Zbig Brzezinski put his body down, warning Pres Bush to tell the Israelis not to try and bomb Iran's nuclear enrichment program, because such an attack would soon engulf the U.S. in a wider and longlasting conflict.
In Israel, John Mearsheimer has said that the only country that wants the U.S. to attack Iran is Israel.
Meantime, Joe Lieberman has attacked Obama over the issue:
"If Israel is in danger today, it's not because of American foreign
policy, which has been strongly supportive of Israel in every way," he
said. "It is not because of what we have done in Iraq. It is because
Iran is a fanatical terrorist, expansionist state."
Of course, Obama promised AIPAC that he will use "everything" to stop Iran from getting nukes, thereby departing from the ever-more-conventional Fareed Zakaria position that we may have to deter Iran, as we deterred the Soviets.
What are the true politics of this issue? Are we Americans? Do we openly discuss plans to go to war? Do we openly discuss the influence of factions in our politics (Christian right and gay marriage)? Isn't it time to have an open conversation about whether Israel's interest and the U.S.'s ever depart, and the role of the Israel lobby in our politics?
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It's hard to assess the probability that Iran will be attacked, by Israel and/or the US. But Bush is noisily castigating the Iranians, and has declared financial war on Iran by attempting to cut off Iran's banking access, even for payments in euros. (Asst. Treas. Sec. Stuart Levey's cutoff of remittances to Gaza was a smaller-scale dry run. From a Zionist perspective, it was a smashing success.)
And Congress regularly whoops through AIPAC's anti-Iran resolutions by 400-to-9 margins.
With political opposition essentially nonexistent in Congress, it's easy to imagine another headlong, ill-considered stampede into aggression, just as occurred against Iraq.
Identifying AIPAC as the instigator of an attack on Iran will nicely raise the stakes. If such an attack occurs and blasts gasoline prices to six dollahs a gallon, furious victims will be looking for a scapegoat. For historical reasons, Jews have a particular horror of being scapegoated. That's why AIPAC's fanatical anti-Persian vendetta needs to be outed and curbed, before real people start getting hurt.
Factually, the focus on Iran is misplaced. Israel, with its long rap sheet of aggressive attacks, and its undisclosed, unregulated nuclear arsenal, is by far the greatest nuclear danger on earth. For the U.S. to collaborate and egg it on is criminally irresponsible.
It is amazing how politicians, particulary neocons and liberal hawks, can project the attitudes of the United States onto anyone.
Iran is an expansionist state????
Apparently, Lieberman has never heard of blowback.
It's like Bin Laden saying in 2001
"If Afghanistan is in danger today, it's not because of Al Qaeda policy, which has been strongly supporitve of Afghanistan in every way. It is not because of what we did in America. It is because Israel is a fantical terrorist, expansionist state."
Foreign policy realism would mean the USA should consider dumping the State of Israel as a primary ally for a more friendly relationship with Iran just as Nixon and Kissinger treated China and Taiwan.
Note that before 9/11 the rejection of realism by Neocon adminstration policy-makers evinced itself in an increasing level of confrontation with the PRC.
Lieberman: "Iran is a fanatical terrorist, expansionist state."
Arguable.
But what is not arguable is that Israel is a fanatical terrorist, expansionist state. And Jewish Zionists like Liberman are its primary enablers. Does that make them terrorists? Possibly.
"six dollahs a gallon,"….
Try $12 a gallon ..with rationing of gas for the public. Just like WWII or the last time in the 70's when OPEC cut us off due to Israel's war.
Already in 2006 and '07 the DOD has awarded Israel shipments of 132 million gallons of fuel from US refinery, Valero, in Texas.
Would Egypt, Russia and the other countries who currently supply Israel with gas and oil keep supplying them if they attacked Iran?
What would Americans say when the US is supplying all of Israel's fuel needs under the old MOU of '75 and US truck drivers can't operate for lack of fuel?
Could AIPAC and the uber US zionist and the GE media spin their way out of the blame for a US war with Iran?
Depends.
On how much pain the public will bear and if large swaths of the US business community is willing to go bust for the sake of "protecting" Israel.
The falllout in the US from an Israeli attack on Iran might just be the only way to get rid of the Israeli parasite.
If is wasn't for the needless devastation and lose of innocent lives I would say go ahead Israel…make my day.
99% of Americans have no clue what AIPAC is.
40% of Americans think Obama is a moslem :-)
99.99% are clueless about the world and the reality all around them.
"Could (…) the GE media spin their way out of the blame for a US war with Iran?"
Yes, easily. With a giant, animatronic Tim Russert cyborg, part GE refrigerator, part cruise missile. Cold yet precise when confronted with the enemy du jour. With Timtronic's flashing thyroid eyes and large, protective Buffalo arms he will shelter the benighted hoi polloi from wayward thoughts and unsettling agitprop.
Revanchist American democracy? This never would have happened on Russert's watch!
The majority of Americans may have no idea what AIPAC is, but were Israel to attack Iran, and were gas to soar beyond the capacity of Americans to work or feed themselves — as the $11 boost in a barrel climbed in one day a week ago when Israel said is was inevitable that it would bomb ran — then not only would Americans soon discover AIPAC and its warmongering minions, but real, visceral, and uncontrollable anger against Israel and everything it stood for would sweep this land.
There would be nothing that even John Hagee could say to his pro-Israel flock that would overcome the reality of a newborn mother starving and unable to afford going to the doctor. or a truck driver with five kids unable to work to feed his family.
