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An origional article by Madhoosier.
Most sane political analysts think the idea of starting hostilities with a larger opponent while America’s military is stretched to the breaking point in Iraq and Afghanistan would be insane, after all one of the definitions of insanity is trying the same thing over and over while expecting diffrent results. Describing the results of Bush's military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan as better than a dismal failure is no longer possible, Iraq’s largest city echoes constantly with the reverberations of warring factions bombs, Osama’s been forgotten, and the Taliban and other war lords control the countryside of Afghanistan and opium poppies are thriving in the fields. But from the point of view of the Bush administration the only flaw to date in there imperial conquests in Iran and Afghanistan are those pesky people that inhabit the country to be taken over. Two simple solutions to this problem come to mind (A) Stop imperial conquests, or (B) kill as many inhabitants as possible so the next nation to be conquered will be unable to mount organized resistance. The following evidence suggests which choice the Bush administration has chosen.
Time and again leaks from the Pentagon have indicated that planning was taking place for the assault on Iran to include nuclear weapons. Time and again war planners have pointed out that the deeply buried facilities in Iran are only vulnerable to nuclear weapons. Time and again I've pointed out in posts to The Smirking Chimp and Democratic Underground that the only possible military strategy to prevent Iran from blockading the Straights of Hormuz would be to nuclear carpet bomb a strip of land five hundred miles long and one hundred miles deep along Iran's Persian Gulf coast.
As I type this the greatest assembly of missile firepower in the history of the world is afloat on American warships within range of Iran, two aircraft carriers loaded with enough aircraft to attack Iran continually, twenty four hours a day, also sail just off Iran’s coast. Additional land based airpower can be deployed to the region in a matter of a couple of days.
Attacks by uniformed American soldiers against Iran’s diplomats in Iraq are defined as acts of war by international law, as are the operations of drone aircraft in the skies of Iran, as are the operations of Special Forces reportedly on the ground in Iran for some months, as are the arming of Iranian rebel groups opposed to the present regime. Patriot anti-missile missiles have been deployed to the Gulf States allied to the U.S.
The Persian Gulf is so crowded with American war ships a U.S. submarine collided with an oil tanker a few weeks ago. Oil prices, counter intuitively, have been weak of late, but this can be explained by Saudi Arabia ramping up production in anticipation of hostilities and/or by the Saudis emptying storage facilities to reduce their exposure to sabotage when war breaks out.
Unexplained by this administration is Dick Cheney’s spur of the moment trip to Saudi Arabia the day after Thanksgiving to consult with Saudi King Abdullah. Coinciding with Cheney’s trip were unveiled threats by the Saudis that they’d intervene in Iraq on behalf of Iraq’s Sunni minority. Since the Sunni minority has targeted Americans in Iraq far more than the Shia this would have been unacceptable to Bush and Cheney. A few weeks later Bush announced his Surge into Baghdad, and that the Shia militia aligned with Iran were to be disarmed. Another twenty thousand troops were deployed to Baghdad even though supplies are so short they will have to share armor and vehicles with troops already there. The excuse that Bush gave to explain his policy of a troop surge is to quell the insurgency, yet this policy has allready been tried and all the insurgents need to do to defeat it is to wait the surge out. It seems far more likely the true purpose of the surge is to secure Baghdad’s “Green Zone” and prevent American forces by being overrun by the Shia militia when the U.S. attacks their allies in Iran.
Also evidence that the Bush administration is planning for war with Iran is the relentless propaganda campaign the administration and Pentagon has unleashed against Iran. Supposedly Iran is providing bomb making equipment and expertise to their Shia allies in Iraq. The supposedly ultra sophisticated shaped charge bombs supposedly provided by Iran to the Iraqi insurgents have in reality been common in asymmetrical warfare for decades; an article on CounterPunch stated that components for the explosives were found in a Baghdad machine shop last November. Recent successful attacks on U.S., helicopters were first blamed by administration sources on Iranian supplied anti-aircraft missiles but newer reports place the blame on conventional small arms fire in combination with 50 cal. machine gun fire. A bizarre attack on an American facility where four soldiers were kidnapped and executed and a fifth soldier was killed in the attack was initially blamed on Iran until the world press reported that one of the attackers was blond and the attackers spoke fluent English while being passed through check points manned by Iraqi forces.
