Every column that Roger Cohen writes now on Iran in the Times must be celebrated. They're so important, the tone is chastened and reasoned and olive-branch. They're historic, in that they're changing the American discussion. And Cohen has staked an enormous amount of personal and journalistic capital on these columns. Here's his latest. A tremendous interview with Mohamed ElBaradei reminiscent of Tom Friedman's important column interviewing the Saudi Prince some years ago, promoting the Arab peace initiative.
“Israel would be utterly crazy to attack Iran,” ElBaradei said. “I worry about it. If you bomb, you will turn the region into a ball of fire and put Iran on a crash course for nuclear weapons with the support of the whole Muslim world.”
To avoid that nightmare Obama will have to get tougher with Israel than any U.S. president in recent years. It’s time.
In his previous column, Cohen quoted Trita Parsi. This is the new left-realist-center of the American debate; and this site plays a role here. At Easter lunch yesterday I sat next to a transplanted Iranian who hates the revolution but who says what Cohen is saying: that attacking Iran will only set it back a couple of years; that a shift of our horrifying Israel/Palestine policy is the crux of our dealings here; that Iran must be engaged if the greatest threat to global peace is to be addressed: Pakistan falling apart, full of nukes.
Update: The AJC recognizes Cohen's potency and is attacking him in a new email from Eran Lerman of their Israeli office, titled, "Should Roger Cohen Have a Conversation with my Daughter? Or Why Belittling the Iranian Threat Is a Clever Sort of Folly". More later...
Is this guy still only on the online NYTimes version? Goal: Token Jew against attacking Iran being pushed to the back of the room so nobody actually knows he's there?
"To avoid that nightmare Obama will have to get tougher with Israel than any U.S. president in recent years. It’s time."
More importantly, get tough with the Israel lobby so it can't extort/blackmail/coerce/bribe the spineless Washington political class into complying with Israel's every arbitrary demand and tantrum.
re "Pakistan falling apart, full of nukes.": this wouldn't be the case but for the Iraq war, which itself was engineered by the Jewish Zionist nation in Israel and America. These people just keep digging us all deeper and deeper.
What's so unbelievable is the extent to which the "secular liberal democracy" of America willingly complies with the whims and tantrums of an outlaw band of religo-racist motivated fanatics. It doesn't bode well for our system of government and money worship as currently manifested.
What we really need is some good old time Western civilization to put these hustlers and thugs in their place. Oh, but that would be politically incorrect, wouldn’t it? I guess maintaining the liberal tenets of political correctness is more important than, say, preventing a Mideast conflagration.
De-Christianized Americans are such wet noodles.
I would like to see Cohen write about the problems that Israel and its backers cause within the U.S. I don't know much about Cohen, but I would bet that he's a soft-supporter of Israel, whether he's a neocon or not. I'm sure that he'd be just another spinner for the Establishmentin the end.
Cohen's summary of proposal for Iran sounds wonderful.
Will they act on it?
And, if they don't act on it, clearly, assertively, what is the next step, with Iran as a nuclear power?
How unconditional is Iran?
Let's see.
Russia does defense and a lot of other biz with Iran.
The USA doesn't.
Israel has a Visa Waiver program with Russia.
Israel does not have a Visa Waiver program with the USA.
Visa Waiver programs are usually between the closest countries. Go figure.
@ doug,
Although not perfect and not free in the (formerly) American sense, Christian Russia has the cojones to put its boot on the neck of the Judeofascist criminals when they start getting too big for their britches. Solzhenitsyn’s persistent Christian influence on Putin, I think, will continue to pay moral dividends, even from the grave.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2008/08/05/toward_end_solzhenitsyn_embraced_putins_russia/
Brazil and Japan have the ability to create a bomb.
Other Nations are ready to reach take off as well.
Israel must realize that the genie is out of the bottle.
They cooperated with apartheid South Africa in developing plans for a nuclear industry I seem to recall.
What duplicitous hypocritical behaviour from a State that will not admit the truth of its own nuclear capacity.
we can have this, but you are not allowed to… interesting position….
