America, Intelligence, Media, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Zeitgeist
American life has a vaudeville quality to it. You learn to shut it out, as you would white noise.
A perennial element of the national freak show is the obscene football scene. Another, it would appear, is the “Mega Millions” lottery. This is major news in mainstream. The queues for tickets are snaking around the country’s neighborhoods.
The odds of a “Mega Millions” jackpot win are 1 in 176 million.
What does it say of those who are placing bets on these odds?
Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iran, Iraq, Military, War, WMD
The following is from this week’s column, “Onward to Iran!”:
That acts of war and elections often coincide should come as no surprise. It’s unfortunate, but electability in fin de siècle America still hinges on projecting bully power around the world—an American leader has to aspire to “protect” borders and people not his own, and if they refuse his advances, he should be prepared to bomb them to kingdom come.
Having used the American military to particularly great political effect—the barefaced Barack Obama may be preparing to blast Iranians with something even “better” than the BLU-82, Bush’s weapon of choice.
Elections are not the only cause for war.
Perverse as this may seem, in its ongoing, reflexive efforts to maintain power and metastasize, the media-military-industrial-congressional complex can’t help but motivate for war.
Thus, out of the blue, in January of 2012, before things had heated up with Teheran, the Anglo-American press reported a military milepost. The Pentagon was working on a “13.6 ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP).” It “is the deepest penetrating ‘bunker buster’ currently in the U.S. arsenal,” swanked the DailyMail Online, “designed to take out fortifications built by Iran to hide their alleged nuclear weapons.”
Correlation is not causation, but the case for hitting Iranian installations has since hardened into dogma.
According to the MailOnline, the work on this big boy began because the Pentagon had “identified” a deficit in the US’s military capabilities: “officials believe [the current arsenal] is not capable of destroying Iran’s fortified underground facilities.”
Essentially, the premise for the MOP project was that American men and matériel should be capable of reaching all corners of the world.
Since the president’s reign of terror abroad began, the Iranian currency had lost 65 percent of its value. Or so boasted Fareed Zakaria, CNN’s inane, wishy-washy correspondent, who represents the media’s voice of moderation in the ramp-up to war with Iran.
Like all fixtures of mainstream media, the Zombie Zakaria has an appetite for destruction. …”
The complete column is “Onward to Iran!”
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Meir Dagan is the “former chief of the Mossad, Israel’s equivalent of the CIA.” Other than the regime-change conceit he shared with 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl, the man is brilliant. (He can take his regime change nonsense and go jump in the lake, as far as I’m concerned, or send his own Shin-Bet boys to do the job.)
Below, courtesy of CBS News, are a few choice passages from the interview. Note how the man lacks America’s cultural insularity; he understands the region and its logic. What Dagan doesn’t get is that Israelis who use their influence on America’s treacherous leaders so as to send us into war are not our friends! More below.
“For nearly a decade buying more time was his job,” reports Lesley Stahl. “The Iranians say Dagan dispatched assassins, faulty equipment and computer viruses to sabotage their nuclear program. All the while, he was poring over the most secret dossiers about the Iranian regime, gaining insights and a surprising appreciation.”
It’s ironic that the man arguing that Israel show restraint, built his reputation on brute force. Dagan is legendary in Israel with a 44-year resume as an effective killing machine. Before Mossad, he ran undercover hit squads, executing PLO operatives in Gaza, then Shiite militias in southern Lebanon. Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon used to say Dagan’s expertise was, quote, “separating an Arab from his head.”
Dagan: I never ever killed nobody or we were engaged in killing somebody who was unarmed.
[Funny line: Dagan: What do they want? That I really would take seriously what the chief of police of Dubai is saying?]
Lesley Stahl: You have said publicly that bombing Iran now is the stupidest idea you’ve ever heard. That’s a direct quote.
Dagan: An attack on Iran before you are exploring all other approaches is not the right way how to do it.
Dagan: The regime in Iran is a very rational regime.
Stahl: Do you think Ahmadinejad is rational?
Dagan: The answer is yes. Not exactly our rationale, but I think that he is rational.
Stahl: Do you think they’re rational enough that they are capable of backing down from this?
Dagan: No doubt that the Iranian regime is maybe not exactly rational based on what I call Western-thinking, but no doubt they are considering all the implications of their actions.
Stahl: Other people think they’re not going to really stop until they have this capability.
Dagan: They will have to pay dearly and all the consequences for it. And I think the Iranians, in this point in time, are going very careful in the project. They are not running in it.
…
Dagan: I heard very carefully what President Obama said. And he said openly that the military option is on the table, and he is not going to let Iran become a nuclear state.
