Another Senseless WAR waged by the Avaricious and Mentally Unstable - International Peace/War

Another Senseless WAR waged by the Avaricious and Mentally Unstable
by Andrew Murray via gan - The Guardian UK Saturday, Feb 4 2012, 9:53pm
international / peace/war / other press

Every War waged by US/NATO has been a DISASTER for the World but a Boon for the CORPORATIONS!

An attack on Iran must be Stopped

The Anglo-American aggression addicts haven't kicked the habit. The team that brought you shock and awe and Operation Infinite Justice is gearing up for yet another crack at winning an unwinnable, senseless war in the Middle East.

This time the target is Iran, the pretence the regime's imminent possession of nuclear weapons. But some things will remain the same – it will lead to slaughter and end in disaster.

A brief recap of the Anglo-American "war on terror" in the Middle East, 2001 to date: Afghanistan was occupied to "eliminate terrorism" but, many thousands of dead later, terror has spread to Pakistan and beyond, leaving Kabul with the most corrupt government on earth.

Iraq was invaded to disarm Saddam of weapons he didn't have. US troops have finally withdrawn, leaving millions dead or displaced and the country broken in dysfunctional sectarian misery.

Libya, far from being the war that went well, was bombed to "protect civilians" with the result that 30,000 died and thousands more remain in prison reportedly being tortured by the regime Nato installed.

"They couldn't be so crazy" is therefore not an unreasonable response to the speculation about yet another Middle East war. But here we go again.

The US national intelligence director James Clapper's unsubstantiated claim that Iran is preparing attacks in the US itself – without even a 45-minute warning, apparently – is one sign among many that the familiar spook-media propaganda coalition is in overdrive again, selling another cock-eyed conflict.

An attack against Iran will not stop the regime acquiring nuclear weapons if it wishes to do so. It can only make it more likely that it will decide to acquire them, and will eventually surely succeed.

Along the way thousands more will die, conflict will extend across the region, oil supplies will be disrupted and the Iranian regime will be strengthened domestically.

Iran is not a liberal democracy. That is an issue which, as the Arab spring shows, is more likely to be addressed by the Iranian people themselves than by a foreign attack sponsored by Saudi Arabia, most recently the butchers of Bahraini democracy.

The central case for attacking Iran is animated by the determination that Washington and its allies have the right to dominate the Middle East come what may.

That is the argument offered by Matthew Kroenig, until six months ago the Pentagon's special adviser on Iran, in an article in Foreign Affairs baldly titled Time to Attack Iran: "A nuclear-armed Iran would immediately limit US freedom of action in the Middle East … Iran could threaten any US political or military initiative in the Middle East with nuclear war, forcing Washington to think twice before acting in the region."

The pragmatic case against war is overwhelming. But the principled case is even stronger. Britain and the US have launched a series of wars across the Middle East for no better purpose than maintaining their control over a region whose peoples they dare not allow to be self-governing and independent.

Can an attack be stopped? If Britain can be detached that would help derail the war drive. Five British warships sail alongside the US navy in the Gulf, and we can be sure that Diego Garcia will be a base for the bombing onslaught – it was ethnically cleansed by the Wilson government for precisely this sort of purpose.

William Hague has made plain government support for US policy so far. The delight of the Commons exchanges on the issue was Jack Straw, whose only contribution to diplomacy was marketing the novel concept of the "unreasonable UN veto" at the time of the Iraq aggression, insisting that Britain should not act without clear UN authority now.

Millions of British people peacefully and democratically opposed the Iraq war and were ignored by Tony Blair. He got his war but lost his political momentum, reputation and job, in that order, as a result.

Today's anti-war campaign must learn from the Occupy movement and UK Uncut, as well as breaking that bipartisan parliamentary consensus for war which proved so calamitous in 2003, if the cycle of war is to end. A nationwide day of action on Saturday 11 February against attacking Iran is the start.

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited

See also:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/03/attack-iran-us-nuclear

If Israel really attacks Iran this year, it – and the Americans – will be more dotty than their enemies think. True, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a crackpot, but then so is Avigdor Lieberman, who is apparently the Israeli Foreign Minister. Maybe the two want to do each other a favour. But why on earth would the Israelis want to bomb Iran and thus bring down on their heads the fury of both the Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas at the very same moment? Along with Syria, no doubt. Not to mention sucking the West – Europe and the US – into the same shooting match.

Maybe it's because I've been in the Middle East for 36 years, but I sniff some old herrings in the air. Leon Panetta, the US Defence Secretary no less, warns us that Israel may strike. So does CNN – an older herring it would be difficult to find – and even old David Ignatius, who hasn't been a Middle East correspondent for a decade or two, is telling us the same, taken in, as usual, by his Israeli "sources".

I expected this sort of bumph when I perused last week's The New York Times Magazine – not an advertisement, this, for I would not want The Independent readers to burn their energy on such tosh – and read a warning from an Israeli "analyst" (I am still trying to discover what an "analyst" is), Ronen Bergman of Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

And here is his "kicker" (as we call it in the trade), which is as near as you can get to playing the propaganda ragtime. "After speaking with many [sic] senior Israeli leaders and chiefs [sic yet again] of the military and intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012. Perhaps in the small and ever diminishing window that is left, the US will choose to intervene after all, but from the Israelis' perspective, there is not much hope for that. Instead, there is that peculiar Israeli mixture of fear... and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves."

Now, first of all, any journalist who predicts an Israeli strike on Iran is putting his head on the chopping block. But surely any journalist worth his salt – and there are plenty of good journos in Israel – would ask himself a question: Who am I working for? My newspaper? Or my government?

Panetta, pictured below, who lied to US forces in Iraq by claiming to them they were there because of 9/11, should know better than to play this game. CNN ditto. I shall forget Ignatius. But what is all this? Nine years after invading Iraq – an enormously successful adventure, we are still told – because Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction", we plan to clap our hands as Israel bombs Iran because of more unprovable "weapons of mass destruction". Now I don't doubt that within seconds of hearing the news, Barack Obama's grotesque speech-writers will be grovelling to find the right words to support such an Israeli attack. If Obama can abandon Palestinian freedom and statehood for his own re-election, he can certainly support Israeli aggression in the hope that this will get him back in the White House.

If Iranian missiles start smashing into US warships in the Gulf, however – not to mention US bases in Afghanistan – then the speechwriters may have much more work to do. So just don't let the Brits or the Frenchies get involved.

© 2012 The Independent

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