Unleashing nuclear war can also be counted on filling the streets of most American cities with protesters of all stripes. Unlike the peaceful anti-war protests of recent years expect these protests to become violent either from confrontations from right wing counter-protesters, the violence addicted, rapture ready, religious cults which view a nuclear war in Iran as necessary for the Second Coming of Christ and the Rapture, or from the acts of agent provocateurs seeded into the crowds to give the authorities an excuse to break up the anti-war protests.
The one intellectual model that has consistently predicted the actions of the Bush administration is Henry Kissinger’s theory of the revolutionary power recently revisited by Paul Krugman in the introduction to his book “The Great Unraveling”. With this theory Kissinger predicts that the existing power structure will consistently underestimate the audacity of a revolutionary power’s attacks on the existing framework of government. The elections last November were a clear signal to the NeoCon revolutionary power that elections, even with the fingers of Diebold tipping the scales, are now the enemy of their revolution. Millions of ordinary Americans volunteered through organizations like MoveOn.Org and the individual campaigns to create a tamperproof voter turnout. The poll numbers of Bush and Cheney have gotten even worse since last November.
As Scooter Libby awaits a verdict in his criminal trial the thought has to cross the minds of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rice, Rumsfeld, Gates and Company that they may also be charged with their many crimes some day should the ordinary flow of governmental change continue to take place in America. Bush and Cheney, if they feel that the republicans will be turned out in mass in 2008, need a way to derail the elections. Nuclear war provides the excuse to declare an endless state of emergency to go along with their endless Global War on Terrorism, so they can cancel elections indefinitely.
I know that many of you are now thinking “there is just no way that they could get away with it.” Don’t bet on it, the corporate owned media can be expected to back whatever actions this administration takes, the media has been complicit in every illegal act of this administration to date. One third of Americans are going to support this administration no matter what they do, and all it takes for the senate to fall into republican hands is having Joe Lieberman cross the aisle to effectively blunt the democratically controlled Congress against this administration. Since the likudniks in Israel are one of the strongest supporters for the attack on Iran, Joe can be expected to cross the aisle when the first missile is launched against Iran.
In the event of war with Iran the Iranian military and Shia militias in Iraq can be expected to inflict considerable casualties on America’s troops in the Middle East. Bush is counting on these casualties to silence political challenges to the war with Iran; “How can those damned liberals be questioning the Commander in Chief when our troops are paying such a high price?” will be the refrain on countless AM talk radio shows. Hate speech on AM radio is also a ready made tool to launch homemade sectarian violence here in the states which benefits the NeoCon cause in two ways, first by intimidating the generally peaceful liberal protestors from marching in mass, and secondly advances the administration’s case for declaring a state of emergency.
This administration is gambling that the authoritarian Russian and Chinese governments will see the transformation of America into another authoritarian regime controlled by an unaccountable elite as a political benefit. Russia stands to benefit greatly by the increased value of her energy reserves and America’s rogue attack may well split a few of the more liberal European allies away from their NATO alliance. China doesn’t have a military option to oppose the U.S. and the possibility that a deal has been made to allow China to reclaimed Taiwan while America’s military is tied down in the Middle East can’t be dismissed.
Finally, the NeoCons need an end to hostilities in the Persian Gulf theater to proceed with the rest of their agenda; they have always seen the regime change in Iran as a necessary step toward that goal, with regime change now a proven failure they’ll up the ante to societal destruction to advance their cause. With the Iranian problem thus solved they’d free up the military assets required to do a little house cleaning in the Western Hemisphere, quickly overthrowing Hugo Chavez and those other pesky socialists in South America that have been gaining power at a rate sure to be alarming to the NeoCons.
That there are a thousand unintended consequences of their actions, that could derail their utopian vision for the future, as happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, has not once crossed their faith driven minds.
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