Closing Window: The People Must Act NOW
to Prevent War with Iran
By Malcolm Shore
On Tuesday March 11, the
same day the media was fixated on news that New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer was about to
step down, another resignation occurred that is potentially far, far more
ominous: that of Admiral William Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command.
It is not the resignation itself that is frightening, but rather the apparent
reason for it. A lengthy profile of Fallon in the April issue of Esquire
magazine portrayed him as a man who- while certainly more than willing to bomb
Iran if he deemed it necessary- deviated from the hard-line approach of Bush
and Cheney. “If, in the dying light of
the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it”ll all come down to one
man,” the piece begins. “If we do not go to war with Iran, it”ll come down to the same
man.”
Eerily, the article even
predicted that Fallon’s failure to march in lockstep with Bush on Iran could cost
him his job. “If that were to happen” the article continued, “it may well mean
that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the
end of this year and don’t want a commander standing in their way.”[emphasis
added]
Days after the magazine
hit stands, Fallon resigned.
Fallon cited the magazine
piece as one key factor in his decision, and explained that the mere idea that
he disagreed with Bush’s key policies had made him incapable of properly doing
his job. “Recent press reports suggesting a disconnect between my views and the
president’s policy objectives have become a distraction at a critical time,”
Fallon said.
In an instant, I once again heard the
clock ticking towards a U.S.
strike on Iran. The news literally took my breath away.
But it seems many in the anti-war
movement are still exhaling from the deep sigh of relief they breathed last winter. That, of course, is when the National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE)was leaked, revealing to the world that the Bush
Regime’s claims about Iran’s
nuclear weapons program were utter lies.
To be fair, the temptation
to feel relieved was strong. After all, the report’s release came at a time
when escalating rhetoric and rumor suggested another nightmare for the people
of the world could be quite imminent: mass genocide against still more
innocent people in still another Middle Eastern country, this time with
the possibly of nuclear weapons and the likelihood of region-wide war that
could take decades to end. Given the
justifiably terrified mood in the air regarding the threat of a U.S. attack on Iran, the NIE came across as a
welcome screeching sound- of a train headed towards mass death and destruction
suddenly braking to a halt.
But did the NIE eliminate, or even substantially reduce, the
threat of war against Iran? Or did it, at best, cause a short-term delay
in the White House’s attack plans, forcing Bush and Cheney to re-oil their
propaganda machine and adjust the way they are pursuing-and “selling”-their war
plans?
This was a question that hung powerfully in the air following a
Feb. 28 panel discussion at Columbia
University, entitled “The
Folly of Attacking Iran.” Between 150
and 175 people packed the Faculty Room of Columbia’s School of International
and Public Affairs (SIPA), a large enough crowd that many audience members had
to stand during the presentation. Prior to the beginning of the program, the
room was buzzing with loud conversation.
Consequences-Predicted and Unforeseen-of
a U.S. attack on Iran
The first speaker was Chris Hedges, a former longtime Middle East correspondent for the New York Times. As he
has done in many very compelling speeches and writings in recent months, Hedges
presented a vivid and terrifying vision of the consequences for humanity if the
U.S. strikes Iran. Hedges
predicted a U.S. attack against Iran could set off a domino effect of
large-scale violence in the Middle East, which could include Iran retaliating
by attacking U.S. troops in the Green Zone; an increase in terrorist attacks,
including strikes within the U.S; massive retaliatory attacks by Shiites all
over the Middle East; and the ultimate possibility of the destruction of
Israel. On this last point, he noted
that the Israel
deems use of nuclear weapons “the Samson option,” and explained, “The Biblical
Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him,
including himself. It may be a sad and apt metaphor.”
Given the calamity faced by the planet, Hedges argued, the
American people must demand impeachment, unless they are prepared to be
complicit in mass destruction and slaughter.
Hedges began his speech by suggesting that, if Congress passes an
updated version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) granting
retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies who participated in the
Bush Regime’s spying program, the
capacity of the U.S. to bomb
Iran
will greatly increase. How? By greenlighting the regime’s spying program, which
would have a chilling affect on the ability of foreign correspondents to freely
interview sources outside the United
States. This, in turn, could significantly
reduce journalists” ability to scrutinize the administration’s justifications
for attacking Iran.
All this becomes particularly ominous in light of the release of
the NIE. Because of that report, Hedges
said, the Bush Regime would need to fabricate a new pretext to attack Iran, and the
spying program is a devastating blow to reporters” ability to expose such phony
pretexts. As I write this, the House
has just passed a version of Bush’s spying program that does not grant
retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies. But Bush has indicated he
would veto the bill, and we know what Democrats have tended to do in the face
of Bush’s vetoes.
