Marching as to World War

Putsch junta intent on using global chaos for maintaining power

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
1/10/07

Iran.

The Putsch junta wants to attack Iran. Oh, every so often one of them makes a /pro forma/ noise about a “peaceful resolution” and a negotiated solution to what they insist is an “impasse,” but the fact is, they want to attack Iran.

Well, they wanted peace and negotiations with Iraq, too, remember? They were lying then. They are lying now. They want to attack Iran.

There are several reasons behind this madness. First, they want to extend control over the Middle East. Iraq was meant to give America a strategically secure mounting right at the crossroads of the Middle East, but things haven’t worked out. Iraq, it turned out, didn’t appreciate being occupied. There has been some mention of that in the newspapers.

The admin is still following a lunatic non-proliferation approach in which countries of which they approve, such as Israel, Pakistan and India, are allowed to develop nuclear weapons, whereas countries they don’t approve of , such as North Korea, Iran and Liberia, can’t have nuclear power of any kind. I leave it to the reader to try to figure out how a Pakistan with nuclear weapons is somehow better than Iran with centrifuges. In the case of Iran, nobody disputes that they are working on a nuclear program. Whether this program is being staged with the idea of power generation or a nuclear weapon is problematical. Outside of the administration war hawks, however, nobody thinks that Iran will have a nuclear weapon for at least five years, or a delivery system for at least ten.

One of the great mysteries, and a massive idiocy committed by the far right, is the notion that the minute Iran or some other country gets a nuke, they are going to fling it at New York City or Haifa. Israel has about 250 nukes, and can pretty much eliminate all chordate life in Iran. America has over 12,000 nukes, and can turn all of Iran into a sea of boiling black glass. If you get your hands on a .25 caliber, are you going to immediately aim it at the guy who has a 50 mm machine gun aimed at you?

The administration still believes Israel’s interests and America’s are identical. Aside from the fact that they aren’t, there is the fact that it’s a one-way relationship. When was the last time Israel did something that helped the US? Israel also has a PR problem with Iran. Iran has 1.6 million Jews living there, mostly in Tehran. They like it there. So much so that when some Zionist group a few months ago offered $50,000 to every Jewish family willing to uproot from Iran and relocate to Israel, there were no takers. Israel is profoundly aware that this large Jewish population in Iran could explode the propaganda that Iran lives only to kill Jews.

And some of the hawks are simply genocidal maniacs. They are the ones who see the “Muzzies” as a huge threat, and advocate killing as many of them as possible. Yes, there are people in America advocating a “final solution” and some of them are in the administration.

And of course, a major war will help the GOP in the 2008 elections. Even if they can’t overcome the widespread public hatred of their policies and they lose, at least they will leave a hell of a mess for the Democrats to inherit – and will proceed to blame them bitterly for failing to fix in one year what it took the Republicans eight years to break.

A lot of people expect that America will make a “clean surgical strike” – an air strike that will involve few or no American casualties and keep the vast carnage on the ground off the evening news. Some scenarios I’ve seen project this being done in conjunction with a strike by Israel, but I find that unlikely. The Israelis have a patsy to do their dirty work for them, and after the Lebanon fiasco they aren’t so anxious to step into the middle of the fray.

Pessimists see another Iraq, where the US invades, wins quickly, and then gets bogged down in a futile and expensive occupation. This, too, is unlikely.

Even if the administration goes for the cheap and vicious air strikes, killing several million people invisibly, it won’t substantially weaken Iran, and may not even affect its nuclear program, the location of which is all over the country and largely a mystery to American intelligence.

Granted, the admin is claiming they know where all the constituent parts are, but these are the same clowns who claimed to know the exact location of all of Saddam’s WMDs. Assume they are lying about that, just for drill.

Beyond that, it’s more complicated. The US can’t follow it up with a ground action. Not only is Iran much larger than Iraq, but it has a far more complicated topography (including mountain regions in which entire armies can hide), a much stronger military, and a population that likes its government and loves its country and is willing to fight for both.

However, IRAN could follow up with a ground action. They could just simply give Washington an indignant look, declare war, and send large armies into Iraq to capture Baghdad and surround the green zone. They can do it. Or they may simply send several hundred thousand operatives in with IEDs, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers and other weapons and turn the already-messy American occupation into a living hell. They could also attack American interests less directly by attacking the Emirates and shutting the Straits of Hormuz.

Watching Petraeus surrender the Green Zone to Iran would certainly stir up war fever in America, but short of a World-War-Two type of effort, it would be a futile anger, unless the US launched nuclear missiles at Iran.

If Putin, who has already made it clear that he would not stand for an American invasion of Iran, hadn’t already entered the war on Iran’s side, he surely would then.

There’s no real guarantee that Russia wouldn’t join a ground-based counter strike by Iran, for that matter. Russia wants a strong alliance with Iran, which can give them access to an ice-free port, and they also have hegemonic interests, in that they want to lessen American power and influence in the region while extending their own. Russia was economically bed-ridden just five years ago, but is now economically resurgent, and regrowing its military – including its nuclear arsenal – as fast as it can. The Putsch junta is just ideological enough to think that because Russia is nominally capitalist, it will be friendlier than the old Soviet Union. We all know that capitalists never put their own interests ahead of anyone else’s, right?

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was profoundly stupid, wasteful, and damaging. An attack on Iran would be catastrophic.

America despises Putsch and his vicious neo-con movement. They want him out. But will they once again respond to the bell, push the lever, rally round the flag, and follow him right off a cliff?