[Peace-discuss] The Next Quagmire.

[n.dahlheim at mchsi.com]

How sad...  What a dark period in our now inglorious recent past.


----------------------  Original Message:  ---------------------
From:    "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com>
To:      peace-discuss at anti-war.net
Subject: [Peace-discuss] The Next Quagmire. 
Date:    Mon, 3 Sep 2007 21:48:32 +0000

> 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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