Steven Kinser, a former
foreign correspondent for the New York Times and another speaker at the Feb 28
panel, also acknowledged the constantly-hovering threat of war against Iran. He said
he feared Americans waking up to find that their government had begun bombing Iran, leaving
them to wonder if they could have done more to stop it. Kinser, author of “All The Shah’s Men,” about
the 1953 CIA-led coup against Mohammed Mossadeq, shared with Hedges an
appropriately ominous vision of what could happen if the U.S. did launch
such an attack. But he approached that question from a slightly different, and
very profound angle: Drawing a
historical analogy to the coup against Mossadeq, he noted, “The worst
affects were the ones nobody could have predicted at the time.”
Kinser described the chain of events following the Mossadeq coup
this way: The 25 years of torture, repression, and murder that ensued after the
U.S.
government replaced Mossadeq with the Shah led to the Islamic Revolution, which
in turn paved the way for the elevation of Taliban-like forces. The chaos created by this revolution
motivated Saddam Hussein to invade Iran,
which led to a U.S.-
financed war between Iraq
and Iran. This, ultimately, helped generate the
adversarial relationship between the U.S.
and Hussein, which then created the conditions for the U.S. to attack Iraq in 2003; and we all know where
that has led. Meanwhile, when the Soviet
Union invaded Afghanistan shortly after the Iranian revolution, the United
States trained Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama Bin Laden, to fight the
Soviets; and we all know how where that led as well.
If the U.S.
attacks Iran,
Kinser said, the worst consequences may once again be those we could not even
envision presently.
Time to Relax?
In contrast to Kinser
and especially Hedges, Ervand Abrahamian- an Iranian-born historian and
professor of Middle East history at Baruch College-spoke of the danger of a
U.S. attack on Iran in decidedly non- immediate terms. “A few months ago, I
would have fully agreed with Chris” eloquent and alarmist view,” Abrahamian
said, opening his speech. And, he noted,
after the elections are over, he may well agree again. But for the time being, the ascendance of
“traditional” conservatives like Robert Gates to key government and military
posts presented a powerful enough buffer against neoconservatives that a
U.S. attack against Iran is not imminent, Abrahamian argued.
“I think as long as [traditional]
conservatives are in the driver’s seat,” Abrahamian said, “we can relax.” Abrahamian distinguished traditional
conservatives from neocons by suggesting that the former brand of right-winger
views war as a last resort, not as an ideal strategy, and that traditional
conservatives are aware that an attack on Iran
would seriously jeopardize U.S.
efforts to “stabilize” Iraq.
Fallon’s hasty
resignation came less than two weeks after Abrahamian spoke these words. Fallon
had been one of the leading “traditional” conservative voices, and yet,
depending on who you believe, he was either forced to resign by Bush and
Cheney, or did so willingly as soon as the mere perception existed that
he disagreed with them over key policies -including whether to attack Iran. Whether
forced or voluntary, Fallon’s resignation gives the lie to any suggestion that
people of conscience can “relax” with traditional conservatives in key
positions of power. Furthermore, to
anyone familiar with the presidencies of
presidents such as George Bush I and Ronald Reagan, the idea that people
looking to prevent crimes against humanity should seek comfort in “traditional
conservatives” is an astounding one; it would be a tremendous understatement to
say that these administrations showed zero reservations about shedding mass
amounts of innocent blood.
However, the prevailing
sentiment among those interviewed after the discussion leaned towards
Abrahamian’s view that an attack on Iran is not imminent The six people I spoke with-none of whom, it
should be pointed out, were students- generally said that they did not foresee
an attack on Iran in the near future because of the NIE report, because the
U.S. military was too strained to manage another war on top of its occupation
of Iraq, and because it simply seemed too irrational an idea to come to fruition.
“I think the possibility has really diminished,” said Iranian-American Bigan
Salianic. “I think that the possibility is there, but not as much as in October
or November.” However, Salianic, like
some others interviewed, suggested the possibility of an attack would be
heightened after November if John McCain becomes president.
Two New York City World
Can’t Wait activists interviewed after the program generally agreed that while
the Bush Regime is undoubtedly still considering military action against Iran, and while
the threat of an attack has not gone away, it had been placed somewhat on the
back burner. One of these activists suggested that, paradoxically, the fact
that the prospect of a U.S.
attack on Iran
has been in the public consciousness for so long has actually made people less
sensitive to the threat.
“Part of the problem, is
there’s been this lingering thing about an attack on Iran,” he said. “So it kind of
dulls people.”
And it is true, the
administration has been threatening war with Iran for a long time, and it is not
guaranteed that the threat will become reality. What is, however,
guaranteed is that for the American people to “wait it out” and hope for the
best is not only stupid but criminally so.
Wishful thinking and
self-deceit are instruments of social paralysis every bit as powerful as fear,
and every bit as deadly.
Our Responsibility to
the People of Iran,
and to the World
Here it helps to put
oneself in the shoes of those who would suffer the worst, and most immediate,
if the U.S. does attack Iran: the
Iranian people.
