printIn the days and weeks ahead, the political Demopublican machine will fog up the Iran matter to such a degree that seeing the forest from the trees will become impossible for the average war-starved American (a default position, it would seem).
For the purpose of formulating a principled position, here’s something of what you need to consider: With all its posturing, Iran is preparing a time table for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Iranians will want to pretend they are calling the shots, so to speak. Saving face is a very crucial component of the culture, in case American multiculturalists have not figured that out yet.
The IAEA did a good job in Iraq; when they reported in 2002 that Iraq had been cleansed from WMD, they were 100 percent correct, although “Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush never stopped gabbling about a reconstituted Iraqi nuclear-weapons program, chemical and biological blights, Scuds and squadrons of unmanned aerial vehicles streaking U.S. skies, and traveling laboratories teeming with twisted scientists.”
(And some members of the fantasy-based community still believe “the weapons” are in Bashar al-Assad’s basement.)
So long as its inspectors are fully engaged with Iran, the Iranian crisis will remain a manufactured one, drummed up by interested parties: Iranian exiles and the usual American armchair warriors.
Recall, as the US was ramping-up for war against Iraq, Hans Blix, Chief United Nations weapons inspector, and Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei were crisscrossing Iraq, scouring the place for WMD. The two had turned Iraq into a CSI-like crime scene:
“From November 2002 to January 2003, Blix conducted approximately 300 inspections of more than 230 different sites in Iraq. Of these, more than 20 had hitherto not been inspected. (He set up field offices in Mosul and Basra, places he could never hope to access today.) Despite this empirical exercise, the fantasy-based community asserted that ‘All the Western intelligence services – the UN itself – stated with certainty that this thug had and was hiding WMD?'”
Please read my account at the time of Blix’s efforts in “INK STAINS AND BLOOD STAINS” and “What WMD.”
Dislike for these operatives doesn’t change that what they reported comported with reality, perfectly.
Israel, unlike America, acts in its self-interest. So it is natural that Israelis would, overall, encourage the world to help diminish their own plight vis-a-vis Iran. However, a man I really like, the hard rightist Avigdor Lieberman (foreign minister) is “being criticized for aligning his policies with those of Moscow.” That’s telling. And what is the position of Moscow? Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian news agencies “that although [the] Iranian’s missile exercise was worrying, restraint was needed. An official communiqué urged ‘Western powers to restrain themselves.”
That seems reasonable at this point.
Ah, Ilana! You are one engaged woman. We agree quite a lot but you back up your beliefs with relevant data.
Avigdor has more sense than his namesake Joe.
In the 1970’s, the Shah arranged to have some 54 Iranian-selected grad students studying nuclear engineering at MIT for a premium tuition. This was encouraged by Carter’s State Department. I said at the time, “What is the Shah going to do – have a plutonium Tupperware party?” It was, of course, a stupid idea to encourage a “friendly” but unstable nation to get a nuclear capability. So, as usual, we helped fuel another mess.
The advanced nations just need to stop sending the advanced nuclear technology to Iran, which will stall these efforts considerably. Wars are NOT NECESSARY and will just switch from one bad situation to an alternative worse situation. Our financial resources are already straining from maintaining the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (plus tens of thousands of troops in Korea, Okinawa, Italy, and Germany). Pakistan – which has nukes – is close to implosion. Smashing Iran, another 75 million people with considerable experience in crafting IED’s and suicide bombers – is really asking for it. Admittedly, war could happen were Iran to strike the first blow – but for us to preempt once more would be MADNESS.
Our military-industrial complex is contemptible. It is was one thing to justify it when the largest empire in the world threatened US (the Soviet Union) but now it is obvious to me that it is an expensive boondoggle seeking and making enemies needlessly.
Give peace a chance? I wish.
“What if a war was declared and no one showed up?”
“The truce began on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1914, when German troops began decorating the area around their trenches in the region of Ypres, Belgium, for Christmas. They began by placing candles on trees, then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols, most notably Stille Nacht (Silent Night). The British troops in the trenches across from them responded by singing English carols.
The two sides continued by shouting Christmas greetings to each other. Soon thereafter, there were calls for visits across the “No Man’s Land” where small gifts were exchanged — whisky, jam, cigars, chocolate, and the like. The soldiers exchanged gifts, sometimes addresses, and drank together. The artillery in the region fell silent that night. The truce also allowed a breathing spell where recently-fallen soldiers could be brought back behind their lines by burial parties. Proper burials took place as soldiers from both sides mourned the dead together and paid their respects.
The truce spread to other areas of the lines, and there are many stories of football matches between the opposing forces.
In many sectors, the truce lasted through Christmas night, but in some areas, it continued until New Year’s Day.
The truce occurred in spite of opposition at higher levels of the military.” from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce [bold added]