Check out this interview:
link to globetrotter.berkeley.edu
It discusses the general issue of ethnic minorities, disproportionate power and wealth, and the social conflicts created.
The interviewee has personal experience. Her Filipino but ethnic Chinese Aunt was murdered due to this. She also describes the seven Russian oligarchs who captured about 60% of the country's natural resources subsequent to privatization. Six of the seven were Jewish. This has spawned much resentment as well as facilitated the creation of anti-Semitic political parties in Russia.
I suspect the large number of Russian Israelis, who often travel back to the "old country," are a big part of why they have a Visa Waiver program with Russia.
I think she can also be found in an interview on C-Span's booknotes. Interesting book and interview.
John,
They cooperated with apartheid South Africa in developing plans for a nuclear industry I seem to recall.
Yes. They also had a lot of direct help from the French. Also the US turned a blind eye and LBJ gutted State's efforts to link nuclear inspections/restrictions to weapons/aircraft sales.
It is probably inevitable that Iran will gain the ability to build the bomb. There is nothing that the US or Israel can do to stop them. We have only one real choice and that is to convince with enticements and diplomacy that they do not in fact build the bomb. Maybe possible, maybe not.
We should realize that we can live in such a world and it really does not need to be just a big issue as far an American national interests are concerned. Israel,who started the nuke race in the ME, is in a different situation, but that is her problem and not ours.
If there is any country on earth which should be permanently forbidden from having the bomb, it is the country which used it twice in 72 hours on civilian population centers in two of the most gratuitous acts of mass murder in history. Failure to hang Truman was an outrageous miscarriage of justice, bringing one more avalanche of shame to this barbaric and disreputable land.
I agree with Witty–Cohen's normalization scenario looks pretty darn good. Wonder what the US guarantee of Iran's security paragraph or clause would look like, and in what sequence would implementing events take place? What would show clarity on both sides? I think the phases would have to be conditional on both sides for Iran to buy in.
I fear Israel will attack Iran under some instigated pretex before they would allow the USA and
Iran to get along, even if Iran shrugs off helping Hamas and Hezbullah. I think Israel would prefer
the Samson Option to sharing real power with Iran over there. Or am I confusing diaspora American Likud Jews with all Israelis?
@ doug,
I'm not sure how close Israel and Russia really are. According to this Jerusalem Post article on 'The rise and fall of Russia's Jewish tycoons,' and why so many of them have taken refuge in the Jewish state and England, "Israel is one of only two countries that don't have a deportation agreement with Russia the other being England."
link to digg.com
Putin has hardly been a friend to Israel, happily doing armaments business with all kinds of it enemies. But maybe he IS setting up a fifth column in Israel to exploit the Jewish Zionist fifth column in America. As I recall, on another thread here, some Jewish American doves suspected Russian émigré A. Lieberman and his Russian constituency of being crypto-Christians.
I have to say, it would be highly amusing if Netanyahu was getting his strings pulled by Putin via Lieberman. But given that spineless, post-Christian American politicians don't have the balls to jerk around puny psychopath Israel, Putin might as well.
It would be less amusing if America was getting its strings pulled by Putin via Lieberman, via Netanyahu, via the Israel lobby, but it would certainly demonstrate clearly for all to see the what the corrupt two-party regime has wrought by allowing a Jewish Zionist fifth column to set up shop in America and dictate American policy.
Truman was faced with the Okinawa death toll as likely rate of attrition, the fact that we had only fought 10% of the total Imperial Japan army, that everybody in Japan would fight to the death, including all civilians, that there was a feeling in the USA to cut wartime production in half, and allow our soldiers who had help win Europe to come home for good, that Japan was working frantically on its own nuke bombs–it had material to make two at the time, Stalin was preparing to invade Japan, etc.
Still, not sure he did the right thing.
Israel is a much greater threat to Iran than Iran is now or has ever been to Israel.
IMO, we should articulate the context, but admit it was a huge moral transgression to drop the bombs right in the middle of huge Japanese population centers…countryside 2, 3, 4 times probably would have accomplished the same thing.
