way we learned to live with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China....We Israelis have what it takes to deter an Iranian attack. We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us...thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany."
U.S. General John Abizaid is one of numerous military people who say that the world can tolerate a nuclear Iran-which, like other countries, does not wish to commit suicide.
Using the "Iranian threat," served Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who on his first tour of duty back in 1996, speaking to a joint session of Congress, made a big point of the forthcoming Iranian bomb.
Somehow the Iranians, who were invaded in 1980 by a U.S.-backed Saddam Hussein, resulting in a million casualties, and who have not invaded anybody for 250 years, are taking a very long time to build a capability for atomic bomb production, much less the actual weapons.
In mid-2011, Meir Dagan, recently retired head of Israel's "CIA," repeated his opposition to a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, adding it would engulf the region in a conventional war.
He further took the Israeli government to task for failing "to put forth a vision," noting that "Israel must present an initiative to the Palestinians and adopt the 2002 Saudi Arabia peace proposal, reiterated since, that would open full diplomatic relations with some two dozen Arab and Islamic countries in return for an Israeli pullback to the 1967 borders and recognition of a Palestinian state."
The war-mongers against Iran have often distorted Iranian statements to suit their purpose and kept in the shadows several friendly Iranian initiatives offered to the George W. Bush Administration.
Flynt L. Leverett, now with Brookings and before a State Department and CIA official, listed three initiatives that were rejected. Right after the Sept. 11 attacks, Iran offered to help Washington overthrow the Taliban. The U.S. declined the offer. Second, in the spring of 2003, top Iranian officials sent the White House a detailed proposal for comprehensive negotiations to resolve questions regarding its weapons programs, relations with Hezbollah and Hamas and a Palestinian peace agreement with Israel. This proposal was rebuffed and ignored.
Third, in October 2003, European officials secured an agreement from Iran to suspend Iranian uranium enrichment and to pursue talks that Mr. Leverett said "might lead to an economic, nuclear and strategic deal." The Bush administration "refused to join the European initiative, ensuring that the talks failed," he added.
A few days ago, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Iran was developing a capability for making nuclear weapons someday but was not yet building a bomb. So why is the Obama Administration talking about a western boycott of Iran's oil exports, so crucial to its faltering, sanctions-ridden economy? Is this latest sanction designed to squeeze Iranian civilians and lead to the overthrow of the regime? Arguably it may backfire and produce more support for the government.
Backing the Iranian regime into such a fateful corner risks counter-measures that may disrupt the gigantic flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Should that occur, watch the prices of your gasoline, heating bill and other related products go through the roof-among other consequences.
Isn't it about time for the abdicatory Congress to reassert its constitutional responsibilities? It owes the American people comprehensive, public House and Senate hearings that produce knowledgeable testimony about these issues and all relevant history for wide media coverage.
The drums of war should not move our country into a propagandized media frenzy that preceded and helped cause the Iraq invasion with all the socio-cide in that country and all the costly blowbacks against U.S. national interests?
It is past time for the American citizenry to wake up and declare: Iran will not be an Iraq Redux!
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Comments
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Why should Iran not build Nucular weapons to protect themselves. Is that not why Israel has them as well as all the other nations?
Is everyone being terrorized by Israel so that they do not speak out against this aggression.
This was done when there were efforts to negoiate with Iran. This is so wrng
There is nothing Americans or indeed the people of the world can to. The people who run the US (and Israel) are psychopaths. They cannot be reasoned with. They are armed to the teeth and will smash any protest that is mounted against them. They are armed with a mass media propaganda machine that will confuse and dumb-down most people.
Nothing can stop the washington regimes criminal spree of world violence until it collapses from its own internal corruption. Someday it will go bankrupt. Weapons suppliers will tire of being paid with worthless dollars. When the US regime collapses, then the wars will end. Not before.
I wish it were not this way. I wish there were some reason in Washington or the Obama regime. But Obama does not make the decisions. Those are made at CIA, Pentagon, and Tel Aviv and they don't listen to anyone; they don't care about anyone. They piss on everyone.
After Cheney/Bush, we really needed a transformationa l president. I'm still waiting.
Short of the front line troops refusing to play their game (extremely unlikely) or mass nationwide demonstrations by the people of the U.S. there's little chance of avoiding this.
