There was a striking story in the papers on
Friday: "Congress OKs Surge in Undeclared War against
Iran!"
Well, that wasn't exactly the headline but it was the truth
behind the reports about the vote in the House of Representatives
to tighten the ligature of sanctions around the neck of Iran, as Antiwar.com reports. In accordance with
the "diplomacy" of the Peace Laureate in the Oval Office, the House
wants to "cripple" the Iranian economy by starving the human beings who
live there of gasoline and other vital goods necessary to maintain a
modicum of ordinary life.
In other words, the popularly elected leaders of the world's
greatest democracy champions of liberty, justice and human rights
want to stop ambulances from transporting sick and dying children to the
hospital. They want whole families to burn to death, whole city blocks
to go up in flames while fuelless fire trucks stand idle. They want
deliveries of food and medicine to grind to a halt, setting off spirals
of starvation, disease, chaos and vast suffering. They want to see tens
of millions of innocent human beings driven into a low and brutal level
of subsistence, to languish, diminish and die in deprivation and
misery. This is what they want to see happen. This is the clear intent
of their "diplomatic" strategy.
And why are they doing this? Because ostensibly because
the government of Iran is pursuing the development of a nuclear energy
program in accordance with international treaties and under
international supervision. And if the above condign punishment of
millions of innocent people does not force the government of Iran to
give up this legal, carefully inspected program, then the champions of
liberty, justice and human rights have proclaimed their intent to
unilaterally attack Iran with all the "options" at their command, up to
and including the "option" of immolating multitudes of innocent human
beings with nuclear weapons.
They seek to break Iran not because it is an odious regime, but
because it defies the imperial will, and balks the bipartisan imperial
agenda to impose domination on the oil lands. If Iran agreed to become
an American client state tomorrow, it would not matter in the least how
odious its regime might be -- as we saw in the long, atrocious decades
when America's pet tyrant, Reza Pahlavi, ruled there. But because Iran
has not agreed to this, it is now a target for decimation: by sanctions
and the ongoing campaign of American-backed
terrorism and covert operation (all of which are themselves acts of
war, including most emphatically the sanctions, as noted here recently), or else by direct
military action by American war machine or its proxy in Israel.
And that is why we hear the constant regurgitation of ludicrous
charges from our national leaders on the "great threat" that Iran poses
to the entire planet. Indeed, Harry Reid, the leading Democrat in the
United States Senate -- lauding the House vote and licking his chops to
advance this escalation bill to final approval in his bailiwick --
declared that Iran was "a festering sore in the world": crude,
dehumanizing language familiar to anyone with even the slightest
knowledge of Nazi propaganda. Reid went on:
"As [the House] get [the bill] out, I will move everything within my power to move it to the floor [of the Senate] The Middle East is unstable. This will help stabilize it."
Just think of the towering stupidity of that remark. Whatever else you
might say about tightening sanctions on Iran -- even if you believed it
was the right thing to do -- the one thing you could not say is
that such a move will "help stabilize" the Middle East.
Indeed, Iran hawks of every stripe -- from the sanctionist strangulators
to the bomb-em-now brigade -- openly, even proudly aver that their
ultimate aim is to overthrow the current Iranian regime: that is, to
greatly, vastly, decisively de-stabilize the Middle East by
bringing down one of its most powerful governments. And of course, the
sanctions themselves -- like all the other war measures launched by the
United States against Iran, and like all the aggressive, constant
threats to attack, punish, even obliterate Iran -- are clearly and
deliberately aimed at provoking retaliation by the Tehran government:
blowback which will, by design, make the Middle East more unstable
... thus 'justifying' whatever measures the United States takes to
further its dominationist agenda.
Reid knows this, of course. He does not believe -- not for a single
nano-second -- that tightening the noose around Iran's neck will "help
stabilize" the Middle East. But he -- like our entire bipartisan foreign
policy establishment -- thinks that you are stupid enough to
believe it.
Reid's warmongering lies were echoed by another top Democrat, Rep.
Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who, as
AFP reports, forthrightly declared that "the world faces no security
threat greater than the prospect of a nuclear world."
O lucky world! The greatest thing we have to fear -- in all the
world -- is the prospect that Iran -- whose leaders
consistently denounce even the idea of nuclear weapons as the gravest
sin, and whose nuclear energy program (we repeat for the nth time) is
under the closest international supervision ever imposed on a nation --
might, somehow, someday, produce a nuclear weapon. If the mere prospect
of this remote possibility is the greatest thing we have
to fear in the modern world, then by Godfrey we are in a lot better
shape than I thought.
But again, none of this is true. And Berman -- even though he is one
of many Congressfolk who seem to believe that they actually represent a
district located somewhere between the River Jordan and the
Mediterranean Sea -- knows it is
not true. He knows, as any sentient being knows, that even if Iran did
produce a nuclear weapon, it would not and could not pose an
"existential threat" to Israel -- or to the United States for that
matter. Any nuclear attack by Iran on Israel would result in a massive
retaliation from Israel's nuclear arsenal (obtained and maintained
illegally, outside any international treaty or supervision). And even if
Israel had no nukes, a nuclear attack by Tehran in the close quarters
of the Middle East would rain deadly fallout back on Iran itself. Not to
mention the distinct possibility of retaliation by the United States --
or indeed Russia or any number of nuclear states who would feel
threatened by this wanton, self-destructive act of nuclear aggression.
I realize it is deeply insulting to the intelligence of anyone with a modicum of intelligence to point out these glaringly, tediously obvious facts -- but when you are dealing with the vast amount of crude, Nazi-like propaganda that daily inundates the American people on the subject of Iran, this kind of waste treatment is necessary.