But then again, Truman was one of the first powerful Washington Democrat Judeo-sycophants to bow down to the Israel lobby, so it doesn't surprise me that his judgment was crap.
Citizen you just repeating what we told ourselves over and over again beginning in August 1945. Historians that have studied those bombings have come to one surprising conclusion — namely attacking in August 1945 was militarily gratuitous. Whatever was the deciding factor, military necessity was not it.
syvanen is exactly correct. Many Americans don't realize that Truman's entire military brass was against use of the bomb. Nor did japan surrender after the nagasaki bomb. They STILL refused surrender until they were guaranteed in secret talks that they could retain the emperor. Without this provision, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the Japanese would fight on until the last man. They surrendered on precisely the same terms available to the U.S. before either bomb was dropped.
BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE
(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables – the MAGIC summaries – for Truman and his advisors)
"…when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.
Japan was working frantically on its own nuke bombs–it had material to make two at the time
Not so. Japan had Uranium as did much of the world. It was a waste product from extracting much desired Radium. It found some use in specialized optical glass and ceramic glazes but most of it was just considered worthless. Like the Germans (and with their aid) they experimented with it but never developed the capability of enriching it at all nor the capability of breeding Plutonium. German had a nascent program that never got very far due to resource limitations. Japan's was even more primitive though we didn't know exactly how far behind they were til after the war. Japan was even more resource limited than Germany.
In a way we gained from Germany's Jewish pograms. The West picked up a large number of Jewish scientists that had been in Axis controlled areas. They were major innovators in the Manhatten Engineering District's work.
Doug
Thanks for the link to the interview with Amy Chau, author of
World on Fire.
Her point about most non-Western countries having social and
ethnic structures totally different from what we have in the
West was shown in the failure of bringing democracy to Iraq.
Her explanation of recent Russian anti semitism resulting
from the introduction of democracy and free speech after
perestroika is enlightening.
It seems that the West will have to learn to live with the
likes of Iran as we do with Morocco, Libya, Egypt and
Jordan.
John, Iraq's social and ethnic structure had little to nothing to do with the failure to bring democracy to Iraq. The cause of that failure is to be found first in the project itself, second in the motivation for it, and third, in the manner in which it was executed. There is nothing in Iraq's social and ethnic structure that obviates Iraq developing a form of democracy or being successfully governed by it.
John,
I also found Chua's book enlightening. Her description of how her aunt's family was treated subsequent to the murder was disturbing.
In her book she also discusses a bit of the reaction of her Jewish husband to some of her findings. I suspect Phil would relate strongly to some of it. There is after all, more to the world than Jews and Muslims.
Envy and greed so easily distort our views and values.
Shirin
The nature of the project in Neocon project in Iraq, motivation and manner of execution were utter lunacy.
In reading Israel Shahak's "Open Secrets: Israel Nuclear and Foreign Policies" formed the opinion that Israel , Iraq and other Arab countries have engaged trade even though there was an Arab boycott.
This lent itself to a corruption of internal political processes where it was nigh impossible to find an untainted politician.
Together with a corrupt political class how do you have democracy when there are private clan,tribal, religious and ethnic militias?
There were not private clan, tribal, religious and ethnic militias in Iraq prior to "liberation", save the Peshmerga, which has been around for decades, and other than being used as a bogeyman to frighten non-Kurdish children into behaving, had no impact on the overwhelming majority of people, and did not at all affect social, family, and business relationships between Kurdish and non-Kurdish Iraqis.
My advice to everyone is to forget everything you have heard about ethno-sectarian/"clan"/tribal relations in pre-2003 Iraqi society. It is, quite simply, all nonsense. Going back millennia Iraqi society was always very diverse, the various groups mixed freely and cooperated, and intermarried, and got along about as well as people do in any diverse society, and better than many.
As for trade relations between Israel and Iraq, I don't have specific information, but I seriously doubt it. I know of one proposal mounted formally by a big general in Israel to make overtures toward Saddam regarding a political alliance of sorts, but it never got off the ground in Israel. The General told me about it himself, and it fits time-wise and otherwise with other information I have, so I believe him.
