The war clouds gather again; quoth Senator McCain (who represents the non-sociopathic wing of the Republican Party these days):
"There's only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option," Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said, "and that is Iran having nuclear weapons."
I do not know what moral or amoral calculus Senator McCain has employed to reach this conclusion. It presumably did not include weighing the costs of yet another illegal war, the damage to international legal order, the risks of retaliation, the people whose lives will be lost, let alone the actual consequences of there being a second nuclear power in the Mideast, to join Israel. We somehow managed with Pakistan, which until 9/11 was an Islamic nuclear power "beyond the pale." We managed with India as a nuclear power ruled by Hindu fundamentalists, who almost brought the world to the brink of nuclear war a few years back. The bizarre totalitarian regime in North Korea is now a nuclear power. (No doubt it is not lost on Iran that we have not attacked them.) Perhaps if the U.S. were not now the world's leading lawless aggressor on the international scene, there would be less of a rush to acquire nuclear weapons.
Paul Craig Roberts comments on some of the factors that apparently did not go into Senator McCain's "calculus":
We are witnessing the same drumbeat against Iranian WMD as we witnessed in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Fox "News," which in fact is the most thorough-going dispenser of war propaganda since the Nazi Third Reich, provides a parade of bought-and-paid-for-consultants who assure credulous audiences that Osama bin Laden has forged an alliance with Iran, which will soon be providing al Qaeda with nuclear weapons.
Even the Bush administration's chief warmonger, VP Dick Cheney, found the Fox "News" charges too absurd to be useful propaganda. Cheney disavowed close relations between al Qaeda Sunnis and Iranian Shi'ites: "there's not a natural fit there."
The New York Times, prostituted itself by permitting Judith Miller to use the newspaper as a tool for neoconservative war propaganda against Iraq. The Times prostituted itself a second time by withholding for an entire year the information that President Bush was illegally spying on Americans in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and a third time by not reporting Al Gore's challenge to the Bush administration's criminal behavior. Now the Times is prostituting itself a fourth time in serving as a Bush administration propaganda organ against Iran.
Unlike Israel, which does have nuclear weapons, Iran is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Under the treaty countries are permitted nuclear energy. Inspections make certain no weapons are produced. Iran agrees to abide by the treaty and to have the inspections.
Israel, however, and its neocon allies in the Bush administration, claim without any evidence that Iran is making a bomb. The nuclear inspectors find no evidence of a weapons program. Israel and its neocon allies reply that once Iran has the know-how for nuclear power, it will be able to make the material from which to make a bomb, therefore, Iran must not be permitted its rights under the non-proliferation treaty. Since Iran refuses to give up its treaty rights to develop nuclear energy, Israel and the neocons maintain that Iran's facilities must be bombed and destroyed....The entire world knows that Israel cannot bomb Iran without US weapons and cooperation.
A US attack on Iran would be another instance of naked American aggression against a Muslim country. Aggression is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the US. Such an attack would further isolate the US as a rogue country. It would further inflame the Muslim world against the US and Israel, making any settlement of the Palestinian issue emotionally impossible for Muslims.
If tactical nuclear weapons are used in the bombing of Iran, as the neoconservatives advocate, America will be reviled throughout the world. Americans will never recover from the burden of shame and war crimes inflicted upon them by the Bush administration.
An attack on Iran could be the death knell for our troops in Iraq and for our puppets in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The majority Iraqi Shi'ites have tolerated the US occupation because the majority Shi'ites are the gainers from the US insistence on majority rule. The Iraqi Shi'ites are allied with Shi'ite Iran. They will recognize an attack on Iran as a blow struck against Shi'ite power. If the Iraqi Shi'ites turn on our troops, US casualties will soar.
The best way to ensure US defeat in Iraq is to attack Iran.
Would Bush and the neocons accept embarrassing defeat or would they escalate the conflict?
Would a sane government pursue a policy that has no favorable outcome? Some analysts believe that Russia and China will protect their Iranian energy and trade agreements by vetoing UN sanctions that the Bush administration seeks as a pretext for its aggression. These two powers, however, might abstain as it is in their interest to let Bush dig a deeper hole for the US. Disruption of Iranian oil supplies increases Europe's energy dependence on Russia and serves to further weaken US influence in Europe.The American people need to understand that with its massive budget and trade deficits, the US is able to go to war only because the Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, and oil producing countries finance Bush's war by purchasing US debt and holding dollar denominated assets. Once Bush has the US over-extended, it will be the end of the American superpower if one of our bankers decides to rein in the rogue American state by dumping dollar holdings....
The US breeds terrorism by its 60-year old policy of interfering in the internal affairs of Muslim lands and ruling them through surrogates....The US creates enormous animosity by appearing to exploit Muslim oil wealth and by turning a blind eye while Israel expropriates the West Bank.
Doesn't it make more sense to mend our ill-considered ways than to go to war against Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and who else? Is there no one in the Republican or Democratic parties who is capable of intelligent leadership? How many more Americans and Muslims are going to pay for Bush's insane policy with their lives, arms, legs, and eyes? How stupid are the American people?
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