Iran — one year later

Like any sane biped with opposable thumbs, I'm thoroughly sick of the pugnacious lunacy of the executive cabal in Washington and the agencies it controls with the pincer-grip of a jealous grandmother.  There comes a point where one has to turn one's head away to rest one's blood-shot eyes on something more positive and life-enhancing, and that is maybe a problem we all now have with the Bushites, whose spots haven't changed even after all the catastrophic failures and all the corruption that has been and remains to be revealed.  While we're moaning from calamity fatigue and escaping into private fantasy, the public neo-conservative fantasy of world domination continues obliviously forward like the historical fascist juggernaut it recalls, the one that swept across Europe sixty-five years ago and would have continued rolling across Asia if it hadn't been stopped.  Now they're planning to go double-or-nothing with Iran and they cannot be stopped even though the consequences have a clear potential to make Iraq look like a food fight at a Labor-Day picnic.  Attacking Iran is a self-defeating enterprise on a higher order of magnitude than the Iraq war since it leads (first) to possibly millions of unnecessary human casualties and (second) to a frighteningly enhanced probability of global nuclear warfare.

What will the attack look like?  If this operation goes forward it is likely to be sudden and massive, involving simultaneous cruise-missile and bombing strikes on hundreds (possibly thousands) of targets inside Iran.  The reasons for the large scale of the operation are not difficult to puzzle out.  First, Iran's entire military defense and command and control apparatus and ability to return fire will be targeted, requiring thousands of missile launches and bombing sorties.  The second primary objective will be Iran's secret uranium enrichment and nuclear R&D facilities, which are likely to be widely dispersed in hardened underground locations that can only be reached by heavy "bunker-buster" ordinance that might include 140-kiloton (or larger) nuclear warheads.  The attack will be enormously destructive, with massive "collateral damage" in human lives lost and civilian infrastructure destroyed in what constitutes a war crime of unprecedented dimension.  There's a great deal more to say about the immediate and long-term consequences but my crystal ball clouds over with moral outrage and I can't interpret the swirling pattern.  For now, suffice it to say that what follows on the heels of such an attack is chaos.

We like to say that we've learned by grim precedent to put nothing beyond the neocon fantasists, but sweet freaking Jesus, you really have to wonder whether this insane program can be real.  After all we have been through in the last six years, is it possible that this lunatic nightmare scenario is really about to occur, or is it just a huge bluff, a Cheney-orchestrated bully campaign that will allow us to feel relieved when the situation deflates and "all" we've got to deal with is the comparatively tame Iraq war?  Or is it all just a disinformazia maneuver aimed at convincing the Europeans to stiffen UN sanctions?  I don't know the answer, but it does not look good.

Something that seems worth noticing right now is the synchronization of the media blitz informing us of evil Iranian activities with the Petraeus Dog & Pony show in congress about how the famous (and fluorescent) Surge has improved the situation in Iraq.  Katie Kouric will be pleased to give you the good news if she knows what's good for her, and God knows there's no shortage of know-nothing Republican wingnuts still clogging the aisles of the hallowed chambers, but I'm trying to convince myself that few members will swallow the Petraeus report since it is so obviously an over-cooked propaganda job that even some of the major lap-dog news outlets are editorializing about how clearly false it is.  Given the odd simultaneity of the two PR/disinformation campaigns, it looks as though we're about to get involved in another huge war for the primary purpose of forestalling a congressional mandate to start bringing troops home, maybe with the secondary objective of keeping war burning fiercely over there until the Democrats take over in 2008.  (If the Democrats allow this to happen, it will be their war by then and they will deserve it.)

So is that it?  Well... FUCK!  Whatever happened to congressional democratic resistance to another war?  They're the majority of representatives now, so where are Hillary and Obama?  Where's Edwards?  What have I missed?  If Bush gives the order to go ahead with this, will the joint chiefs arrest him and Cheney and bring them before congress for summary impeachment?

Again, I don't know the answers, nor do I have any idea where you're going to be on the morning following Bush's Iran equivalent of the "Shock and Awe" announcement of hostilities, but we can be certain that Richard Bruce Cheney will be sitting comfortably in his undisclosed hidey-hole with his handy defibrillator and a year's supply of heart medications.  (I don't have that option and am googling for cheap hotel rooms in Acapulco.)

(I once found one right down on the beach with walls that were made of bed sheets slung over strings that cost considerably less than $1 a night, but things have probably changed since January, 1971.)

UPDATE:  And now we get this weird story about nuclear-armed cruise missiles aboard a B-52 that was "mistakenly" routed over the continental United States to Barksdale AFB, a known staging area for sending munitions to Iraq.  Some folks are interpreting this as a sign that we're moving the nukes for the impending attack on Iran.  Maybe so, but it might also be more disinformazia, another planted leak intended to show the Iranians that we mean business, but there seems no point in speculating since we'll never find out the truth though the story does seem to have some related significance.  I shudder to think what it might be.