Let’s say somebody had
been repeatedly threatening to bomb you, your mother and father, and your
brothers and sisters into small pieces. And let’s say that, in recent days,
those threats once again seemed to be escalating. Do you say to yourself, “Oh well, it hasn’t
happened yet, so I guess it’s not a serious threat”? Do you console yourself with the notion
that, even if the murderers might still be planning to kill your family, it
probably wouldn’t happen for at least a few more months?
Or would you do
everything you could, right then and there, to stop your family from
being murdered?
This is the situation we
are faced with in the world. Except that
it is not just one family that is being threatened, it is millions; in fact, it
is ultimately the entire extended family known as humanity that is in danger.
Largely absent from the Columbia University panel was any emphasis on the opportunity
and necessity facing the American people to stop war with Iran. Hedges
came the closest to addressing this, when he spoke of the moral responsibility
of Americans to demand impeachment.
However, even he referred to supposed opponents of a U.S. attack on Iran
within the military-including Fallon-as the “last best hope” to prevent a new
war.
An Opening” If We
Resist NOW
The good news is that,
on that critical point, Hedges is wrong.
The “last best hope,” is to galvanize the people of this country to stop
deluding themselves and act on what they already know: that their government,
proven over and over again to be war criminals, may be preparing to launch
another horrific atrocity against a country that has never threatened
them. While nothing is guaranteed, there
is still a strong possibility that- if the American people make the decision right
now that a war with Iran is simply intolerable, and manifest their
opposition in whatever ways they can-we may be able to stop this war from
happening.
Consider the protests
against the Iraq War. The most common observation made by progressives about
these mass demonstrations-a perception the media is only to happy to echo-is
that they did not stop the war from being launched.
But lest you think the
anti-Iraq War protests had no significant or lasting impact, consider the following
quote from Barbara Slavin, a senior correspondent for USA Today, from a recent
article in American Journalism Review. “I was hearing a lot of the same
language against Iran that I
heard against Iraq-the
arguments about WMDs, support for terrorism and abuse of human rights,” Slavin
said. However, she went on to add:
“There are a lot more dissenting voices for us to quote this time. That makes
it a bit easier for reporters.”
Leaving aside the fact
that there were millions of dissenting voices journalists could have quoted last
time as well, there is a huge lesson to learn in Slavin’s comment: Why do
we have a situation today where it is common knowledge-and widely accepted even
within sections of the media and political mainstream-that the Bush administration
used false pretexts to lead the nation into war in Iraq? It is largely because
of massive anti-war protests that, from the beginning, labeled the Iraq War as
immoral and based on deceit, spreading throughout the U.S. and the
world the sentiment that the Bush administration is a pack of liars . In due
time, of course, this sentiment became vindicated, and it is a matter of
elementary logic that one cannot vindicate what was not expressed to begin
with.
The result, as Slavin’s
comment indicates, has been an American public that- while still far too easily
influenced by flimsy or concocted evidence- is also far more skeptical than
last time around when the administration tries to lead it into a new war.
In addition, while
Fallon’s resignation is a sobering reminder of the insanity of looking to
anyone in the military or government for salvation, it is true that the
powers-that-be are far more divided over whether or not to attack Iran than they
were going into the Iraq War. This is likely due to several factors, chief
among them the severe problems the U.S.
military has encountered during the war in Iraq, and the widespread
unpopularity of that same war. The sharp division within the U.S. government over whether or not to attack Iran was powerfully
embodied in the comments foreign relations chairman Joe Biden made at a
campaign rally last November.
“The president has
no authority to unilaterally attack Iran,” Biden said. “And if he does, as Foreign Relations
Committee chairman, I will move to impeach.”
Yes, it is
worth noting that Biden said Bush has no right to unilaterally attack Iran (leaving
open whether he supported multilateral attacks). It is also worth acknowledging
that Biden, who was running for president at the time, could have been lying to
solicit votes. Still, this is not, in a
million years, a leading member of Congress would have made during the run-up
to the Iraq War. The fact that Biden issued that statement, and that it
garnered heavy applause from the crowd, says a lot about changes in the
political terrain during the last four years.
Clearly, the divisions
within top levels of government and military, coupled with widespread disgust
and skepticism of the Bush administration, are not reasons to relax: the last
several years, right down to the last several days, have resoundingly
demonstrated the folly in that notion.
What this convergence of
factors does present is an opening for the American people to prevent
war with Iran-if
we act boldly and act now. But recent events
suggest that opening may once again be closing.
And if we do not act soon, it may shut, leaving us with only darkness.
We would do well to
consider the closing words of Hedges” speech.
“I have friends in Tehran, in Gaza, in Beirut and Baghdad, in Jerusalem and Cairo,”
Hedges said. “And even if our efforts of resistance fail, we should at least
muster enough integrity and courage so that when the slaughter is over, we will
have earned the right to ask for their forgiveness.”