Corruption of internal political processes is endemic to dictatorships of all kinds, including monarchies. It is far more rare not to find it. Interestingly, I have heard from several westerners who did business in Iraq in the '60's-80's who said they found very little corruption there in their interactions with the government as well as in business.
Israel Shahak had a huge axe to grind, and therefore must be taken with a grain of salt. I stopped paying attention to him, and most sophisticated Palestinian and Arab groups became suspicious and stopped citing him quite a long time ago, especially after he came out with some classic European anti-Semitic stuff in his speeches and writings. Even if he was right about a lot of stuff, it is too much of a liability for Palestinians or Arabs to be associated with anti-Semitism.
Shirin I generally agree with your comments — there is little evidence of the inter-ethnic/religious wars in Iraq that the western press describes as 'endemic'. But there is one historical analogy that is relevant to what is happening today. After the fall of the Ottoman empire after WWI, the British moved in and tried to make Iraq a colony. It was the Shiite tribes that resisted and the British expeditionary forces fought. In fact the first use of chemical weapons in a ME war occured then when the British dropped mustard gas bombs on the resisting Shiites. At the same time, the British came to agreements with the Sunni tribes and after finally suppressing the insurrection, turned over state power to them.
I think this was part of Sistani's thinking when he urged his followers not to resist the American occupation. He was right. This time it was the Sunnis who resisted while the Americans turned over state power to the Shiites.
Of course both of these are examples of westerm imperial powers using divide and conquer tactics, that created the religious tensions.
Shirin
Thanks for your clarifing post.
You could have been dismissive or not even bothered to reply.
I am beholden to you for opening the window for me.
What about the Kurds?
Will they be content for some autonomy in a type of federation?
Doug
We will go to Hell and back for being envious.
Often the country, group or individual you envy is completely unaware of your emotion.
It is a great fault and leads to duplicity, falsehood and calumny.
It has a flip-side though, as it can assist in rising self esteem.
As for greed, an elderly man said to me " have you ever known a millionaire that didn't want another million?"
syvanen, you are correct in general outline. I would say, though, that there is no evidence of inter-ethnic religious wars in modern times prior to 2003 because none took place.
Historically in the last, say, 1400 years or so prior to 2003, there have been two significant incidents of what I would consider genuine sectarian conflict in Iraq. Each of them took place when the region was invaded and occupied by foreign powers, and each subsided relatively quickly after the occupation ended. That should be an indication of why many of us believe that the removal of the U.S. presence is necessary to bring Iraqis back together.
To my mind those who view what took place during Saddam's rule as Sunni versus Shi`a are not seeing the true root of the conflict, which I see as first and foremost a dictator crushing opposition (which he did ruthlessly whether it was Sunni, Shi`a, secular, or none of the above) and second as a conflict between secular and theocratic forces. But that is a bigger discussion than we have time for here.
The British did, of course, practice divide and rule in Iraq as they did everywhere. However, it was not so much that they put the Sunnis in power as it was that they installed a non-Iraqi as King, who happened to be Sunni, and to a significant extent they kept a similar power structure to the one the Turks had maintained. And it is certainly true that it was to a very great extent the Shi`a resistance that did enormous damage to the British. And yes, the British did use poison gas mainly against Shi`as.
Something that is little known in the US, by the way, is that most Iraqi tribes are neither Sunni nor Shi`a, but mixed Sunni and Shi`a. That is true of virtually all the major tribes, and many of the smaller ones. This by itself should put the lie to the notion that Iraq is easily divided into Sunni, Shi`a, and Kurd (as if all the other important ethnic and religious groups don't matter).
Another thing that is not at all understood is that there is historically a very high rate of intermarriage in Iraq among all groups. Sunni-Shi`a intermarriage is extremely common, Arab-Kurd, Arab-Turkmen, Muslim-Christian, Yezidi-Christian, Mandaean-Christian, Muslim-Jew, Christian-Jew – any combination you care to think of, and there will be examples. These intermarriages were sometimes done to strengthen relations between families for commercial or political reasons, and sometimes because two people fell in love and their families could not find a good reason to object.