I wonder however, how Russia & China will react and whether this is an influencing factor on what happens.
Here in Australia I would love to see our Prime Minister Julia Gillard (who will no doubt support any action) in the front line with Obama.
The way to Peace is NOT through War.
Obama could have prevented all of this if he would have allowed (or ordered) his Attorney General to open investigations and prosecutions against these neo-cons for lying to congress (felony), theft ($12 billion went missing in Iraq), torture, and many other crimes. The neo-cons are psychopaths but basically bullies. They love power but will back off if pushed hard enough. If some of them were in jail or on trial, they would not now be spreading more lies about Iran and pounding the drums of war.
Obama told all of us that his administration would not prosecute any of the neo-cons because he wanted to look forward and not backward. Well, now he's looking forward to a terrible war that he cannot stop. When you don't prosecute criminals, they keep doing what they did in the past. In order to change the future, you must deal with the past.
This sort of threat is an explicit violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which the US has signed but Israel has not. Iran has signed it. Why is this violation of international law not bringing UN mandated sanctions against the American regime?
Obama's sanctions against Iran are an act of war. Right now it is just economic war. Geithner is making the rounds of the world getting other nations to join the US in its economic war against Iran. When Iran is bled down and made weak, the bombs will begin to fall. This is how the US works -- it bleeds people into starvation (Iraq, Afghanistan) and then bombs the hell out of them.
The roots of the neo-con movement go back into Nazism in Germany of the 1930s. They did not like Hitler but they loved the Nazi movement with its commitment to corporatism, militarism, racial supremacy, and conquest of the world's natural resources. The US is not the standard bearer of the Nazi legacy. If Obama has any brains, he will get out of this movement. He will not be their useful idiot. They will take us just where Hitler took Germany in the 40s.
If Nader is right, where is the media "calling out" the neocons to spotlight accountability for their new drum-beating regarding Iran? Can it be the whole military/media complex is headed down the same dead-end all over again, with the same collusion, while the rest of us, slightly distracted by this Depression, sit by powerless to affect any rational course correction?
Unless there's blatant provocation (i.e., blockage of the straits of Hormuz), it seems to me there'll be no act of war until 2013, once the re-elected, or new, president is sworn in.
If it's Romney, you can basically bet the farm on war with Iran, and all that implies. With Obama, based on his performance so far, there's a better than even chance of avoiding an all-out war. He is not a neocon, the last time I looked, nor is Panetta. Richard Perl and William Kristol aren't giving them advice. Question: who is?
You think if you use the oxymornic term "Israeli American" you can euphemize your anti-semitism? Doesn't work. Israelis who come here to live and/or work are no different than Indians, Pakistanis, Canadians, Taiwanese, Japanese,South Africans (black and white), who all do the same. That's one of the unique things about America...always has been. If you're opposed to "Zionism" for whatever reasons, I can deal with that, but when you start drawing blanket conclusions about the motives of a whole demographic, you simply don't know what you're talking about, and that just stinks.
Note the access to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
Ask yourself this: How will we get all of that Iraqi oil to market? By the way, Iran has some oil too.
Their power is breathtaking and heinous and the U.S. is totally under their control, aided and abetted by all those listed in many RSN posts and by RMDC above. Folks should abandon the myth of the two party system and those who put on that show year after year.
I'll gladly vote for him as a Democrat. I just won't vote for a 3rd party.
Nader seems like the only person who'd might be willing to break the taboo.
If he chose to run again as a Democrat, I'd vote for him in the primary.
"Bashar al-Assad is right. There are international conspiracies to take him down.
This is OBVIOUS as expat Syrian National Council uses a policy papers arguing FOR military intervention in Syria that was WRITTEN by a NEOCON & Israel supporter & PAID FOR by U.S. State Department.
To further the military intervention the paper is defended DOING AWAY w/ local Syrian protesters who OPPOSE intervention was written by Michael Weiss, PR guy for a Brit NEOCON org w/ patrons like U.S. neocons Richard Perle, William Kristol & James Woolsey.
