[Peace-discuss] A passionate sermon…

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Speaking of suicide missions, WHY don't the executive and legislative branches of the US government get this???
   
  Jenifer  

"Morton K. Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com> wrote:
  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._______________________________________________
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