[Peace-discuss] A passionate sermon…

[Morton K. Brussel]

By Chris Hedges, given September 25, 2007, Judson Memorial Church,  
New York City.
Extracts:

…But more ominously, an attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East.   
The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with Silkworm missile attacks by  
Iran on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, could send oil soaring to  
close to $ 200 a barrel.  The price of oil would certainly double the  
moment war began.  The effect on the domestic and world economy will  
be devastating, very possibly triggering a huge, global depression.   
The Middle East has two-thirds of the world's proven petroleum  
reserves and nearly half its natural gas. A disruption in the supply  
will be felt immediately.

The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the Shiite majority in Iraq  
and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey will turn  
in rage on us and our dwindling allies.  We will see a combination of  
increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and the  
widespread sabotage of oil production in the Gulf.   Iraq, as bad as  
it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops as Shiites  
and Sunnis, for the first time, unite against their foreign  
occupiers.  Iran, in retaliation, will fire its missiles, including  
the new Qadr-1, with a range of 1,100 miles, on American  
installations, including the Green Zone.   Expect substantial  
casualties, especially with Iranian agents and their Iraqi allies  
calling in precise coordinates..  Iranian Shabab-3 and Shabab-4  
missiles, as well as the Qadr-1, will be launched at Israel.  The  
Strait of Hormuz, which is the corridor for 20 percent of the world’s  
oil supply, will become trecherous.  Chinese-supplied C-801 and C-802  
anti-shipping missiles, mines and coastal artillery, along with speed  
boats packed with explosives, will target U.S. shipping, along with  
Saudi oil production and oil export centers.  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, rather than Iran, could become the  
first radical Islamic state to possess a nuclear weapon.  The neat  
little war with Iran, which nearly all Democrats do not oppose, has  
the potential to ignite a regional inferno.

The country, however, that will pay the biggest price will be  
Israel.  And the sad irony is that those planning this war think of  
themselves as allies of the Jewish state.  A conflagration of this  
magnitude could see Israel drawn back in Lebanon and sucked into a  
regional war, one that would over time spell the final chapter in the  
Zionist experiment in the Middle East.  The Israelis call their  
nuclear program “the Samson option.” The Biblical Samson ripped down  
the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with  
himself. It may be a sad and apt metaphor.

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.…

…This president is guilty, in short, of what in legal circles is  
known as the “crime of aggression.” And if we as citizens do not hold  
him accountable for these crimes, if we do not actively defy this  
government and support impeachment, we will be complicit in the  
codification of a new world order, one that will have terrifying  
consequences. For a world without treaties, statutes and laws is a  
world where any nation, from a rogue nuclear state to a great  
imperial power, will be able to invoke its domestic laws to annul its  
obligations to others. This new order will undo five decades of  
international cooperation – largely put in place by the United States  
-- and thrust us into a Hobbsian nightmare…

…The scenario that faces us requires those of us as citizens to act.   
The Democratic Party, which does not have the stomach to halt the war  
in Iraq, has made clear it will cheer on our self-immolation in  
Iran.  A country that exists in a state of permanent war cannot exist  
as a democracy.  Our long row of candles is being snuffed out.  We  
will soon be in darkness.  I ask you to join me, if we should go to  
war with Iran, in refusing to pay your income tax.  Put the money in  
an escrow account.  Dispute this.  Go to court.  Maybe a few  
courageous judges will rule that the Constitution has been usurped  
and the government is guilty of what the post-war Nuremberg laws  
defined as a criminal   “war of aggression.”  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I  
no longer know.  But I do know this.  I have friends in Teheran, in  
Gaza, in Beirut and Baghdad, in Jerusalem and Cairo, and even if our  
efforts of resistance fail we should at least muster enough integrity  
and courage so that when the slaughter is over we will have earned  
the right to ask for their forgiveness.