UPDATE #2:  Okay okay, Bush-Cheney can't attack Iran because the country is not behind them, right?  Hello?  Are you there?

UPDATE #3:  Wrong.  The lame ducks have nothing to lose, and their world view indicates they're quite likely to go ahead with this.

UPDATE #4:  There has been some kind of attack by Israel on Syria.  I don't know the details, but Syria is Iran's ally amd this is not a good sign.  Maybe the Cheney hawks are winning the argument in Washington about how to deal with Iran.  Ok, I'm going to stick my head back in the sand now.

UPDATE #5:  Let's face it, the Bush administration is unpredictable in this circumstance.  On the one hand, it's obvious that they'd be utterly crazy to go through with this attack, but then they easily qualify as loony tunes by any reasonable standard.  Also, their foreign policy is such a catastrophic disaster that they're probably desperate enough to try just about anything on the chance that they could somehow pull a scraggly rabbit out of it.  It's still an even bet.

UPDATE #6:  Seymour Hersh has weighed in, here.  It seems that the war plans may have been modified, and Cheney is winning over the moderating influence of the state department.  And now we find also that the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, passed by the Senate on 09/26 with a 76-22 majority that urges the Bush administration to identify the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Al Quds unit as a terrorist organization, was written by AIPAC.  (Here is the Wikipedia entry.)  So much for congressional resistance to the neocon push for another war.  (Hillary and Obama?  Forget it.)

How I became a clown

I was feeling perplexed and uncomfortable. There's a period of depression and despair that follows a life threatening operation like open heart surgery, a bereftness of spirit that doesn't happen right away or suddenly, but builds gradually over several months of recovery until there is no further doubt that you've made it through the ordeal and are going to live. You faced down death, and in the process of doing that, you constructed a strong belief that life has to be worth living. But then you start feeling normal again, and you come to realize that your belief in this life was just a necessary part of the ordeal, that life is actually full of pain and discomfort and might not be worth living after all dependiing on how you live it at every moment. It is a poignant and sorrowful realization, like the loss of belief in a god that you had ardently worshipped all your life.

I missed the passion I had felt so strongly and set out to find it in a dream. I climbed the mountain for a consultation with the master, who looked exactly like Wayne Dyer with a beard and, in fact, was Wayne Dyer with a beard. Sitting at his knees, I asked him what to do. "I don't know," he began. "Do you like bowling?" I told him that I did not. "How about baseball?" Again I answered in the negative. He smoothed out his long gray beard. "I see that you are not a sportsman," he observed. "No," I agreed. "Apparently not." He let out a long endless sigh and got up from his rock to rearrange his robes and consider how to address my profound spiritual and philosophical predicament without loss of prestige or potential future income.

"I have it," he suddenly shouted, leaping into the air with his eyes flashing like Ken Kesey's on LSD, as described by Tom Wolf in The Electric Koolaid Acid Test. "You should don a clown suit and play the accordion for the amusement of the wealthy east-side uptowners!"

"That's brilliant, oh thank you Master!" I replied with heartfelt enthusiasm and gratitude and, as my feet flew without effort back down the mountain trail to the crystaline city, I felt a lightness of heart that I hadn't experienced since the surgeon temporarily removed it from my chest.  Firm in my new resolve, I proceeded to follow the wise directives of the Master.

The clown suit was easily taken care of since, luckily for me, Macy's was having a 2-for-the-price-of-1 BIG SALE on clown apparel the following weekend.  The accordion, however, was another matter entirely, since I realized that it was necessary for me to learn how to play the damned thing.  I bought a beginner's book with training video, but I couldn't seem to acquire the actual instrument because I got hung up on the question of whether to get one with buttons or piano keys.  I was inclined toward buttons since I have never managed to conquer an old childhood fear of piano keyboards, but I also understood that a basic familiarity with the intervals between black and white keys forms a foundation for an almost unlimited range of musical experience.  The decision is not dissimilar to that of choosing between learning Norwegian or Japanese.  Which language would be more useful?  In the end I was unable to finally make up my mind and, after another agonized period of indecision, the whole accordion/clown thing just sort of drifted away, leaving behind a remorseful feeling of yet another path not taken, a tributary not followed, a passionate ambition not pursued and a life not fully lived.

On the positive side, the clown suit fits me perfectly.  I've thrown out all my other outfits, and people tell me I look pretty good in polka dots.

Snow kites

One 'looped the loop' and vanished. The other flew for hours.

 

Chess 1963