[Peace-discuss] The Next Quagmire.

[Morton K. Brussel]

Will such desperate cries  -- in the wilderness?-- do any good?

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/03/3587/

Again, the responses to this article at the Commondreams website are  
symptoms of the despair many feel. Call your reps tomorrow and  
express your disappointment/anger at their complicity.

Published on Monday, September 3, 2007 by TruthDig.com
The Next Quagmire
by Chris Hedges
The most effective diplomats, like the most effective intelligence  
officers and foreign correspondents, possess empathy. They have the  
intellectual, cultural and linguistic literacy to get inside the  
heads of those they must analyze or cover. They know the vast array  
of historical, religious, economic and cultural antecedents that go  
into making up decisions and reactions. And because of this-endowed  
with the ability to communicate and more able to find ways of  
resolving conflicts through diplomacy-they are less prone to blunders.

But we live in an age where dialogue is dismissed and empathy is  
suspect. We prefer the illusion that we can dictate events through  
force. It hasn’t worked well in Iraq. It hasn’t worked well in  
Afghanistan. And it won’t work in Iran. But those who once tried to  
reach out and understand, who developed expertise to explain the  
world to us and ourselves to the world, no longer have a voice in the  
new imperial project. We are instead governed and informed by moral  
and intellectual trolls.

To make rational decisions in international relations we must  
perceive how others see us. We must grasp how they think about us and  
be sensitive to their fears and insecurities. But this is becoming  
hard to accomplish. Our embassies are packed with analysts whose main  
attribute is long service in the armed forces and who frequently  
report to intelligence agencies rather than the State Department. Our  
area specialists in the State Department are ignored by the  
ideologues driving foreign policy. Their complex view of the world is  
an inconvenience. And foreign correspondents are an endangered  
species, along with foreign coverage.

We speak to the rest of the globe in the language of violence. The  
proposed multibillion-dollar arms supply package for the Persian Gulf  
countries is the newest form of weapons-systems-as-message. U.S.  
Undersecretary of State
R. Nicholas Burns was rather blunt about the deal. He told the  
International Herald Tribune that the arms package “says to the  
Iranians and Syrians that the United States is the major power in the  
Middle East and will continue to be and is not going away.”

The arrogant call for U.S. hegemony over the rest of the globe is  
making enemies of a lot of people who might be predisposed to support  
us, even in the Middle East. And it is terrifying those, such as the  
Iraqis, Iranians and Syrians, whom we have demonized. Empathy and  
knowledge, the qualities that make real communication possible, have  
been discarded. We use tough talk and big weapons deals to  
communicate. We spread fear, distrust and violence. And we expect  
missile systems to protect us.

“Imagine an Iranian government that was powerful, radical, and in  
possession of nuclear weapons; imagine the threat that would pose to  
Israel and to the American-led balance of power, which has been so  
important in the Middle East since the close of the Second World  
War,” Burns said in a speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential  
Library in Boston last April 11. “That is our first challenge.”

“Our second challenge is that Iran continues to be the central banker  
of Middle East terrorism,” he went on. “It is the leading funder and  
director of Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the  
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine general command. Third,  
Iran is in our judgment a major violator of the human rights of its  
own people; it denies religious, political, and press rights to the  
people of a very great country representing a very great  
civilization. And so we see a problem that is going to be with us for  
a long time, and we are trying to fashion a strategy that will work  
for the long term.”

George W. Bush’s latest salvo, on Aug. 28, was more of the same.

“Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear  
weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and  
violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,” he said. Bush  
warned that the United States and its allies would confront Iran  
“before it is too late.”

These kinds of words, pouring out of the administration, send a clear  
message to any Iranian: You are in trouble. Bend to our will or we  
destroy you. These were the same words, with a few minor changes,  
that the Bush administration delivered to Saddam Hussein, who,  
despite numerous compromises, including letting the U.N. inspectors  
back into his country, was overthrown and put to death during a U.S.  
occupation.

And the Iranians know that without the bomb, which no intelligence  
agency thinks they can produce for a few years, they are now probably  
going to be attacked.

The Pentagon has reportedly drawn up plans for a series of airstrikes  
against 1,200 targets in Iran. The air attacks are designed to  
cripple the Iranians’ military capability in three days. The Bushehr  
nuclear power plant, along with targets in Saghand and Yazd, the  
uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, a heavy-water plant and  
radioisotope facility in Arak, the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit, and the  
uranium conversion facility and nuclear technology center in Isfahan,  
will all probably be struck by the United States and perhaps even  
Israeli warplanes. The Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Tehran  
molybdenum, iodine and xenon radioisotope production facility, the  
Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories, and the Kalaye  
Electric Co. in the Tehran suburbs will also most likely come under  
attack.

But then what? We don’t have the troops to invade. And we don’t have  
anyone minding the helm who knows the slightest thing about Persian  
culture or the Middle East. There is no one in power in Washington  
with the empathy to get it. We will lurch blindly into a catastrophe  
of our own creation.

It is not hard to imagine what will happen. Iranian Shabab-3 and  
Shabab-4 missiles, which cannot reach the United States, will be  
launched at Israel, as well as American military bases and the Green  
Zone in Baghdad. Expect massive American casualties, especially in  
Iraq, where Iranian agents and their Iraqi allies will be able to  
call in precise coordinates. The Strait of Hormuz, which is the  
corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, will be shut down.  
Chinese-supplied C-801 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles, mines and  
coastal artillery will target U.S. shipping, along with Saudi oil  
production and oil export centers. Oil prices will skyrocket to well  
over $4 a gallon. The dollar will tumble against the euro. Hezbollah  
forces in southern Lebanon, interpreting the war as an attack on all  
Shiites, will fire rockets into northern Israel. Israel, already  
struck by missiles from Tehran, will begin retaliatory raids on  
Lebanon and Iran. Pakistan, with a huge Shiite minority, will reach  
greater levels of instability. The unrest could result in the  
overthrow of the weakened American ally President Pervez Musharraf  
and usher into power Islamic radicals. Pakistan could become the  
first radical Islamic state to possess a nuclear weapon. The neat  
little war with Iran, which few Democrats oppose, has the potential  
to ignite a regional inferno.

We have rendered the nation deaf and dumb. We no longer have the  
capacity for empathy. We prefer to amuse ourselves with trivia and  
gossip that pass for news rather than understand. We are blinded by  
our military prowess. We believe that huge explosions and death are  
an effective form of communication. And the rest of the world is  
learning to speak our language.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for  
nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is  
the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on  
America.“
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