Shirin: "To my mind those who view what took place during Saddam's rule as Sunni versus Shi`a are not seeing the true root of the conflict, which I see as first and foremost a dictator crushing opposition (which he did ruthlessly whether it was Sunni, Shi`a, secular, or none of the above) and second as a conflict between secular and theocratic forces. But that is a bigger discussion than we have time for here."
Shirin, you appear to be sympathetic to these Saddam-Sunni gangsters who presented themselves as progressive secularists (yeah, right, in the "progressive" vein of Stalin) when they were attacking Iran and subjugating and persecuting Shia religious, until they adopted a Sunni-Muslim identity for political purposes once they had a parting of ways with America. Do you expect us to believe that Saddam didn't put his Sunni-gangster Ba’athist brethren on top, followed by Sunni tribe, followed by everyone else when he was doling out his Stalinist persecutions?
You appear to be attempting to scapegoat Saddam alone for the crimes of the supposedly secular Ba’athists, who, like the Jewish Communists, were never really secular at all, but primitive tribal gangsters who put their ethnic-gangster fellows first, followed by their Party members, followed by their extended tribe, followed by everyone else.
Attempting to put lipstick on primitive, tribal, gangster-pigs passing themselves off as secularists to gullible Westerners for money-grubbing purposes simply won’t fly in the West in the long term.
re Roger Cohen I'd point out that it's much easier and it takes less courage to take a stand against Israel concerning Iran than concerning Palestine. The pro-Israel lobby has been very effective concerning palestinian matters, but there the opposition usually doesn't have much clout.
@ Ed
While agree with much of what you said, isn't it common knowledge that the Bathist party was modeled after the Nazi regime, which it's founders, and Saddam himself much admired? As to the socialist aspects of Bath rule, well, what can I say but Nazi aka National Socialist German Worker's Party? Even Stalin recognized the power of this concept when Germany invaded Russia and Stalin finally realized he could not stop them by appeals using communist rhetoric/doctrine–he had to revert to appeals to nationalism, to blood and soil, to the Russian homeland, not any Communist homeland…
@ doug
"…Like the Germans (and with their aid) they experimented with it but never developed the capability of enriching it at all…"
Yes, the Germans tried to help them by sending them uranium sub-extract of the right kind, but the German submarine that carried it was turned midstream over to the allies upon Germany's surrender. The Japanese scientists at the time nevertheless had developed a way to extract the right uranium for enrichment (not the same process we used as we could afford to try all four processes and pick the most reliable) from deposits dug mainly from Korea. Japan was a short time a way from the steps beyond enrichment when Truman put it an end to it. The
devices left intact for full capability were dismantled by the US Army shortly after Japan surrendered. Are we on the same page or not?
@ ed
"…we should articulate the context, but admit it was a huge moral transgression to drop the bombs right in the middle of huge Japanese population centers"
I'm sorry, looking at the context I detailed above, exactly how was it a "huge" moral transgression
to drop the bomb on Japan? How do you get from A (context details I mentioned) to B ("huge" moral transgression)?
Certainly some moral transgression, but even there I have a problem–our fire bombings of Japanese wooden cities took a higher toll than the two nukes we dropped later. Were they
lesser moral transgressions, considering the context, or equally huge moral transgressions?
How about the fire bombing of Dresden?
I'm just asking. Such moral issues are not settled in my mind. Obviously, with a different change of clothing, the issue of proportionate response still lives, as it does re the I-P situation…
Dropping nukes is different than firebombing cities, and Truman and his henchmen had to know it. They were opening Pandora's box, and setting precedents. If they had to use their new toys, they could have used better judgment. We're all damn lucky they haven't been used again. (Although I suppose an argument can be made that they haven't been used again because the results of their first use were so noxiously monstrous.)
