Iran is a timely topic, since the lovely folks who brought us the Iraq war are now banging the same drum about that country and, just as with Iraq, the case they present for starting up another war is founded on deliberate misrepresentations of intelligence (i.e., lies). Their familiarity with Iran is not greater than mine, but that's ok because any real knowledge about the godless Persian evil-doers could only slow the rush to obliterate them with cleansing nuclear fire, a fully contingency-planned project that is ready to be pulled off the shelf and carried out at a moment's notice. I've read that the nuclear bombs and cruise missiles are already positioned with targeting coordinates punched in, the field commanders briefed and ready to launch... ?
Once again I find myself asking whether we are on the brink of using nuclear weapons. Has the world gone crazy or am I just subject to the intimidating propaganda of the Bush/Cheney bullies? I don't put anything past these frigging assholes after what they've done to Iraq, especially with all this loose talk about readiness to go nuclear.
War may be "a continuation of politics by other means," but militarism is actually a way of life, a modus vivendi that does not so much extend politics as replace it. A reliance on military solutions carries with it a narrow manichaean mindset that is intolerant of any "means" other than itself, any competing methodology that might be used to similar ends, such as diplomacy or negotiation (both synonymous with politics). The most grievous difficulty associated with having at our disposal the world's most powerful military force seems to be that the pressure to use that power for something increases to the point where war becomes just a logical step in the process. During the final stages of that machine-like sequence, an enemy-object is required upon which to release the pressure. If no credible threat exists at that point, then one must be invented, a principle that helps to explain some fundamental motivations for the war with Iraq. Everyone whose salary doesn't depend on parroting the administration line can now agree that there was no compelling reason for that catastrophic war. A false set of reasons therefore had to be first imagined, then prototyped and planted in various hollow trees, and finally mass produced and distributed via compliant media outlets, a process that has come full circle with Iraq and is now being repeated to bolster the next cycle with Iran, albeit with less enthusiasm.
A prominent aspect of our militarized society is that it is teeming with useful idiots who can be counted on to continuously cry wolf about the horrific intentions of various real or imagined enemies. In a different political culture, one that is dominated more by civil society than militarism, such loud-mouthed war mongers would be sidelined or defanged before acquiring influence in the media or attaining powerful positions in government. In our mainstream media and in the hallowed corridors of Washington, these are the people who pull the strings of the marionettes that are driving the rogue elephant around Southwest Asia.
So, the deranged wingnuts are embedded in Washington and are obliged to create credibly dangerous external enemies in order to legitimize their stranglehold on power. There's nothing really new or mysterious about that, though the sheer magnitude of the deception is impressive. What I fail to comprehend is why, after everything we've been through in the five years since 9/11, it continues to be an effective political strategem to scream bloody murder about the horrific intentions of fabricated enemies. Are my fellow citizens really so profoundly dumb and suggestible as to fall for this transparent bullshit again and again, endlessly? Maybe the current election season will answer that question once and for all.
But wait, is the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not the dangerous lunatic we've been told repeatedly that he is? Is he not a fascist who wants to acquire nuclear bombs so he can toast us infidels like marshmallows? Who knows? He looks the part, certainly, but it's important to understand that he's also a product of failed diplomacy in the form of the Bush adminstration's refusal to break bread with the Iranians when they made reasonable overtures in hopes of finding common cause with the US against Al Qaeda (among other objectives that probably included the desire to be considered an entity distinct from the Al Qaeda nexus).
For the sake of clarity, it is the Bush administration and not the mullahs in Teheran that has consistently declined to engage in peaceful negotiations, as is more fully explained here, and in answer to the war party's continuous repetition of the wondrously effective trope comparing Democrats to Neville Chamberlain at Munich, it needs to be pointed out that Hitler's rise to power was similarly the product of an avoidable diplomatic failure in the form of the allies' rigid enforcement of the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty.
(Now there's a question for the What if...? theorizers and Philip Roth-style speculative novelists: If WWII had been avoided by more farsighted policies on the part of the allies, what would the present world look like?)
As historical analysis, maybe all that seems overly breezy, though it's no more so than the shouted accusations of appeasement, but such historical comparisons tend to be thinly-veiled agitprop in any case. Times change, the point being that this embroglio with Iran is the kind of squabble that is probably amenable to garden variety diplomacy of the kind the French just pulled off so brilliantly in defusing the Israeli/Hezbollah war. Their achievement was built up from the simple recognition that both sides needed a dignfied way to step down from lethal hostilities. The same method should work with Iran, but of course the US is as disinterested in negotiating with Iran as it was with Iraq.
Furthermore, though I'm no expert on Iranian intentions, based on the reputation of detente for stability, I seriously question whether an Iranian bomb is so dangerous that it must be prevented at any cost, but even if it were, there is no need to rush to a military solution while Iran is still far from weapons capability and outsiders are uncertain about the details of Iran's program to achieve it. The startup of a heavy water plant yesterday might bring the decision closer but it comes nowhere near to equivalency with Hitler's claim on the Sudetenland. Plenty of time remains in which to engage with the Iranians diplomatically before resorting to extremities.
BUT... any suggestion of diplomacy appears to be moot at this point because Bush has a strong domestic political motivation for going to war, or at least he believes that he has, in addition to whatever triple-bankshot geostrategic designs the neocons have cooked up on Iran. All Bush & Co. needs is the merest excuse to scramble the bombers, and Iran's reaffirmed refusal to discontinue uranium enrichment might prove to be that trigger.
Jimmy the Greek hasn't been answering his phone lately, so we're on our own, percentage-wise. In my estimation, the odds on whether Bush will go for it seem about even (assuming Ahmadinejad doesn't change his position before the Security Council deadline on Friday of this week). A big factor in that probability calculation is Bush's psychological predilection for war, which might tip the scales in favor of attacking Iran as soon as — next Saturday? Is this really a distinct possibility? I certainly hope that cooler heads will prevail at least until Labor Day, since I haven't been to the beach all summer and would like to spend some idle hours floating in my inner tube before the Autumn jellyfish bloom hits Coney Island or the world blows up.