Stahl: So let me try to sum up what I think you’re now saying. And you’re saying, “Why should we do it? If we wait and they get the bomb, the Americans will do it.”
Dagan: The issue of Iran armed with a nuclear capability is not an Israeli problem; it’s an international problem.
Stahl: So wait and let us do it.
Dagan: If I prefer that somebody will do it, I always prefer that Americans will do it.
[SNIP]
Dagan is a patriot; an Israeli patriot. Like the Iranians, he acts in the interests of his country. But America’s ruling elites are different: they are traitors to their own people. Our leadership is always ready to shed the blood of our brave men.
I blame American leaders first and foremost for forsaking their people for another.
For that, the Israelis cannot be blamed. They are, however, to blame for taking for granted that the American people are up for another war.
Long-time readers know me as a staunch supporter of Israel. However, if Israel is expecting the tired titan that is the US to do their battle for them—they will have lost this scribe’s support, for what it’s worth. It’ll be a sad day. I have been a friend to Israel because I believed in the country’s cause and dignity.
“The titan is tired. We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own—be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don’t need our friends looking to us to do so.” [From “The Titan Is Tired”]
Classical Liberalism, Ilana Mercer, Intelligence, Law, Political Philosophy, Race, Reason, South-Africa
After a while, when interviewers and reviewers would request an interview or ask me about “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America,” I’d reply with little enthusiasm:
“What in particular about The Cannibal would you like to cover?”
The replies would invariably be these: “Oh, how relevant it is to the US.” “Diversity, multiculturalism, affirmative action, immigration, quality of life before and after “freedom”; this or the other population index.”
“Since you must have read my book,” I’d retort—initially, in hope—“how about discussing the often frayed thread of natural vs. political rights that runs throughout? Let’s look at the origins of Apartheid? Did you know these were firmly rooted in existential, largely non-racial, considerations? I really like the section about the ‘Colonialism Canard’ in the context of Chapter 5, the ‘Root-Causes Racket.’ Also a favorite of mine is the examination of case studies in current South African jurisprudence as an example of the “indigenization” of what was once a Western system of law. Oh, and my absolute best: the moral questions floated in the sections, “Intra-Racial Reparation” and “Recompense or Reconquista.”
Needless to say, the focus of the reviewer or interviewer was always so foreign to how I understood my book—that I lost interest in speaking about it, or concluded that my points had not been picked up due in some measure to my failures.
Enter Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. (Who never even requested a review copy of The Cannibal.) The fact that Kerwick levitates in level of abstraction and understanding above most might not be a good thing for his career as a popular writer, but I’m enjoying it.
Dr. Kerwick’s “Reflections on Ilana Mercer’s ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa'” appeared in Intellectual Conservative. Once again, Kerwick exposes the tortured tension vis-a-vis natural rights that I experienced and, apparently, Burke did too. As does he commend the absence of biological reductionism, a textual strength that drew derision from racialist quarters (I reject reductionism, in most spheres.)
The neglect with which this book has been treated is as sore as it is tragic. Cannibal is a woefully underappreciated book. A not inconsiderable number of otherwise astute reviewers seemed to have missed its main significance. This work is not primarily about “diversity,” “democracy,” “egalitarianism,” or “collectivism.” And it is certainly not about any conflicts within the Jewish community (Mercer is herself a Jew who remarks upon the role that South African Jews, including her father, played as critics of apartheid, as well as the role that Israel assumed as a stalwart ally of the Old South Africa). Cannibal isn’t even a book about inter-racial conflict.
….Neither, however, does Mercer countenance any reductionist biological accounts of black-white differences … Such an approach is problematic for more than one reason, but especially because it would, ultimately, amount to but one more “root-cause.” …
…Mercer’s thought is distended between universal natural rights and particular cultural traditions, it is true. Yet as is the case with so many works of genius, this tension is as much one of Cannibal’s strengths as it is a weakness, for from it there springs an energy that is notable for its sense of urgency.
… Like Burke before her, Mercer, it is clear, is on a mission. Burke was consumed with the conflagration of the French Revolution that he believed threatened to tear European civilization asunder. Far from obscuring his ethical vision, I believe that much of the passion that informed it stemmed from a conflict in Burke’s consciousness between a recognition of both the universal demands of morality and the partiality that we owe to “the little platoons”—our local attachments—from which we derive our individual identities. This, though, is precisely the same war that rages within Mercer, and as it aided Burke in his contest with the evil of the French radicals, so too does it aid Mercer in her contest with the wickedness of the African National Congress and its supporters.
The complete review, “Reflections on Ilana Mercer’s ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,'” is on Rachel Alexander’s Intellectual Conservative.