And when America finds out that the USA promised $3 billion in 2002 oil/barrel prices for Israel, offered to store it here, and ship at US taxpayers' expense to Israel, then the jig is up. As reported in Jane's Defense Weekly, "the USA agreed to divert oil from its home market, even if that entailed domestic shortages, and guaranteed delivery of the promised oil in its own tankers if commercial shippers were unwilling or not available to carry the crude to Israel." A copy of that article here: link to globalresearch.ca
It's all so easy.
Propaganda 101: Make your bogeyman PROVE that something doesn't exist.
From the new Time rag cover story, 'The Merchant of Menace:'
"Iran has repeatedly denied having an active nuclear weapons program, but it has never furnished solid proof, and concerns remain that it is working to develop its nuclear expertise."
Solid proof that it has no nukes program. Provide it or suffer the (neo)consequences.
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"With Timtronic's flashing thyroid eyes and large, protective Buffalo arms he will shelter the benighted hoi polloi from wayward thoughts." — Oarwell
Brilliant! Worthy of the original Eric Blair, not to mention the late, great Punch magazine.
More, please, kind sir!
* bangs spoon on tin cup *
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~MRW~ :
i think there is no need for such speculative thinking as what would happen *were* Israel to attack Iran.
i say what will happen *when* the banks are foreclosing on at least a third of morgages, and when half of the wage earners find a big bite taken out of their checks to pay for inexpungable creditcard debt, and when they happen to notice that these same banks are no longer owned by white americans but by the royal families of arabia and china, and when they see that the whole country in fact has been bought up by wogs and frogs?
*what* i say *will* they do then? that is the question.
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This is serious sh*t. They are trying to cut off Iran from receiving payment, in either dollars or euros, for its oil exports. From the Slimes:
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LONDON — Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Monday that Britain and the European Union would freeze the overseas assets of Iran’s largest commercial bank, joining the United States in intensifying financial pressure against Iran over its refusal to address international concern over its nuclear activities.
Mr. Brown announced that Europe would move to restrict European transactions of the Iranian bank, Bank Melli, immediately. Last week, the Iranian news media reported that Iran had recently moved $75 billion in assets from Western financial institutions to banks in Iran and Asia.
“If we freeze the assets of Bank Melli, they start to run out of places they can do business in Europe,” the senior British official said. “That starts to apply real pressure.”
“The sanctions will put on further pressure, but Iran can use its windfall oil revenue and pay further costs to import through smaller banks,” said Saeed Leylaz, an Iranian economist. “Iran will also shift its trade from Europe to Asia.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/world/17prexy.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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Here comes a zionist-instigated train wreck. If Iran is cut off from trading in dollars or euros, it will be driven straight into the arms of China, which has large and increasing energy needs.
Traditionally, Japan has been a major investor in Iranian energy projects, and consumer of Iranian oil. But being a U.S. protectorate, Japan will be forced by U.S. pressure to bow out, as the Chinese move in.
A China with secure, nearby energy resources from Iran will only increase its strategic advantage over the U.S., which has become disastrously dependent on imported energy.
It is impossible to measure the cost to the U.S. of such self-defeating sanctions, but I would guess that they exceed by an order of magnitude the $5 billion a year in direct U.S. cash subsidies to Israel and its neighbors (Egypt, Jordan, et al). As the late Senator Everett Dicksen might have said, "Fifty billion here, fifty billion there; pretty soon you're talkin' real money."
From a Darwinian standpoint, a country which allows zionist leeches to suck it dry probably deserves to fade into decrepitude. Color me "American and ashamed."
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Call me American and Proud! This contrafunctional government cant last much longer! God's Countenance smiles on us again at last! The Times are finally Changing!
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I see a mistake in the above. I have no right to be proud of my Creator. Call me rather American and Glad!
http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1118&Itemid=5
Note the way Lieberman phrases this
If Israel is in danger today, it's not because of American foreign policy, which has been strongly supportive of Israel in every way,"
No one is implying that Israel is in danger because the U.S. hasn't been supportive enough. The truth is that unqualified U.S. support for Israel makes Israel, and the U.S, less secure.
Lieberman also states that Iran is an "expansionist state". It isn't Iran building all those new homes in the West Bank–it is Israel.
Ray
P.S. Phil, THANKS FOR WHAT YOU DO!!!!!
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Thanks ~Todd~ for that great article. I loved the maps as well.
~Haygood~ I'm not surprised that BrownNose got in bed with Bush, but how could 'Europe' follow? Were the 'reforms' voted down by Irish people in fact unneccessary? Is 'Europe' just as bad as 'US'?
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~Haygood~ i must admit tho that if we permit the USG to nuke iran, god will never spare us from selfimmolation.
What Zbig said about the consequences of Israel attacking Iran is true, i.e., that it would result in the US being bound ever more tightly to Israel and to endless Mideast war, then that would be the perfect rationale and motivation for Israel to attack Iran.
Particularly so since Israeli pols certainly are aware of some beginnings of a possible US shift away from total adherence to Zionist policies.
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re my question on why european union got in bed with bush (yugga) a friend suggests that this was the quid pro quo for saudi arabia to raise its production.
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Paul Easton, you wrote:
"i think there is no need for such speculative thinking as what would happen *were* Israel to attack Iran.
i say what will happen *when* the banks are foreclosing on at least a third of morgages, and when half of the wage earners find a big bite taken out of their checks to pay for inexpungable creditcard debt, and when they happen to notice that these same banks are no longer owned by white americans but by the royal families of arabia and china, and when they see that the whole country in fact has been bought up by wogs and frogs?"
There is an enormous difference between the U.S. going to other countries or economies to pay its debt, or having to sell off its assets to make domestice payments, and a country involving the full faith of the United States in its own foreign policy aspirations that benefits no one but itself and descends American interests into a veritable hell.
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