Citizen,
Good watches, BTW. :)
Same page except that I know of no evidence the Japanese had suceeded at the production of any significant qtys of U235, Pu239 or U233 (via the Thorium route). They did have a large weapons program but the hard part is the large scale production. That this remains a hard, expensive process is a very good thing.
Japan was never close to producing a nuclear weapon prior to the war's end. That said Japan currently has the capability of rapidly producing nukes should it so choose.
Citizen
If you are really interested in this topic, I hope you will read Gar Alperovitz' magisterial book "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb" I think there can no longer be any doubt, given the documentary record, that the use of the bomb was totally unnecessary to achieve peace quickly, on favorable terms, without land invasion. Truman knew this quite well and wrote of his confidence in the original Potsdam Accord in his diary. It offered the Japanese a carrot and a stick, in his diary. The carrot was that they could retain the emperor, without which, Truman and EVERYONE knew beyond question, the Japanese would never surrender. The stick was the announcement of Russia's entry into the war as a power hostile to japan. As truman wrote: "When that happens, fini Japs!" His intuition was backed up by a host of intercepted cables from the japanese, revealing their utter desperation and attempts to sue for peace through a beutral country. So what happened? Why was this version of the Potsdam accord never presented to the japanese? Simple. The two-pronged strategy was replaced by the demand for unconditional surrender as soon as the bomb completed its successful test in Almagordo, NM.
As I said earlier, truman's entire military brass would today be considered A-bomb revisionists, for their outspoken opposition to use of the atomic bomb. The lone exception was truman's abominable sec of state Byrnes—a sort of Dick Cheney nut case who pushed Truman to drop two atomic bombs.
A few choice quotes:
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm
rykart
Thanks, I will look into that recommended book.
You might want to read this–it's not a whole book, but a rather lengthy article that makes what you say, and others have said above, not as crystal clear as you imagine:
link to www-cgsc.army.mil
/>
Especially note the many uses, abuses, fluctuations, manipulations by various US governmental factions of the term "unconditional surrender." And the responding Japanese factions' various interpretation of the same.
One thing seems clear is that Truman, the old artillery man, viewed the A bomb as just another tactical weapon, and that at the time of decision he deluded himself in thinking the two targets
were primarily military targets, but after those two bombings he couldn't stop thinking of killing kids and moved to just get the war over with ASAP.
Hi Citizen
have only skimmed the piece you supplied. Anxious to sit down later and read it properly…looks interesting.
I think one of Alperowitz' sensible points is that..sure..we can endlessly speculate over what the Japanese would have done, had they been given the offer they eventually agreed to BEFORE use of the bomb. It's impossible to replay the filmstrip of history and know this with certainty. Alperwitz asks whether Truman BELIEVED that the war could be ended speedily without resort to the use of the bomb and I think the case is pretty airtight that he did believe this was possible, indeed, likely. For many of us, that makes his decision to use the bomb irregardless, an inexcusable war crime.
As to speculations and what-ifs, I think it's worth considering the possibility that the US might have developed a stockpile of these weapons when no one else had them and then engaged the great powers to ban their development completely, subject to international inspection. The threat of global annihilation that continues to hang over all of us MAY have been averted. Truman's first use ensured the rapid development by other nations and all that this implies for our security.
As to Nagasaki, it seems that very few if any serious scholars view that massacre as a matter of necessity. It was entirely gratuitous, save for the fact that the plutonium version of the bomb had not been tested and this was a splendid opportunity.
As to Nagasaki, it seems that very few if any serious scholars view that massacre as a matter of necessity. It was entirely gratuitous, save for the fact that the plutonium version of the bomb had not been tested and this was a splendid opportunity.
No. The Uranium bomb was the one previously untested. Enriched U was scarce while Plutonium was being cranked out regularly by graphite reactors. The Plutonium bomb was considered more at risk, requiring sophisticated implosion. The first Plutonium bomb was detonated at the Trinity site in New Mexico. The Uranium bomb was not tested prior to use as a weapon.
That the Uranium bomb was not tested before use should be kept in mind re Iran. It's one of the reasons secret U enrichment is so feared.
doug
You're right. I blew that one.