WEISS recently wrote a policy paper "Safe Area for Syria – An Assessment, etc" an amateur attempt (since Weiss is neither lawyer NOR has military experience) to write a PLAYBOOK FOR MILITARY intervention in SYRIA: "...this paper examines the way in which foreign military intervention could work for Syria." --was written for Strategic Research & Communication Centre run by Syrian expat Ausama Monajed former dir. of Barada TV”. - known from Wikileaks cables: Barada TV is affiliated w/ Movement for Justice & Devel, a network of Syrian exiles.
U.S. diplomatic cables showd that US State Dept funneled about $6 MILLION to the group since 2006 for satellite channel & finance "other" activities INSIDE Syria.
Iran is not our enemy, just as Iraq, Afganistan, Vietnam, etc were not enemies of the American people.
I dislike Theocracies but Israel is also one by default and in the deeply narrowly-focused conservative hands of LIKUD + there are those who would have the US be such -especially some of the current Republican wanna-be's, certain members of congress and some on the supreme court into the bargain.
The real danger is having nuclear weapons in hands who rule from the pulpit, or minaret, or synagogue, or deathly-looking marble temple -or as in N. Korea's case from secular worship of the "Beloved leader" while the people are starving in both substance and isolated ignorance.
It's one thing to somewhat justify Iran allegedly arming itself or adopting nuclear power but the whole point is that the entire planet should be cooperating to get rid of it and pursue sustainable means of power production.
Consider: sanctions and possibility of a military garrote being applied to the straits of Hormuz could well be a hard lesson in this supreme irony by making war and concurrently sending oil prices into the stratosphere -and guess who will get priority monopoly on what oil there is? -Yep, the already bloated military death machine, not the already over-stretched civilian populace.
But even that will no doubt escape the US and allied power structure who seem to dunk deeply of the draught that takes reason prisoner.
Colbert?
Hanford: Hey Mr. Driscoll. What are your international views?
Driscoll: I don't have any Mr. Hanford.
Hanford: Of course you do. Everyone has to have views as to the destiny of our country.Now you take the case of the Indian wars. All this silly, conciliatory nonsense about giving the Indians lands. As if you could actually make savages understand treaties. We should have swept across the prairie, destroying every redskin. Then we should have planted the American flag deep high and proud!
Abigail Sloan, a teacher: I think the country is tired of fighting Mr. Hanford. We were bled dry by the Indian wars. Anything we can accomplish with treaties should do.
Contd...
Hanford: This isn't the pap you spoon-feed your students. Treaties indeed! Peace indeed! The virility of a nation is in direct proportion to its military prowess. I live for the day when this country sweeps away...
[Notices Driscoll's disapproving look]
Hanford: You some kind of pacifist Driscoll?
Driscoll: No, just some sick idiot whose seen too many boys die because of too many men who fight thier battles at dining room tables and probably wouldn't last 45 seconds in a real skirmish if they were thrust into it.
Hanford: I take offense at that remark Mr. Driscoll!
Driscoll: And I take offense at arm chair warriors who don't know what a shrapnel, a bullet or a sabre wound feels like. Who've never smelled death after three days on an empty battlefield. Who've never seen the look on a man's face when he's lost a limb and his blood is seeping out. You have a great affinity for planting the flag deep; but not a nodding acquaintance of what it's like for families to bury their sons in the same soil!
Hanford: I'll not sit here and take that!
Driscoll: No, you'll go back to your bank. And it'll be business a usual until next dinner time when you give one of your vacuous speeches about a country growing strong by filling its graveyards. Well, you're in for some gratifying times Mr. Hanford. They'll be filling lots of graveyards for you; in Cuba, in France, all over Europe and the Pacific.
Contd
Driscoll: You can sit on the sidelines because according to you this country is going to get as virile as the Devil; from San Juan to Inchon we'll show how red our blood is because we'll spill it. There are two unfortunate aspects to this: One is you won't have to spill any; the other is you won't live long enough to know I'm right.
Cheerleader, w/ obvious, but unintentional hypocrisy: A violent man.
I'll add to Driscoll's statement: The recipients of attempts at planting the "American flag" have had to bury their dead & not even that, being unable to find the bodies. Obviously, Hanford is the relic the neocons aspire to; Driscoll, symbolic of one of many responses to be used derived from ammunition ironically provided by them to effectively refute their "flag-planting" fetish.
Finally, to conclude (again off topic): The Twilight Zone was one of the best series broadcast in U.S. TV history. And Rod Serling definately had a way w/ words, verbally & written.
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